With the Upper House election a month away, Japanese politics will soon kick into high gear.
The parliament is set to close on June 15, and campaigning will likely begin on June 22, with voters casting their ballots on July 10.
For its part, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is already primed and ready for the race. With a brand new slogan (“Decision and execution. To protect our livelihood”) and a confident leadership, the party aims to pad its seat total and renew its mandate.
While new developments will still invariably unfold, there are five things to note when looking at the LDP’s position heading into this race.
1. The LDP is in cruise control
The LDP is entering the campaign period with historically high public approval ratings. The Kishida administration’s polling numbers are the best for an LDP prime minister since July 2013, when then-leader Shinzo Abe was riding the wave of popularity following his return to power in December 2012. The party itself is also enjoying a wide approval margin over the opposition, with nearly a 35-point lead over its nearest competitor, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. This bodes well for the LDP.
Although public opinion is just one indicator of potential success or failure, it is an important one in Japan’s de facto one-party system. Most national elections in the country boil down to a question of whether the electorate is dissatisfied enough with the current government to vote for the opposition, and polling data offers insight as to where many of them sit vis-a-vis that question.
According to the numbers, it would seem that the opposition is facing an uphill battle in convincing the Japanese public that change is necessary right now.
2. Differences with coalition partner put aside — for now
The LDP is successfully coordinating its election strategies with Komeito. For all the speculation that there was trouble brewing inside the ruling coalition, the LDP and Komeito have seemed to set aside any policy disagreements to focus on the upcoming election. As with past elections, the coalition partners have deconflicted their candidates to eliminate the possibility of splitting votes and to maximize their chances of winning the biggest spread.
This continues to demonstrate that election partnership remains the single most important feature of the relationship, and it reflects the reality of politicians’ hierarchy of needs. On the first tier of that hierarchy is political survival; next is benefits to individual parties and politicians; and once they satisfy those things, they then can shift their focus to actual policymaking. The LDP and Komeito continue to illustrate this concept whenever election season rolls around.
3. At last, progress in gender equality
The LDP has met a self-imposed target of 30% female candidates.
As late as last month, there was some concern within the party of whether it was going to achieve this goal, but on May 30, LDP Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi announced that they had fielded enough female candidates to break the 30% threshold — squeaking in at 30.1%.
This is still below the 35% as envisioned by the 2020 Cabinet plan for gender equality, but it is significantly higher than the abysmal 9.8% from October’s Lower House election. The 30% number is one the LDP will continue to use in trying to invigorate support from younger generations of voters, especially women.
Of note, one of the LDP’s female candidates that appeared on stage with Motegi during his gender equality news conference is a naturalized citizen of Uyghur and Uzbek descent. The Georgetown-educated Arfiya Eri is running as a proportional representation candidate from Fukuoka.
Not only does her candidacy make a difference in reaching the 30% goal, she personifies several policies from the LDP’s platform and offers the party a new image in the upcoming election.
4. Slim ambitions for constitutional change
While Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is likely to state that the LDP’s goal is a simple majority (more than half the seats in the Upper House), the actual target for the party will be a stable majority.
A stable majority is more than 56% of the seats, which will afford the ruling coalition all the committee chairperson positions and most of the committee seats. If the LDP was targeting a supermajority — that is, more than two-thirds of the house — they would have to be running several more candidates than they are putting forward.
As it stands, to reach a two-thirds majority in the Upper House, 88% of all LDP and Komeito candidates would have to win, and that would be a political miracle.
This is an important consideration when it comes to the debate over constitutional amendment. For the government to amend the Constitution, any proposal would have to receive two-thirds support from both the Upper and Lower Houses.
The unlikelihood of the ruling coalition achieving two-thirds means that the LDP does not have a realistic chance of making any constitutional amendments anytime soon. Whatever party leaders may be saying in the information space, the LDP is not positioning itself to be able to secure such an epoch-making change.
5. Keeping Abe at bay
It is important to recognize that for the LDP, this election remains Motegi’s show. Kishida continues to focus on leadership on the world stage, as he is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue this week and is contemplating becoming the first Japanese leader to attend a NATO summit later this month. Meanwhile, other traditional LDP elites like Abe, Taro Aso, and Toshihiro Nikai remain in the background.
This is important for understanding the dynamics inside the LDP. The more success Motegi enjoys, the further away the party moves from the Abe-led conservative wing. Motegi may not have been a heavyweight when he took the position, but as a faction head and determined leader of the LDP, it will be tough for anyone to usurp his place in the line of succession.
As with any election, new developments will emerge that bear observation, but the Kishida administration has positioned itself well in preparation for the Upper House election. Kishida will work to demonstrate sure-handed leadership of the government, while Motegi continues his deft orchestration of party affairs.
Meanwhile, the relationship with Komeito has gone back to its roots in electoral politics, and the LDP has enough fresh faces in the lineup to claim that it is not just the old guard anymore. Will all this hold true in the run-up to the Upper House election? There is just a month until we find out.
Michael MacArthur Bosack is the special adviser for government relations at the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies. He previously served in the Japanese government as a Mansfield fellow.
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