The Japanese leader's election gambit, fueled by the power of her personality and some unlikely help from young voters consumed by “Sanamania,” appears to have paid off.

The Japanese leader’s election gambit, fueled by the power of her personality and some unlikely help from young voters consumed by “Sanamania,” appears to have paid off.

Japan’s conservative prime minister Sanae Takaichi has won a landslide victory after she gambled on a high-stakes snap election.

Takaichi, who took office in October after being elected leader of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), surpassed the 310 seats needed for a supermajority in the 465-seat lower house, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported from the official election count on Sunday evening. The supermajority allows her ruling coalition to override the upper house, where it lacks a majority.

An NHK exit poll as voting ended earlier on Sunday projected the LDP would win between 274 and 326 seats. The party and its coalition partner Ishin were projected to win a combined 302-366 seats, as voters turned out amid freezing temperatures in a rare winter election.

  • ilinamorato@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1681·
    3 days ago

    Hmm, I just realized that I (an American living in New Zealand) have no idea what Japanese politics are like. To Wikipedia!

    Takaichi has been described as holding hard-line conservative and Japanese nationalist views,

    uh oh

    citing former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher as a role model and deeply influential on her personal political beliefs.

    Uh oh

    Like Thatcher, she is called the “Iron Lady”.

    Uh Oh

    Takaichi is a member of Nippon Kaigi, a far-right ultraconservative organisation

    UH OH

    that argues for a reinterpretation of Japanese history

    RED ALERT

    amongst ultranationalist lines.

    WELP

    Oof. Well, I guess it had to happen to Japan someday. It’s happened everywhere else. Here’s hoping it doesn’t last long and the damage is minimal.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      29·
      2 days ago

      TBF fascism never really stopped in Japan. The American occupation was so clueless it changed very little of what Japan was before; the elites just kind of divided into nominal parties.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          81·
          2 days ago

          Yes, it is. America really biffed it, and the nuking a couple cities thing wasn’t great either.

          Now, that’s not to say Japanese democracy is fake. The elections are real, and AFAIK the parties have gradually taken on real ideological differences. It does help explain why they’re broadly racist, still not sorry about WWII and have a lot of regional vote buying with projects, though.

          Edit: Not great women’s rights either, ironically.

          • ilinamorato@lemmy.worldEnglish
            41·
            2 days ago

            America really biffed it,

            Pretty decent summary of American history, that. With few exceptions.

    • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      38·
      3 days ago

      Hey look at it this way, we may finally get our mechs out of this.

      I mean, they may be the last thing you see, but at least we may see them.

    • MadPsyentist@lemmy.nzEnglish
      62·
      3 days ago

      Maybe Japan gets a situation like NZ where the conservitve parties and “the right” like National and Act would probably be left of the USA Democrats on the political spectrum. I can hope right?

      Also reducing all politics to a left right thing is so stupid and probably the worst thing to do for political discourse but… here we are. I blame the murdoch media

      • Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.comEnglish
        311·
        2 days ago

        Unfortunately not. Japan has been very far-right (bordering on jingoistic) for a long time now. The country’s external facade is all cute anime characters and zany fashion… But that was an intentional rebrand (heavily subsidized by the country’s propaganda department) in the wake of WW2 to distance itself from the atrocities they had committed. But internally, the country has remained extremely hardline conservative and xenophobic. And it has only shifted farther right with recent elections.

        • lechekaflan@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          2 days ago

          But internally, the country has remained extremely hardline conservative and xenophobic.

          Yeah, they also get the Mainland Chinese wolf-warriors frothing in the mouth who would love turning Yasukuni Shrine into a mountain of matchsticks.

        • Gathorall@lemmy.worldEnglish
          71·
          2 days ago

          And after the war USA nudged Japan right with anything they could think of for good measure, to shape it in their own image.

      • ilinamorato@lemmy.worldEnglish
        51·
        2 days ago

        To be fair, that is almost exactly why I moved here. Luxon seems like a somewhat worthless lump, but his most extreme position appears to be a bit further left than Elizabeth Warren. And it’s not impossible that he won’t survive the year in his role.

        Also reducing all politics to a left right thing is so stupid and probably the worst thing to do for political discourse

        Absolutely agree. I hate that my first reaction to every conversation has to be “…but are they a fascist?”

    • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
      4·
      3 days ago

      It more accurately happens like every second or third PM and then things swing to another faction of the LDP (or, historically rarely since WWII ended, another party though the last times that happened they faceplanted pretty quickly and it went back to the LDP)