Japan Election: Asia’s Most Stable Democracy Is Sent Into Chaos

Deep-seated grievance among Japanese voters has put the Liberal Democrats, longstanding custodians of the status quo, on notice.

For years, Japan has managed to resist the populist waves that have swept Europe and the United States as disaffected electorates have demanded radical change.

But as voters handed the longtime governing party of Japan a resounding blow in snap parliamentary elections on Sunday, there were signs that their frustration could convert one of the region’s most stable democracies into a much more chaotic one.

On the surface, it appeared that the center had held. Even though the Liberal Democratic Party, which has dominated Japanese politics for most of the postwar era, lost its majority in the lower house of Parliament, the Constitutional Democrats, who won the second-most seats behind the L.D.P., are another relatively centrist party.

But minority parties on the far left and far right both gained seats. And while Shigeru Ishiba, who was selected by the Liberal Democrats as prime minister only a month ago, blamed the party’s dismal showing on a protracted political finance scandal, analysts said the sense of grievance among voters went far deeper.

“The last 30 years of stagnation and the deterioration of the living standards, especially for young people — the frustration is there,” said Kunihiko Miyake, a former Japanese diplomat who is now a special adviser at the Canon Institute for Global Studies in Tokyo.

Mr. Miyake said that L.D.P.-led governments had so far managed to contain voter discontent over flat wages, labor shortages and a rapidly aging population. But now, he added, “the doomsday has come” to Japan. The Liberal Democrats, custodians of the status quo, have been put on notice.

“This is not a simple political money scandal,” Mr. Miyake said. “It’s much more structural and longer term.”

The unaccustomed electoral disarray has left it unclear who will lead the government going forward. The hobbled L.D.P. has 30 days to try to bring more partners on board and form a ruling coalition. The opposition is seen as unlikely to be able to bridge its divides and put together a government.

Mr. Ishiba, 27 days into his prime ministership, was also facing questions about how long he will last. During a news conference on Monday, he acknowledged the “harsh criticism from the public” and promised to introduce more transparency in political fund-raising and accounting.

In many ways, pressure had been building for years under a deceptively placid political landscape, where it appeared that the Japanese public would put up with business as usual indefinitely.

Successive administrations led by Liberal Democrats “looked very stable, but these governments postponed real policy changes and left serious problems in the Japanese economy and society,” said Jiro Yamaguchi, a political scientist at Hosei University in Tokyo.

With eight opposition parties winning seats, it will be very difficult for them to present a unified new vision for the country.

“The fragmentation and polarization of the party system appears to be starting from this election,” Mr. Yamaguchi said. While choice can be one sign of political health, the potential for voters to flee to parties with more extreme positions could be “a very dangerous symptom for democracy,” he added.

And although voters clearly wanted to send a message to the Liberal Democrats, it’s not clear that they chose a consistent alternative.

“The diversity of parties that achieved gains in this election show that there’s not one coherent vision for moving Japan forward,” said Kristi Govella, an associate professor with the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies at the University of Oxford.

Part of the reason the Liberal Democrats were able to weather public discontent for so long was that Shinzo Abe, a talented politician who was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, enforced party discipline and persuaded the public that stability was more important than sweeping change.

But after Mr. Abe was assassinated in 2022, the public grew increasingly disaffected by emerging scandals that had remained hidden. Mr. Abe’s killer said he held a grudge against him because of the former prime minister’s links to the Unification Church, a fringe religious group that had taken thousands of dollars from the gunman’s mother.

Once the Japanese media swiftly revealed that dozens of Liberal Democratic lawmakers were also supported by the church’s political arm, approval ratings for the party spiraled downward. The public grew even more disgruntled with the more recent political finance scandals.

Analysts said they were not sure the results from Sunday’s election would improve the public mood or yield much substantive change.

“This isn’t going to make the Japanese public feel happier about their democracy,” said Tobias Harris, founder and principal of Japan Foresight, a consultancy in Washington.

If the Liberal Democrats end up forming a minority government along with their current coalition partner, Komeito, or recruiting a few minority parties through backroom negotiations, that “is not going to result in a whole lot of love for the government that comes out of it,” Mr. Harris said.

Analysts said that even if Mr. Ishiba can retain the prime ministership, he will face significant challenges in his efforts to purge corruption from the party. Although he was selected as the L.D.P.’s leader because of his perceived public popularity and willingness to criticize his colleagues, during his few weeks in power, he has not shown an ability to clean house effectively.

More than 45 politicians were implicated in allegations of hiding proceeds from political fund-raisers and taking kickbacks, but Mr. Ishiba had announced that the party would withdraw its endorsement from just a dozen candidates in Sunday’s election. And last week, the Japanese media revealed that the L.D.P. transferred 20 million yen — about $131,000 — to local branches of candidates who had lost the party’s endorsement.

Mr. Ishiba faces opponents within his own party, which means “he can’t make any reforms,” said Mieko Nakabayashi, a professor of politics at Waseda University in Tokyo.

But “if the L.D.P. doesn’t want to lose more seats, they should do something” before an upper house election scheduled for next summer, Ms. Nakabayashi said. “That was the message from the people.”

On one front, at least, the election did not appear to cause much disruption. Regardless of what form a governing coalition takes, there is unlikely to be backtracking from the Liberal Democratic Party’s recent moves to increase Japan’s defense budget, restore relations with South Korea and stand firm with the world’s richest democracies in backing Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

Rahm Emanuel, the United States ambassador to Japan, said he was confident that the alliance between the two countries would remain stable. “There are things that are locked in that are still contributing to the alliance and the deterrence effect of the alliance,” Mr. Emanuel said.

But Shihoko Goto, director of the Indo-Pacific program at the Wilson Center in Washington, warned that Japan’s inward turn to deal with domestic political instability could undermine its role as a bulwark in the region against rising threats from North Korea and China.

“The hope had been that Japan would continue to be an anchor,” but the election results put that into question, Ms. Goto said.

What’s more, she said, with the U.S. election just eight days away, “depending on what the results are in Japan and in the United States, there’s going to be a great deal of uncertainty across the region.”

Kiuko Notoya and Hisako Ueno contributed reporting.

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