Is Japan Back?
Hardline conservative Takaichi expected to use polls mandate for dramatic change
The landslide snap election gamble in Japan of the extremely popular 64-year-old Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a hardline conservative and nationalist who came to power less than four months ago, has far greater foreign policy implications than economic ones, despite the focus on the impact on an already very weak yen of the new premier’s association with even bigger fiscal deficits.
Takaichi secured 316 of the 465 seats in the lower house of the National Diet, Japan’s Parliament, giving the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which had been averaging only 28 percent approval before the elections, a two-thirds majority made even more striking with the addition of another 36 seats held by coalition ally Ishin, the Japan Innovation Party. A single party hasn’t won a two-thirds supermajority in the House of Representatives in the post-World War II era. The win gives her unrivaled control over parliament, allowing the LDP to monopolize committee chair posts and override potential vetoes, producing a mandate for change in a country seemingly frozen in policy paralysis since the end of the Endaka (high yen) period in 1991.
Assurance as US ally
US President Donald Trump can expect a steady ally in Takaichi, who has pledged to revise security and defense policies to reinforce military competence and lift bans on weapons exports that go back decades. She is expected to align even more closely with the US on the issue of regional security, famously having irritated Beijing by labeling a potential conflict in Taiwan a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan. Critics argue these steps move Japan further away from its postwar pacifist principles, with her bellicosity triggering frissons in some Southeast Asian nations as well as China. But she is expected to maintain stable relations with South Korea despite the decades-old issue of Japan’s kidnaping of women to use as WWII sex slaves, focusing on shared security concerns regarding China and North Korea…
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