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.
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.
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.
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.
Clueless or intentional?
Clueless.
Hanlon’s razor. Also, how great a cultural understanding would you expect 1940’s America to develop?
That’s disappointing, but good to know. Thanks.
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.
America really biffed it,
Pretty decent summary of American history, that. With few exceptions.
Said to be a former heavy metal drummer.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=WvfplA3a02g
I do have to say that 80s Japan included some edgy subcultures involving Nazi fetishization.
Currently, in Japan, it is a major issue that her party’s video has been viewed 160 million times on YouTube. Of course, the majority of those views are thought to have been for advertising purposes.
She is a far-right politician who advocates “countermeasures against foreigners,” but she paid a large sum of money to Google, a foreign tech giant, to win the election.
At the very least, online election advertising will likely be an issue for discussion in the upcoming Diet session.
japan is fucked up
Takaichi is known for favouring proactive government spending. She supports heavy government investment in critical strategic sectors in what she refers to as “crisis management investment”. These include artificial intelligence, semiconductors, nuclear fusion, biotechnology, and defence.
Her other policies aside, the economic one looks like a winner.
I’m sure the shareholders will be happy.
Yeah, you’re probably right. Just looked at unionization rate and it’s around 16%. Workers won’t see much from this investment.
Funny exerpt from wiki:
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the U.S. Occupation authorities initially encouraged the formation of independent unions, but reversed course as part of broader anti-Communist measures.
The cold war era propaganda and policies have really fucked everything up. There’s a straight line between them and today’s Republican/MAGA party that runs right through Reagan’s economic policies. MAGA sits at the crossroads of that and the festering racism that was never dealt with following the civil war. Unfortunately America’s world police mentality (and CIA fuckery, another result of the cold war) has spread those policies and attitudes to a bunch of other countries (who all for some strange reason have a dominant conservative media company owned by Rupert Murdoch, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence right?).
Japan has struggled with horrendous xenophobia for pretty much their entire history so this isn’t really surprising even if it is disappointing. Unfortunately we’re seeing a rise in far right parties around the globe and there are depressingly few liberal governments left. If this keeps up it’s not going to take much to ignite WW3 with all these nationalists taking control.
Completely agree. A lot of countries were on some path or another of dealing with liberal capitalism’s collapse that gave us The Great Depression. The propaganda you mention steered these changes right back to the right - towards oligarch class dominance over working people, like it used to be before the depression. Unsurprisingly we find ourselves in a situation very reminiscent to the pre-depression environment.
Welcome to the party Japan! You’re gonna regret this in about 4-6 months after it’s to late…
Why are the Japanese leaning ultra-nationalist conservative?
I kind of get it in the States. The US has always leaned fundamentalist religious and more conservo-libertarian, more skeptical of federal government.
I kind of get it elsewhere, like the UK or Brazil.
But Japan? I thought they were… more urban? I thought work burnout + a population age cliff was their existential crisis, so why would they vote for less immigration and less control over that, unless I’m misunderstanding the platform?
Japan is more or less the Israel of East Asia.
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP; Japanese: 自由民主党, romanized: Jiyū-Minshutō), also known as Jimintō (自民党), is a major conservative[14] and nationalist[15] political party in Japan.
I’m so fucking confused. This is why Japan’s population is in decline.
Everywhere outside of the US, ‘Liberal’ means right-wing
Well relatively speaking. Up until the Trump era both major parties in the US were essentially liberal parties before the Republicans became a far right party. The right wing nationalists in other countries would probably be moderate Democrats by US standards.
It means that in the US too. Just less than the other right-wing party… who is also liberal.
Bruh
She looks like a traditional japanese mask and that worries me.
that’s not the one I had in mind. I couldn’t find the specific one when I searched earlier though. Paler and more like the happy mask salesman
Heavy Metal Japan
