What Awaits Kishida After Japan’s Lower House Election

On October 31, Japan held an election for its House of Representatives (the lower house of the Japanese Diet). In the final count, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)-Komeito ruling coalition easily remained in power, though it lost 12 seats and the opposition parties gained 16. Before the election, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio had indicated that, if the ruling coalition maintained its majority in the Lower House, he would keep the existing cabinet (which, after all, was only unveiled on October 4, the day Kishida took office). As such, no drastic changes in his policy direction are expected.

On the one hand, this is good news for Japan. Externally, Japan finds itself surrounded by neighboring countries that have grown increasingly hostile. Despite Kishida’s initial outreach to Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, these countries have been intensifying their provocative behavior, as demonstrated by a recent incident in which Chinese and Russian vessels sailed together through the Tsugaru Strait between the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Meanwhile, North Korea tested a submarine-launched ballistic missile on the day that the lower house election campaign period officially began.

Internally, even though the COVID-19 vaccination drive has been accelerating, Japan’s battle with the virus is far from over. There is much work left to be done to revitalize the Japanese economy, which was unable to enjoy a much-anticipated economic boost from hosting the rescheduled 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In short, this is not the time to experiment with a change of power in the government.      

On the other hand, the days leading up to the election also suggested that Kishida has much work to do to restore voters’ confidence in the ruling coalition under his leadership. Even though the LDP consistently topped, by a comfortable margin, opinion polls conducted by various news outlets, these results also illustrated that the LDP has suffered a loss of confidence among non-affiliated voters.  Even among those who identify themselves as LDP supporters, their loyalty seems to have waned.

Meanwhile, support for most of the opposition parties, including the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party), and Japan Communist Party (JCP), has increased.  While these parties failed to topple the LDP-Komeito coalition, the poll results did show voters’ dissatisfaction with the governing coalition.

In the final tally, the LDP dropped from 276 seats to 261, enough to guarantee a majority on its own. The LDP’s main partner, Komeito, gained three seats, going from 29 to 32. The CPD, interestingly, also lost seats, going from 109 to 96;the JCP also dropped from 12 to 10. The big winner among the opposition was the Nippon Ishin, which increased its seat tally by 30, going from just 11 seats to 41.

Indeed, looking beyond the election, Kishida has a formidable list of issues to tackle. First and foremost, as he declared in his policy speech in front of the Diet in early October, he must restore the confidence among voters that the government listens to and cares about their concerns, particularly in its response to COVID-19. This includes the government laying out concrete steps that it intends to take to reopen Japan’s society while learning valuable lessons from the experience of the pandemic, including how to better incorporate remote work. Kishida also needs to show that — unlike his predecessors — his government will respond should there be another surge in COVID-19 cases that may require the reintroduction of travel and other restrictions, while implementing much clearer benchmarks for his government’s decisions. A poor response to COVID-19 and its impact on people’s lives brought down his immediate predecessor, Suga Yoshihide, a little over a year after he took office. Kishida cannot and should not repeat the same mistake.   

Kishida also has a quite full foreign and national security policy plate. He has already indicated that his government will revise three key documents for Japan’s foreign and national security policy: the National Security Strategy (NSS), National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG), and Mid-Term Defense Program (MTDP). In fact, the revision of the NSS — the first revision since 2013 when it was originally set — is overdue, given the dramatic change in geopolitical landscape since then.

Kishida will also oversee a couple of important processes that the Japan-U.S. alliance has been going through — host-nation support (HNS) negotiations and the consultations under the “2+2” umbrella, which aim at reaching key decisions on issues such as responsibility-sharing between the two countries’ militaries in various contingencies as well as deepening bilateral defense technology cooperation. With that in mind, the decisions that will be made under Kishida will be consequential for Japan’s foreign and national security policy for the next decade, possibly longer.

It is ironic that Kishida, known to be sometimes overshadowed by former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s robust diplomatic engagement while serving as his first foreign minister for five years, finds himself to be in the position of making these profound decisions for Japan. However, with his political style that places a premium on pragmatism, compassion, and consensus-building, Kishida may be the right person for the job at the right time.