Economic Insecurity and the Rise of the Right: How the Standing Japanese Government lost its Majority Rule

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Edited by Arya Kumar, Elizabeth Adams, Owen Andrews, and Sarah Ahmad

The Japanese parliament held its upper house election in July 2025. Half of the 248-member upper house goes up for election every three years, with upper house members serving fixed six-year terms. Out of the 125 open seats (with one extra seat being available to fill a vacancy), 50 were elected through proportional representation and 75 were elected from electoral districts, with 520 candidates seeking out seats. The Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), often considered the dominant political party in Japanese politics, is starting to lose its influence to right-wing and conservative ideologies amidst growing economic struggles

The Japanese ruling coalition, consisting of both the LDP and the similarly left-leaning Komeito party, hoped to obtain at least 50 of the 125 contested seats to reach the majority threshold in the July election. Prior to the contest, they held 141 seats. After the election, they were down to 122, leaving the coalition without majority control in both houses of parliament. Claiming to be “taking responsibility for the LDP’s poor election results,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba stepped down from office on September 7 after less than a year in office. Even before his decision, talks were underway within the LDP party on whether they should hold an early presidential election, with some party veterans publicly calling for Ishiba to resign. Without a majority, the LDP will struggle to pass legislation without heavy concessions and negotiation with the opposition. 

The LDP had seen largely uncontested rule since its inception in 1955, the only exception being the 2009-2012 period in which the Democratic Party of Japan was in power. Much of the party’s success has been attributed to extensive public work projects built within LDP politicians’ districts. While the party historically drew much of its support from agricultural households, small shop owners, veteran and military groups, new religious groups, and construction groups, recent policy changes such as cutting back on “pork-barrel spending,” deregulating the economy, and privatizing businesses have led to a decline in rural voters and an increase in its urban support base.

But the party has recently come under scrutiny for its inability to effectively address several key economic issues. An uptick in anti-foreigner sentiment has emerged as Japan sees rapid increases in immigrants, tourists, and foreign workers. Huge surges of immigrants have entered the country under work-related visas — sought after by companies in the hospitality, retail, healthcare, construction, and industrial sectors to help deal with ongoing labor shortages — leading some Japanese natives to worry about their job security. The proportion of foreign-born residents in Japan currently sits around 3%, but if current immigration trends continue, it will likely exceed 10% by 2067. There are also worries that foreigners use outsized shares of welfare benefits and underlying fears that they have made Japanese society “unsafe.” 

Many are also worried about Japan-U.S. trade relations, with many Japanese concerned about the potential fallout of additional tariffs on their export-heavy economy. The current deal between the two countries sets most Japanese exports to the U.S. at 15%, a decrease of only 10% from the initial planned tariff rate of 25%. The automobile industry was notably affected by the new rates. Auto exports to the U.S. saw a 14% decrease in August compared to the year prior, the fifth month in a row of decline after the tariff rate increased from 2.5% to 15%.  

Most notable, however, is an increasing cost of living, with many across Japan struggling to adapt to rising rice prices. Rice is seen as a staple food in Japan and is seen as a necessity for the average buyer. Significant price hikes in the grain significantly affect the lives of most consumers within Japan. With farmers being a large part of the LDP voter base, the government has long been placing artificial restrictions on rice production, limiting supply to ensure prices remain relatively high to support the livelihoods of farmers. Following the particularly poor harvest of 2023, rice prices doubled in the span of one year as supply was unable to meet demand. This concern was only exacerbated further by panic buying and a growing hospitality sector buying up increasingly large amounts of rice to support and sustain its growth. 

The LDP’s reaction to the price crisis was insufficient. The previous Agricultural Minister, Taku Eto, delayed the release of government rice reserves after misjudging the current supply and demand of the staple food. When he finally did release the rice, he chose to sell it through auction rather than directly to retailers. The auction system primarily sold rice to farming cooperatives, such as the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives, rather than the stores themselves, which results in the grain going through several distribution layers before it is able to be sold to the public. This created large delays between the sale of the rice and the grain actually being in retailers’ possession. For example, in March, the government sold 212,132 tons of rice, but by April 13, only 3,018 tons had actually been distributed for retailers to sell. 

Eto stepped down as Agricultural Minister after a gaffe made at a political fundraising event where he said that he received so much rice from his supporters that he did not need to buy any, a comment deemed incredibly insensitive as the average citizen struggled to afford the staple food. Under new Agricultural Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, the ruling government switched to direct contracts, and prices have been showing a steady — albeit slow — decline. Even still, the delay remains a poor reflection on the government's ability to act quickly and effectively.

The LDP as a whole has also faced a series of campaign funding scandals. In January 2025, an internal investigation found that 26 current and former members of the LDP’s parliamentary group in the Tokyo metropolitan assembly failed to report millions of yen raised from political fundraising events from 2019 to 2022. A similar scandal was brought to light in 2023, where it was revealed that, between 2018 and 2022, factions formerly headed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former LDP Secretary General Nikai Toshihiro had failed to report nearly 935 million yen raised as income through fundraising parties. A 2024 poll found that over 84% of respondents believed former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who many had suspected to be the "key figure" who may know the truth behind the funds scandal, should be asked to explain the LDP’s secret slush fund scandal before the national legislature. Additionally, a survey conducted in October 2024 following the general election that month, in which the LDP ruling coalition lost its majority in the House of Representatives, found that 79.2% of respondents were opposed to allowing LDP members hit by the scandal to be assigned key positions in government. 91.5% of respondents also believed that the LDP’s loss of seats in the election was caused by the slush fund scandal. 

The LDP has recently shown itself to be both riddled with scandals and ineffectual in its handling of pertinent economic issues. It is not a coincidence that, amidst such economic turmoil and distrust in the current government, far-right populist movements would develop significant traction, the most notable of which being the Sanseito party.

 The Sanseito party came away from the July Upper House Election as one of its biggest winners, obtaining a total of 14 seats. The party, touting the slogan “Japan First,” is firmly conservative, populist, and anti-globalist, running on a campaign of growing unease regarding foreigners and immigration, with the party pinning Japan’s economic strife on the two. 

It is not fair to strip the nuance of the party and reduce it to pure xenophobia. The Sanseito party advocates for tax cuts, educational reform, and a reduced reliance on foreign goods, but it is undeniable that Japanese nationalism and anti-foreigner rhetoric are major campaign issues. Their slogan is, after all, “Japan First,” and the party has made promises to set caps on foreign entrants, restrict foreigners from holding certain public sector jobs, limit their ability to purchase land, and suspend welfare payments to non-citizens.  

On the surface, it can be easy to undermine the significance of such a party’s emergence into the political scene. 14 seats may not seem like a lot compared to the 248 total seats, but what this ultimately reflects is that there does exist a sizable, growing minority of voters for whom the policies and scapegoating created by the Sanseito party resonate with. Many voters appear to believe that policies that ultimately aim to suggest that the majority of the problems facing Japanese society stem from foreigners, immigration, and globalism will ease their economic worries. The Sanseito party is merely five years old, and yet in one election cycle, it was able to obtain nearly 10% of all seats up for grabs at the time. 

It is, however, far too simplistic to pin the blame entirely upon foreigners. Issues such as rising rice prices, while attributed in part to a booming tourist industry, were also largely due to a poor 2023 harvest and the LDP government’s ineffectual handling of a remediable situation. Targeting foreigners and immigrants may remedy the crisis, but it does not actually solve nor provide an effective fix forthe structural issues at hand here, and therefore it does not provide an effective countermeasure to ensure such a crisis will not happen again. But such nuances are difficult to express within a political context. For the average voter, it can be easy to ascribe the problems facing a nation to one specific group, rather than look at underlying factors. Placing all of one’s blame into one basket, so to speak. In targeting foreigners, the populace is united in their frustration with the current governance and able to channel it into — or rather against — something easier to understand. The shift towards right-wing ideologies, thus, does not appear to be a result of an outright shift in political ideology, but rather a symptom of a general disapproval of the standing government.