The LDP have been urging fiscal restraint, with one eye on a very jittery government bond market, as investors worry about Japan’s ability to refinance the world’s largest debt pile. Any concessions the LDP must now strike with opposition parties to pass policy will only further elevate those nerves, analysts say.
“The ruling party will have to compromise in order to gain the cooperation of the opposition, and the budget will continue to expand,” said Yu Uchiyama, a politics professor at the University of Tokyo.
“Overseas investors’ evaluation of the Japan economy will also be quite harsh.”
Sanseito, which first emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites, is among those advocating fiscal expansion.
But it is its tough talk on immigration that has grabbed attention, dragging once-fringe political rhetoric into the mainstream.
It remains to be seen whether the party can follow the path of other far-right parties with which it has drawn comparisons, such as Germany’s AFD and Reform UK.
“I am attending graduate school but there are no Japanese around me. All of them are foreigners,” said Yu Nagai, a 25-year-old student who voted for Sanseito earlier on Sunday.
“When I look at the way compensation and money are spent on foreigners, I think that Japanese people are a bit disrespected,” Nagai said after casting his ballot at a polling station in Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward.
Japan, the world’s oldest society, saw foreign-born residents hit a record of about 3.8 million last year.
That is still just 3 per cent of the total population, a much smaller fraction than in the United States and Europe, but comes amid a tourism boom that has made foreigners far more visible across the country.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/japan-ruling-coalition-lose-upper-house-majority-exit-poll-5248266
