The Japanese electorate delivered a verdict last weekend that shattered the conventional wisdom of Nagatacho. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her Liberal Democratic Party roared back from the political wilderness, securing 316 seats in the 465-seat Lower House of parliament.
This supermajority is a stunning reversal of fortune. Just two years prior, voters had sent the LDP to the “penalty box,” to borrow a Canadian hockey metaphor, punishing the party for the corruption scandals and feckless leadership that characterized the administrations of former LDP presidents Fumio Kishida and Shigeru Ishiba.
Yet while Takaichi’s victory offers an overwhelming mandate for the LDP as the stewards of the nation, it would be a grave error for the prime minister to misread the tea leaves. This was a vote for hard-nosed realism in a dangerous neighborhood, not a license for performative nationalism or domestic culture wars.
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