The cabinet of ministers led by Shigeru Ishiba, which has been in power in Japan for the past five months, has almost immediately encountered a number of serious challenges, both domestic and international.

The Fragile Position of Ishiba’s Cabinet in Parliament

The term “fragile” is also applicable to the overall domestic political situation, which is a result of longstanding, near-fundamental problems in Japan. Chief among these is the prolonged stagnation of economic indicators, leading to a sense of insecurity among the population, especially the younger generation. Families are either not having children at all or limiting themselves to one child. As a result, concerns about the potential extinction of the Japanese people as a nation are increasingly voiced.

It is these fundamental problems, rather than intra-party corruption scandals, which mainly provoke media uproar, that are testing the electorate’s patience. This was reflected in the aforementioned elections last autumn, whose outcome has been described as an “historic failure” for the LDP.

Meanwhile, elections to the upper house of parliament are scheduled for the summer of this year, during which half of the 248 seats will be contested. Under the pretext of concerns over the upcoming election results, calls have already been made for Ishiba’s resignation as party leader.

The initiator of this demand belongs to the faction within the LDP formerly led by the late Shinzo Abe. It was with Abe that Ishiba engaged in a leadership struggle within the ruling party back in the previous decade. An........

© New Eastern Outlook