Tokyo Report | Politics | East Asia

The Untold Story of Japan’s Election: The Quiet Breakthrough of Team Mirai

Team Mirai, a new party founded in May 2025, secured 11 seats in the lower house.

The newly-elected lawmakers from Team Mirai pose for a photo before attending their first session of the Japanese Diet, Feb. 18, 2026.

The February 2026 lower house election in Japan delivered electoral results that will take some time to fully understand. The major election headline was that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) surged from 198 to 316 seats, clearing the two-thirds threshold on its own and setting a postwar record for seats won by a single party. Meanwhile, the Centrist Reform Alliance – formed by the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Komeito just before the election – collapsed from 167 seats to just 49.

Most coverage has focused on the LDP’s landslide and the centrists’ rout, worthy focuses to be sure. But another story deserves attention as well: the quiet rise of Team Mirai, a new party founded in May 2025. It secured 11 seats in the lower house, compared to one seat in the upper house. That’s more than double the party’s own pre-election goal, and only four seats fewer than Sanseito, whose meteoric rise sparked a flood of thinkpieces last year.

It’s worth taking a closer look at Team Mirai and its breakthrough success. 

Team Mirai was founded by Anno Takahiro, an AI engineer and science fiction writer who previously ran in Tokyo’s 2024 gubernatorial race. Several points make Anno’s party stand out, including its stance on maintaining the consumption tax while pursuing social security reforms, its use of contemporary technological language, and the criticisms that have followed.

During the campaign, the consumption tax became a key economic issue. Since its introduction nearly four decades ago, the consumption tax has been increased three times; it is now at 10 percent for most items, and 8 percent for food. Parties across the political spectrum, from the left-wing Japanese Communist Party and the right-wing Sanseito, pledged to cut the consumption tax on food items to ease inflation, support households, or lift real wages. Even Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae said she would accelerate discussions on the consumption tax. 

It’s clear why: the Japanese public is increasingly concerned about the rising cost of living. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered energy price spikes in 2022, Japan’s consumer price index has grown by around 3 percent, the highest level since the bubble economy collapsed. Voters have consistently reported rising prices being their top concern. Food and daily necessities have become particularly painful pressure points, and more households feel their disposable income shrinking. In a November 2025 Yomiuri Shimbun poll, only 33 percent rated the government’s response to inflation positively. Against that backdrop, the lower house campaign became a contest over how far to cut the consumption tax, rather than whether to cut it at all. 

What set Team Mirai apart was that it was the only party to clearly reject consumption tax cuts outright. The party argued that cutting the consumption tax was not a sustainable solution. Instead, it campaigned on lowering social insurance premiums, introducing tax reductions tied to the number of children in a household, and strengthening the long-term sustainability of the social security system. 

These policy stances gave voice to a sizable but politically homeless constituency. Skepticism toward consumption tax cuts is far from marginal, given major concern over Japan’s record high national debt. Its debt-to-GDP ratio is now over 230 percent, the highest among G-7 nations. 

Team Mirai’s stance on the consumption tax aligns with the views of many economists in Japan. In a joint survey by the Japan Center for Economic Research and Nikkei of 50 economists, 42 percent said they “strongly disagree” that setting the consumption tax rate on food to zero would benefit the economy, while another 46 percent said they “disagree.”

Yet in this election, few parties represented voters who are worried about Japan’s fiscal health. By rejecting tax cuts, Team........

© The Diplomat