By Shuhei Kuromi

8:00 JST, April 5, 2025

A crisis looms for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

In the House of Representatives election last October, the Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner Komeito suffered a crushing defeat, losing their majority in the lower house. Ishiba has since made repeated concessions to the opposition parties, such as expanding the scope of free high school tuition and raising the “annual income barrier” (the threshold for the imposition of income tax), but his administration has continued to struggle. Looking at the Cabinet’s approval rating in Yomiuri Shimbun opinion polls, the highest figure was 51% when the Cabinet was formed in October. Since then it has hovered around 40%.

This difficult situation has been compounded by a scandal of Ishiba’s own making. When it was discovered that he had given vouchers worth ¥100,000 each to 15 LDP members of the House of Representatives with whom he had dinner, his approval rating plunged to 31%, the lowest since his inauguration, according to a March survey.

Ishiba’s ability to attract support through his image of political purity has visibly declined. Although senior LDP members and potential Ishiba challengers are not openly calling for his removal, a former cabinet minister said: “Everyone thinks he can’t hold on much longer. If one more problem arises, it wouldn’t be surprising if his administration collapsed.”

Some in the government and the ruling party are pointing out the similarities between the current political situation and the situations in 1989 and 2001.

The triennial House of Councillors election and the quadrennial Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election coincide every 12 years. Specifically, in the Year of the Snake. In past cases when the........

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