Japan's Sanae Takaichi wins a supermajority after gambling on a snap election

TBF fascism never really stopped in Japan. The American occupation was so clueless it changed very little of what Japan was before; the elites just kind of divided into nominal parties.

Here's another fact you may not want to know (the reptile in the image is Sanae.)

The context in Japanese:https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2014/10/21/hitlersenkyo_n_6019042.html

shes the japanese margeret thatcher, doing her duty for "empress and empire of the rising sun"

Said to be a former heavy metal drummer.

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=WvfplA3a02g

I do have to say that 80s Japan included some edgy subcultures involving Nazi fetishization.

Maybe Japan gets a situation like NZ where the conservitve parties and "the right" like National and Act would probably be left of the USA Democrats on the political spectrum. I can hope right?

Also reducing all politics to a left right thing is so stupid and probably the worst thing to do for political discourse but... here we are. I blame the murdoch media

It more accurately happens like every second or third PM and then things swing to another faction of the LDP (or, historically rarely since WWII ended, another party though the last times that happened they faceplanted pretty quickly and it went back to the LDP)

she's the anti-status quo candidate. it's just she will move the country even move to the right.

yep. this why I need help emigrating.

I only read to the point of personality cult and it was obvious.

also backed by russia i believe, the political party is funded at least, its not surprising.

I wonder where they got analyst that said this was a real risk? Because when a supermajority was on the table no analyst worth their salt would make a prediction over 16 percentage points across because that's a guess.

you're not.

Pray you'll have elections come next time cause they're going to be "fraudulent" with a need to be "reformed"

She does want to reduce the number of reps in one of the houses, but that's all I'm immediately aware of. Another party wanted to restrict naturalized citizens more, but I don't think that made its way to the LDP platform.

The "next time" for elections in Japan is also a little less set since the PM can dissolve the lower house whenever triggering an election a couple weeks later. There are also other elections on other schedules. I don't see it going that far at this time, personally.

reptile brains arent evolved for the power of algorithm propaganda. yes we are fucked by the right, but its only temporary until clinate change decimates everything.

Not all Japanese are, as there's still a vocal anti-war/anti-nuclear movement, and likewise there are very small progressive groups.

But then the real problem is just how supposedly apolitical some of the younger generations are there.

That pool seems to be shrinking rapidly these days...

I mean it's not a bad place fot sightseeing but...it fucking sucks to be Japanese

Just go before her measures kick in

I’m sure the shareholders will be happy.

Japanese already overwork enough that their productivity per hour is abysmal within their peer group. That hand is overplayed as is.

Once driven into a corner they can only double down on the ideology - that lead to their current position.

Everywhere outside of the US, 'Liberal' means right-wing

Japan is ultra racist. Always has been. It probably has something to do with them living on islands, separated from other ethnic groups.

Cult of personality + foreigners bad. LDP went further right since Sanseito and other anti-foreigner-spewing parties took a chunk of their voters in the last election. This correctly showed that they would go back to LDP (though Sanseito still lives).

The main opposition, CDP, merged with Komeito, LDP's former coalition partner, to form a new centerist party (mostly to the right of the former CDP). Komeito has ties to Sokka Gakkai which, in my personal opinion, is a cult. This put off people voting on any of their new candidates. They also didn't have time to really solidify things since the election came so fast (I suspect this was either very last-minute or not fully baked by the time the election was called).

Some other parties did get more seats. Team Mirai was one, though they seem to also have a bit of a vague platform in some regards and, at worst, may turn out to be DOGE-like techbros. Time will tell.

For parties left of center, with the CDP being gone, there are only a couple. The JCP (Japanese Communist Party) is not actually a communist party anymore but stubbornly refuse to rebrand and people are still scared of them (they're more social democrats or somewhere thereabouts).

They seem heavy into their culture and traditions. Foreigners always destroy that stuff.

They are pretty close to North-Korea which has nukes. They feel only ultra-nationalist conservatives will defend them well against NK & China.

Also the US is their major ally and turned right wing as well.

Japan is more or less the Israel of East Asia.

I don't think that's exactly right as someone in Japan for more than a decade now.

Overtourism is a separate problem. With the yen weakening compared to other currencies, it made things more affordable. A lot of the tourist industry also collapsed around Corona and the strict (to those external) lockdowns here. That meant there also were fewer accommodations, tourism staff, etc. here. This compounded the problems.

With Corona also came increased prices of a lot of goods and salaries were largely staying stagnant. Having a bunch of extra people buying things up on the cheap yen also meant those things were harder to get for locals. Add to this the JA (basically an ag cartel) and bad weather causing bad rice harvests and people can't even get the staple that has defined Japanese life for centuries. There's a lot of simmering anger there. The additional influx of tourists also means that Japanese can't even travel domestically as cheaply. Hotel prices in some areas have more than doubled since corona and peoples' salaries have not.

There's a whole lot going on. I could add a ton of (often illegal) short-term rentals (think Air BnB or similar) pricing people out, foreign (largely Chinese) investors buying land and buildings pricing out the locals is also causing issues. A lot of this boils over to stronger anti-foreigner sentiment that was a real hit in the last election last year and somewhat carried forward this year.

The LDP's former coalition partner broke off with their rightward turned and formed a new party combining with the main opposition. This meant the main opposition party shifted to the right and also now had ties to Sokka Gakkai which also made them unpalatable to at least some voters. Allegedly, there's still Moonie money and involvement in the LDP, but I haven't followed that news much. The LDP's rightward shift, though, did pick up those tired of the "foreigner issues" (lovely that they rarely distinguish actual residents from tourists, innit) voters who went to other parties. I'll certainly shed no tears for the more racist parties losing seats, but this is still worrying overall.

Team Mirai, a new party of young people, did pick up votes. They claim to aim for transparency and come from mostly IT backgrounds. The worry here is they're a bit too into the Dodge type of thing in the US, that they may be very tech-bro types, and they want to use AI for stuff. I don't know yet. I am no fan of AI and certainly don't want Dodge tech-bro bullshit coming in. Who knows.

I can't vote as a non-citizen anyway. If things get bad, I'll just have to uproot my whole life and move again, but I certainly hope it never gets there.