Reading the Tokyo Tea Leaves: Metropolitan Assembly Election Clues to the Upcoming Upper House Contest

Tough Times Continue for the LDP

In the 2021 election for the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, the Liberal Democratic Party won 33 seats, carving out a position of power for itself as the largest single party in the chamber. Four years on, though, in the contest held on June 22, the party watched its candidates go down one after another, in the end taking just 21 seats, including three that went to candidates running without LDP endorsement who were brought back into the party fold after winning their seats. This is the lowest number ever secured by the party, falling even below the 23 it won in 2017.

Leaping into top position in the assembly was Tomin First no Kai (Tokyoites First), backed by Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko. The group extended its seats by 5 from its previous total to 31.

First and foremost among the issues dragging down the fortunes of the LDP was the involvement of party members at the metropolitan level in fundraising scandals. Irregularities in reports filed by politicians about their revenues from fundraising parties triggered public ire, just as it did at the national level toward the end of 2023. Second was inflation—rising prices, particularly of rice, undermined public support for the Liberal Democrats, the party in charge of the national administration, impacting local members too.

LDP President and Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru may have hoped to turn around public sentiment with a change at the top of the Ministry of Agriculture. In late May he sacked Etō Taku from the post of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries minister following his statement that he had never had to buy rice since his supporters gave him so much and replaced him with the more popular figure of Koizumi Shinjirō. Koizumi hit the ground running, implementing a program to drive grain prices down by tapping the government’s emergency stockpiles of rice. As prices for a 5-kilogram bag of stockpiled rice crept below the ¥3,000 mark once again, approval ratings for Ishiba’s administration and the LDP showed signs of improvement at last.

LDP Secretary-General Moriyama Hiroshi and others with their eyes on the party’s electoral prospects believed that falling rice prices were certain to appeal to voters in Tokyo, the nation’s largest consumer market for the grain. Moriyama, a party hand with strong connections to the agricultural sector, appeared to agree with Ishiba’s and Koizumi’s efforts to further drive down the cost at retail shelves. Through early June the ongoing public opinion surveys gauging likely trends in the Tokyo election showed a solid performance for the party.

In the end, though, this performance was short-lived. The hoped-for “Shinjirō effect” failed to materialize for the LDP at the polls, and it became evident that the factors at work in the broader political sphere—which saw the LDP and its junior coalition partner Kōmeitō lose their majority in the House of Representatives in the general election in autumn 2024—could not be countered so easily.

Worries About Washington Also in Play

In addition to all of the above, it feels like this year, eight decades on from the end of World War II, the Japanese people are taking a tougher stance on their country’s politics, which have had the LDP at their core for nearly as long.

The LDP has long built its brand, and the stability of its rule, atop the foundation of Japan’s security arrangement with the United States. This has allowed Japan to spend less on its own defense and focus on the economy instead. Today, though, with the arrival of the second administration of President Donald Trump, there is a far lower chance that Washington will remain willing to uphold the international order, and the position of the Liberal Democrats, who have depended on that America-centered order, also appears less stable.

Under Donald Trump, the United States is now levying steep tariffs on its allies, and in many cases going so far as to turn security policy into a bargaining chip or a bludgeon to threaten them with. The Japanese people are casting an increasingly critical eye on the proposition that their country needs to continue following the lead of this untrustworthy partner. It seems as though there is growing support in Japan for a future where options other than the status quo are placed on the table.

On the morning of June 22, soon after polling stations opened in Tokyo, Donald Trump—who had been expected in some quarters to play a mediating role preventing a military clash between Israel and Iran—announced that US military aircraft had bombed three locations in Iran associated with its nuclear development program. Described as a military intervention carried out in response to a request by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this operation came at the perfect time to underscore Tokyo voters’ worries about Japan’s ties to a volatile America.

Ishiba Holding On to His Lifeline

The global situation is indeed fraught with tension. But the House of Councillors election to take place on July 20 is far more likely to focus on purely domestic issues, namely rising prices of rice and other key products and the question of whether to push ahead with subsidy payments or tax reductions on the policy front.

As rice from government storehouses hits retail shelves and prices of some 5-kilogram bags come back down below ¥3,000, it may impact consumer sentiment to an extent, but there are doubts that it will lead to similar price drops for the higher-quality brand-name rice that many shoppers prefer. Meanwhile, debate is heating up in the Diet between opposition politicians arguing for a reduction in the consumption tax rate and LDP pols who stress that consumption tax revenues are a vital source of funding for the nation’s social security programs. It remains to be seen which of these arguments will prove most convincing to voters.

Prime Minister Ishiba has so far held the line on his party’s stance against reducing the tax rate, but swayed by arguments within the ruling coalition that the parties cannot succeed on election day without something to offer on the policy front, he has decided to pledge cash subsidies of ¥20,000 for all Japanese residents and additional subsidies of the same amount for children, among other measures. This proposal had come up earlier this year, but in April he walked away from the idea following accusations that his party was seeking to buy votes with handouts; in the runup to the election this summer, though, the concept has come bubbling up once again.

Of the 248 seats in the upper house, the LDP currently holds 113 and Kōmeitō 27, giving the ruling coalition a comfortable majority of 140 seats in the chamber. In last year’s lower house election the ruling parties lost their majority in that chamber, making their majority in the House of Councillors a lifeline allowing them to rule as a minority government.

Half of the seats, or 124, are up for voting in July’s contest, along with one additional seat representing Tokyo that needs to be filled. The LDP and Kōmeitō hold 74 seats not up for reelection this time around. They will need to win 50 of the seats up for grabs to attain the bare minimum majority of 125 in the chamber, including Sekiguchi Masakazu, who maintains an independent position as president of the House of Councillors but is originally from the LDP and continues to be counted among their number. This goal of 50 wins on July 20 may not seem like a tall hurdle to clear, but the outcome is by no means guaranteed.

As is commonly noted, political parties’ fates in House of Councillors elections are decided in two ways: by their victories in the 32 single-seat districts up for grabs each time, and by voting in the proportional representation blocs. In around half of the single-seat districts open in this year’s voting, opposition parties are fielding multiple candidates with relatively strong name recognition, which means that the LDP and Kōmeitō can extend the coalition’s count if they cooperate by avoiding overlap in their own tickets.

However, Sōka Gakkai, the Buddhist organization that backs Kōmeitō, has seen its own influence wane since the death of its longtime leader, Ikeda Daisaku, in November 2023, leading to a drop in the vote-getting capabilities of the junior coalition partner. Kōmeitō fielded 22 candidates in the Tokyo assembly election with the goal of winning seats for all of them, but fell short, taking just 19 seats, down 4 from its pre-election total. The warm cooperation that once characterized LDP-Kōmeitō ties has shifted over time, and Saitō Tetsuo, who took over as head of the latter party in late 2024, has plenty of reasons to be concerned.

Political Realignment in the Cards?

If the ruling coalition parties fail to secure a majority in the upper house in next month’s election, including their seats not up for voting this time, it is likely that Ishiba Shigeru will be pressed to step down as prime minister. A coalition forced to rule as a minority government in both chambers of the Diet would be extremely unstable, causing the LDP to look for further partners to add to its coalition or even to replace Kōmeitō, or else to step aside if a non-LDP coalition is cobbled together to take the reins. Either of these courses would be a major shift in the political landscape.

What of those opposition parties, though? The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, the leading opposition group today, lacks the centripetal force that could draw other parties into its orbit to form a ruling coalition. For one, the gap between the liberal CDPJ and the center-right Democratic Party for the People (DPFP) remains too wide to engineer real cooperation between the two, despite their common roots in the former Democratic Party of Japan.

In last year’s general election the DPFP vaulted ahead, gaining four times as many seats as it held prior to the voting. Building on this success, it now aims to field candidates actively in the single-seat districts, showing little willingness to coordinate candidacies with the CDPJ. At the same time, though, DPFP leader Tamaki Yūichirō is being blasted for his party’s lack of appropriate governance following its decision to run former House of Representatives member Yamao Shiori in the upper house proportional representation contest, only to rescind that endorsement after her selection was criticized on social media.

The Nippon Ishin no Kai, or Japan Innovation Party, lacks momentum outside of its home turf in the Kansai region, and won no seats in the Tokyo assembly election. The Japanese Communist Party, meanwhile, which once enjoyed relatively robust support from urban voters, saw its own seat count dwindle on June 22, evidence of its gradual slide into irrelevance. Both of these parties are focusing on seeking their own seats in the House of Councillors contest, leaving nobody willing to coordinate campaigning and avoid vote-splitting among a broad coalition of opposition parties.

The upshot of all of this is that we are likely to see a continuation of the hung parliament, with the ruling coalition in a minority government in the lower house and barely holding on to its majority in the upper chamber. Prime Minister Ishiba will still be crawling ahead clumsily, heeding demands from the opposition parties on a piecemeal basis as he implements policy.

Looking back over the eight months that have passed since the LDP and Kōmeitō lost their House of Representatives majority, it is clear that the repeated consultations between ruling and opposition blocs have slowed down the policy process, but have also served to make that process more visible to the public. It may be that the time has come for politicians and voters alike to walk away from the “leave everything up to Diet members” approach to politics that has been a hallmark of Japan under stable political rule.

(Originally published in Japanese on June 25, 2025. Banner photo: The House of Councillors of Japan’s National Diet in session on June 20. © Jiji.)