2026 POLLS: Takaichi Keeps Mum on Tax Cut, Unification Church

Tokyo, Feb. 6 (Jiji Press)--Since the campaign period for Sunday's House of Representatives began on Jan. 27, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has shied away from the topics of a proposed consumption tax cut and her alleged ties to the controversial religious group Unification Church.

Hoping to turn her silence into a focal point of the election campaign for the all-important lower chamber of the Diet, Japan's parliament, the opposition parties have ramped up their criticism.

Takaichi, who is also president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, shows no signs of changing her ways as she cannot afford to give the opposition parties any more ammunition in the final stretch of the campaign period.

The LDP's policy pledges feature a plan to cut the consumption tax rate on food items to zero for two years.

The prime minister "hasn't talked about the consumption tax at all recently," Yoshihiko Noda, co-leader of the Centrist Reform Alliance, a new party created by the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Komeito, told reporters in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, on Thursday.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]