Japan’s landslide was not a conservative turn — it was the collapse and reconfiguration of the centre
Japan’s lower-house election delivered an extraordinary result: Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) secured a two-thirds supermajority on its own — a scale of victory rarely seen in post-war Japanese politics. The defeat of liberal and left-leaning opposition forces was equally striking.
Yet to interpret this outcome as evidence of a rightward shift in Japanese society would be profoundly misleading. What unfolded was not an ideological realignment but a structural transformation: the fragmentation of the political centre, combined with a decisive generational transition.
To understand this, one must first clarify what “liberalism” actually represents in contemporary Japan.
Traditionally, political polarisation revolved around constitutional pacifism and the US–Japan security alliance. Over time, however, as even former socialist party accepted the legality of the Self-Defence Forces (SDF) and the alliance became broadly consensual, “liberal” came to denote voters opposed to defence expansion, supportive of progressive taxation, sceptical of traditional gender roles, open to same-sex marriage and dual surnames, and temperamentally anti-authoritarian.
But according to a nationwide values survey conducted last August by my institute (Yamaneko Research Institute, Inc.), such voters constitute only about 12 per cent of the electorate — and are disproportionately concentrated among those over 60. In Japan, liberalism is less a coherent ideology than a product of specific historical experiences and media ecosystems.
This matters because for years the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) functioned as the default repository for protest votes in single-member districts, attracting far more than this narrow liberal base. Many of its supporters were not liberals at all. They were simply parking their dissatisfaction with the government.
That arrangement has now broken down.
The decisive factor in this election was Prime Minister Takaichi’s repositioning of economic policy. Her government effectively shifted the LDP towards a more redistributive stance, foregrounding inflation relief and direct support for working-age households. By reframing the contest around living standards rather than cultural symbolism, she drew back precisely those pragmatic voters who had previously drifted to centrist or protest parties.
The parallels with the 2016 US presidential election are striking. In both cases, economic immediacy trumped identity politics. Voters prioritised material security over abstract values.
Opposition forces, by contrast, doubled down late in the campaign on anti-war rhetoric and nostalgic narratives. Such messages still resonate with parts of the older generation. But they no longer mobilise majorities. Reliance on this shrinking constituency merely pushed the opposition deeper into its own ideological enclave.
The behaviour of younger voters is especially revealing. Support splintered across several newer parties. “Team Mirai” attracted technocratic rationalists who would once have backed market-oriented reformists. The Democratic Party for the People (DPFP) drew practical voters with relatively weak beliefs in individual self-reliance. Sanseito mobilised citizens with heightened security anxieties, ranging from cost-of-living pressures to fears about foreign influence.
What unites these groups is not left or right ideology, but a shared preference for stability over doctrine, for personal life planning over national narratives.
Japan’s younger electorate increasingly operates outside the traditional constitutional versus conservative axis. For them, politics is less about grand visions of the state than about whether daily life feels viable.
With its supermajority secured, the LDP is likely to reopen debate on constitutional revision — a move that will almost certainly provoke Japan’s ageing liberal constituency into renewed mobilisation. But this will be a battle fought on terrain chosen by the governing party. The result is more likely to be exhaustion than revival.
What matters far more is where the displaced centre moves next.
By winning so decisively, the LDP has paradoxically exposed itself to new vulnerabilities. Its coalition now encompasses voters with sharply divergent expectations. Managing such a broad and fluid base will prove harder than defeating a fragmented opposition.
This election did not mark a conservative triumph. It marked the erosion of Japan’s political middle ground — and its reassembly around economic security rather than ideological identity.
Japan has entered a more plastic, and therefore more unstable, phase of democratic politics.
That may ultimately matter far more than who won this time.