this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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The Japanese leader's election gambit, fueled by the power of her personality and some unlikely help from young voters consumed by “Sanamania,” appears to have paid off.

Japan’s conservative prime minister Sanae Takaichi has won a landslide victory after she gambled on a high-stakes snap election.

Takaichi, who took office in October after being elected leader of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), surpassed the 310 seats needed for a supermajority in the 465-seat lower house, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported from the official election count on Sunday evening. The supermajority allows her ruling coalition to override the upper house, where it lacks a majority.

An NHK exit poll as voting ended earlier on Sunday projected the LDP would win between 274 and 326 seats. The party and its coalition partner Ishin were projected to win a combined 302-366 seats, as voters turned out amid freezing temperatures in a rare winter election.

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[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 52 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (3 children)

Hmm, I just realized that I (an American living in New Zealand) have no idea what Japanese politics are like. To Wikipedia!

Takaichi has been described as holding hard-line conservative and Japanese nationalist views,

uh oh

citing former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher as a role model and deeply influential on her personal political beliefs.

Uh oh

Like Thatcher, she is called the "Iron Lady".

Uh Oh

Takaichi is a member of Nippon Kaigi, a far-right ultraconservative organisation

UH OH

that argues for a reinterpretation of Japanese history

RED ALERT

amongst ultranationalist lines.

WELP

Oof. Well, I guess it had to happen to Japan someday. It's happened everywhere else. Here's hoping it doesn't last long and the damage is minimal.

[–] MadPsyentist@lemmy.nz 0 points 38 minutes ago (1 children)

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

[–] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 2 points 16 minutes ago

Unfortunately not. Japan has been very far-right (bordering on jingoistic) for a long time now. The country’s external facade is all cute anime characters and zany fashion… But that was an intentional rebrand (heavily subsidized by the country’s propaganda department) in the wake of WW2 to distance itself from the atrocities they had committed. But internally, the country has remained extremely hardline conservative and xenophobic. And it has only shifted farther right with recent elections.

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 1 points 44 minutes ago

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)

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 16 points 3 hours ago

Hey look at it this way, we may finally get our mechs out of this.

I mean, they may be the last thing you see, but at least we may see them.