The campaign for Sunday's Lower House election has seen more heated debate than usual about the direction Japan should be taking, with issues ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to Asia's increasingly volatile security environment and what to do about nuclear power weighing on voters' minds — raising the stakes for the ruling coalition.
All 465 seats will be up for grabs. The ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito are expected to exceed a simple majority of 233 but fall short of the 305 mark, which is the number of seats they held prior to the election.
The ruling coalition is looking to win citizens’ approval for its track record over the past nine years — a period that has seen a pandemic, increased Chinese assertiveness and North Korean missile tests as well as drastic monetary easing — with recently installed Prime Minister Fumio Kishida as a fresh face at the helm. The opposition camp, meanwhile, is criticizing the ruling parties’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, economic policies that favored the rich as well as a political culture that they characterize as one of cronyism and favoritism.