Japan’s House of Representatives convened an extraordinary session on November 11 to elect the chief executive. Liberal Democratic Party leader Shigeru Ishiba secured 221 votes in a decisive runoff, defeating former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, who collected 160 votes. The outcome confirmed Ishiba as Japan’s 103rd prime minister. It was the first parliamentary runoff election in Japan in 30 years.
The vote followed the October 27 snap general election. The LDP-Komeito coalition fell from 279 seats to 215 in the 465-member lower house, below the 233-seat majority threshold; the CDPJ expanded from 98 seats to 148. In the initial round, Ishiba received 221 votes and Noda 151, triggering the runoff. Lawmakers from the Democratic Party for the People and Nippon Ishin no Kai cast blank ballots rather than backing Noda; 84 invalid ballots were recorded in the second round. Ishiba and his first cabinet resigned before launching his second cabinet. He retained Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, and Defense Minister Gen Nakatani.
Ishiba’s minority government must negotiate policy compacts with opposition factions and draft a supplementary economic stimulus budget before the end of the calendar year. The Democratic Party for the People, led by Yuichiro Tamaki, has demanded raising the basic tax-free income threshold from 1.03 million yen to 1.78 million yen; the Ministry of Finance estimated that this adjustment could reduce national and local tax revenues by up to 8 trillion yen. The coalition’s electoral setback stemmed from public indignation over undisclosed political fundraising, which resulted in formal party sanctions or electoral defeats for 68 LDP lawmakers. Ishiba pledged legislative revisions to the Political Funds Control Act to abolish discretionary policy activity expenses and introduce independent compliance auditing.
