Japan’s Kishida faces plummeting public support – can opposition take advantage?

A public opinion poll by the Yomuiri newspaper published on Tuesday put Kishida’s approval rating at 26 per cent, the seventh consecutive month the figure was below the 30 per cent threshold.

“The LDP is trying to come up with policies but it’s largely talk and nothing is really changing,” Hiromi Murakami, a professor of political science at the Tokyo campus of Temple University, told This Week in Asia. “So this is a chance for the opposition.”

While there is considerable public cynicism against the opposition after the brief and unspectacular Democratic Party of Japan government that ruled between September 2009 and December 2012, the public is tired of the present government and eager for change, analysts say.

“People want many and different things but as a nation we have realised that a solution to the demographic crisis is the biggest issue that Japan faces,” said Hiromi Murakami, a professor of political science at the Tokyo campus of Temple University.

“The country needs to be shown an economic framework for the way forward, a vision of how future generations will survive amid this turmoil,” she said. “Someone needs to come up with a plan of how the nation will be sustainable over the longer term and then not just talk about it but clearly show the steps they would take to get there.

“It has to be realistic and people need to be shown the path that it will take to reach that goal and address issues like pension reform,” she added.

If the opposition parties can propose feasible solutions to these problems, voters may be inclined to vote for them, according to Murakami.

According to the Yomuiri poll, the Japanese public was also angry with the LDP for not doing enough to stamp out corruption within the party, with 79 per