Japan’s shock election shows how much inflation matters

Japan is remarkably safe, stable and comfortable, but it is in a dangerous part of the world, right next to China, North Korea and Russia. That makes it important to European allies and, above all, to its closest ally, the United States, as a liberal leader countering China and Russia in Asia.

Its stability cannot be taken for granted. Even Japanese voters can get angry and disillusioned, as they showed in a destabilizing shock result in Sunday’s general election. In the election, the country’s long-ruling conservative coalition lost its parliamentary majority, while the opposition parties showed new energy and coherence.

This wasn’t supposed to happen: A new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, who had made a career out of being a maverick outsider, called a snap election to exploit his apparent personal popularity.

Now, after he’s been in office for less than a month, Japanese commentators are comparing him insultingly to Britain’s Liz Truss, the Conservative who in 2022 famously survived for just 45 days as prime minister.

In truth, this is the sign of a healthy democracy, but it is an election result that holds lessons for other rich countries. It also leaves a key American security ally lacking a government just ahead of America’s own, rather momentous, election.

Japanese governments are normally formed within hours or, at most, days, but forming this one could take weeks or months.

The parliamentary arithmetic is difficult. In the 465-seat House of Representatives, a party or coalition needs 233 for a simple majority, but Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party fell in the election to just 191 seats while its coalition partner since 2012, Komeito, fell to 24, giving them a combined total of just 215, way down on the 279 the