00:00:00 John Daub: This is what you would typically call a wet day in the city of Tokyo. So I'll be brief because I'm getting rained on quite a bit. For those of you following the political drama inside Japan right now, we have a political party, the LDP, Liberal Democratic Party, Jiyū Minshutō (自民党), which has been the ruling power in Japan for most of the post-World War era. I think there have been only two periods where other parties came into power, but they've been a pretty steady hand for a very long time.

00:00:32 John Daub: They elected a new leader, Shionoya Takeichi [?], who just a few days ago I did a live stream talking about as the next prime minister. No matter who's the prime minister of Japan, I'm not a citizen, so I'm always going to be on the side of Japan and support whoever's the leader because I want Japan to be successful. That's just the position I have after living here for a very long time. I realize despite all the taxes I pay, it's not my country, and it's up to the Japanese people to make that determination. They elect the officials, and those officials go out there and elect the next leader. The system just works out all on its own, and you have to wish for success because right now there's a lot of people in Japan that are hurting. With that said, there's also a lot of apprehension and skepticism on the LDP right now, which is the party Shionoya Takeichi is a part of.

00:01:22 John Daub: Something just happened yesterday which really made us worried. We're going to support the process. This is Shionoya Takeichi's biggest challenge, and she's not even the prime minister yet, is to get elected. This is very, very important. I'm not on one side or the other. Again, whoever is the prime minister, I'm going to support because I love Japan and want this place to be very successful, and a lot of you feel the same way. Jiyū Minshutō, this is the party with the 196 you see on the left side of the screen. That's Shionoya Takeichi's party. The other party has a lot of people. The Prime Minister, Ishiba, lost.

00:02:03 John Daub: The LDP has been losing elections quite a bit over the last couple of years because of a finance scandal and a lot of other scandals. They don't seem to listen to anybody or get any better, and this is an issue for sure. The scandals have created a lot of uncertainty with the LDP, so it's resulted at the ballot box where the government is now very fractured. No majority party, really. Nothing can be done in Japan without coalitions. It's sort of like Canada in a way. It's hard to get anything done right now, but the LDP does not have that strong hold on power anymore, and it's showing. Just yesterday, she lost the support of her coalition and the Komeito Party, I believe. And now, without that support, she might not be prime minister.

00:02:58 John Daub: This is a really big situation brewing here, and we're going to follow it all the way to the end because it determines quite a bit about Japan. But in the end, what I've learned is that the prime minister can't do anything without consensus of the parliament. It's not like the United States with executive orders and stuff. The prime minister of Japan is a leader of the government. They have sway, but they can't get anything done without that. Despite her, I mean, Prime Minister Abe in his second term had a majority for the LDP, so he could get a lot of stuff done working with his government, but he also worked with the other parties as much as he had to. But they didn't really listen to other people, and now it's starting to show.

00:03:51 John Daub: The biggest issue is maybe with former Prime Minister Aso being the vice president. We're not quite sure what's going on here. If you are interested in this, I'm tuning in now about the Komeito split due to the anti-spying law that she wants to pass. There's a lot more to it than just that. There's also the fact that now the vice president of the LDP in 2023 called them, I believe, a cancer. There's a lot of strong opinions here. It's all come into light right now, but the split is real. You can see it. I've been following Jeffrey J. Hall on Twitter for a very long time. He's a PhD professor here in Japan. He's a little bit left-center. Usually he's pretty straight shooter with stuff, but there's a little bit of a leaning here. I get the feeling that he really doesn't like Shionoya Takeichi. But I think he's pretty much on target here.

00:05:00 John Daub: He's been going through some of the votes. And if it's held today, I don't know if Shionoya Takeichi is going to win here. Japan might not be getting its first female prime minister. This was yesterday. The LDP's 193 lawmakers will vote for Takeichi. If the Democratic Party for the People votes for Tamaki and is supported by the Ishin Party and the CDP, it would bring Tamaki's vote to 213, and he would win. So Japan would not be getting its first female prime minister. This outcome with the ending of the coalition is much more probable now. It's anyone's guess. This is what makes this really, really interesting.

00:05:52 John Daub: I'm following this, tuning in several times an hour. The hurdle for Shionoya Takeichi to become prime minister has become high. It doesn't mean it's a lock, but it's certainly much more challenging now. So the reports that Tamaki Yuichiro becomes the next prime minister with the three main opposition parties. Now there's going to be some political bargaining here, and they're going to figure it out. But in Tokyo right now, everyone is talking about this, what the future of Japan holds. Whoever the prime minister is, I'm going to be really supportive of that person because I want Japan to win. That's the extent of my politics here.

00:06:36 John Daub: I kind of had this discussion with my friend, the bot. Even if Shionoya Takeichi wins, she's not going to be able to do all those things—she's hawkish, ultra-conservative. All those things might be true. But unless the prime minister is able to build a consensus, they're not going to get anything done. That's one of the reasons why Ishiba was the choice a year ago. Because he's sort of like a status quo guy. He can't really push into one direction. He has to try to build consensus, and he's really good at that. Shionoya Takeichi is not that person. She's a different part of the LDP which broke apart when she was in the LDP. She was the one who was alongside when Prime Minister Abe was assassinated. The LDP no longer has an automatic majority, which means everything has to be negotiated, which means one of the outcomes could be that Prime Minister Ishiba stays in power longer. He's much more centrist than conservative.

00:07:56 John Daub: Policy gridlock is highly likely. Even if Shionoya Takeichi becomes the Prime Minister, she's still going to have a lot of stuff. Defense and constitutional reform, probably not going to happen. Economic stimulus or tax policy, it's going to depend on the coalitions. Foreign policy, she has a cabinet and a direction, but she needs the Diet to work with her on a lot of this. Coalition building or deal-by-deal governance, it's not an agenda. She doesn't have a mandate. She's going to have to patch things up with the Komeito party. She's going to have to court the Ishin no Kai (Japan Innovation Party), which is both center-right and reformist—they have things in common, but without the corruption. She has to be a little more compassionate to the wishes of other people. The real end of the drama could come with a snap election. That's risky right now because the LDP is down. The scandals here were real. Corruption is real. They don't listen to anybody because they've been in power for a long time. That needs to change. They need to listen more.

00:09:16 John Daub: What does the Diet look like in numbers for each party right now? The LDP has 191 seats and the CDP has 148 seats. You can see it's with the coalition underneath there. They don't have a majority. They lost the Komeito party right there with 24 seats. It makes it even harder. Summing up the 191 seats so far is short of the 233 majority needed to govern. So whoever is the prime minister is going to have to be a deal maker. Risk of stalemate or gridlock. If an election were held today, if the parliament was dissolved and they had elections to give the next prime minister a mandate, would she get a mandate? Chances are not. She's going to have to work in this coalition and try to build a consensus and show that the LDP really is deserving of it. But if a snap election were held today, which it could be, I don't think that they win. The estimates are that LDP loses seats. They still would need the Komeito party. They would still need some of the other ones. The other parties would gain, and that means that she would not have a mandate.

00:10:49 John Daub: So despite all of the ultra-conservatism that you hear about Shionoya Takeichi, she's going to have to be somebody who brings people together to get anything done. Let me just go through quickly about the LDP. There's the scandal fatigue, money factions, secrecy. A lot of stuff has happened. And this goes all the way back to the assassination of Abe-san. Why that person assassinated him. That Unification Church. Like I don't like that kind of stuff in politics either. There's a lot of underhandedness, secrecy. But right now, the cost of living is just out of hand. And it's something that the LDP said that they'd get under control and they haven't. The yen is weaker now than it was after the prime minister, the leader was announced. And the collapse is not building confidence in Japan. So this that happened in the last 24 hours is not building a lot of confidence in Japan. In fact, it's bringing a lot of the flaws and issues that they have with Japan to the forefront internationally.

00:12:03 John Daub: I have to be honest, the way that the foreign media works, they were really too high on her being a woman. And I think that's a great thing. But now, I bet you the Western media gets okay so that Japan can elect a woman, and that narrative gets played out a little bit in the Western media. But that's not the case at all. I think that there's seven bullet points that just rolled by why the LDP and the party that Shionoya Takeichi represents is not popular right now. It's down. When the other parties led, which was right before the great earthquake and tsunami in 2011, they weren't successful. Their inexperience showed. The core paradox of Japanese politics: even voters get frustrated enough to punish the LDP, the other parties aren't exactly experienced enough to be in power. '93, '94, there's the Hosokawa Coalition, non-LDP. And then 2009 to 2012, the DPJ was in power. And after the earthquake and tsunami, things did not get better. They just were not prepared to be in leadership. At least, even the Netflix drama shows that.

00:13:24 John Daub: I really don't care about parties so much. I really want whoever is leader to do an amazing job. And that goes for the United States as well. Whoever it is, they got to do a good job. And you got to get behind it. At least, if you love your country, you should be hoping that that person at the top does a good job. There's a bunch of stuff that happened with the DPJ. It was a mess. And you know what happened? They went back to the LDP and said, OK, we gave the other party a try. Let's go back to good old faithful, risk-averse Japan. Smaller parties now have amplified leverage because the LDP cannot govern solely on its own. So now all of these other parties that have just a few seats have a voice now. And that's pretty powerful.

00:14:17 John Daub: The breakdown of the coalition between the Komeito Party and the LDP is a big deal. But the comments that Prime Minister Aso made in 2023—he has a reputation of putting his foot in his mouth. It's kind of a big deal here. They asked former Prime Minister Suga and other former Prime Ministers to try to help to rebuild that Komeito partnership. But it's very hard because they're a Buddhist-based party. Pacifist. They don't like the ultra-conservative getting weapons, even for self-defense. They want to maintain the constitution the way it is, for example, Article 9. And Shionoya-san is on record of saying, with Abe-san, they want to change the constitution. A lot of Japanese probably aren't behind that yet. Some, a growing number of people are. But Japanese people right now feel from the onslaught of tourism and the bad people that have been here, they feel their fortunes are down. They can't go to Hawaii. It's too expensive. The yen right now has lost a lot.

00:15:43 John Daub: But that might also have to do with the dollar's going to get weaker after President Trump said he's going to initiate new tariffs on China. I believe the Dow Jones is down. So that's probably going to balance out. I think it would be at like 155 if not for the news of the tariffs, perhaps. But this is going to fluctuate quite a bit. It's a good time to change your yen, change your dollars, actually. This could impact tourism. Look, I think her being hawkish—we need a strong leader. China is a strong country. It's a country that needs to be respected. It's a great country. It brought a lot of people out of poverty. I don't agree with the politics of China. But Japan needs a strong leader to deal with that. And I don't know if Prime Minister Ishiba was that person. I think he did a good enough job to keep things going, despite the fact that the LDP lost. Kishida-san was kind of run out of office because of the scandals. So he was this consensus builder guy, and he only lasted a year. So now they bring in an ultra-conservative in the LDP. I don't know if that's a bad thing or not. Honestly, I think maybe you want to have a hawk in there, but you need to have a strong leader. Somebody who's going to be very much for the Japanese people in these negotiations.

00:17:37 John Daub: When you see the news media and the headlines, they don't want any migration here. There wasn't any real migration here anyways. So to me it's a little perplexing on the way the media frames all of this stuff to scare you into thinking that one leader or the other. If Shionoya Takeichi comes into power, she's not in a very strong position, and she'll have to build consensus. And despite what a lot of you have heard about her ultra-conservatism, the reason why I'm not too worried about it is because the system works so well—it doesn't work at all sometimes. I've been here for a long time. I've seen the way it works. But it seems like we always will lean back into the LDP no matter what. And maybe this will break it. But I'll be following Jeffrey Hall and a bunch of other people on X and looking at the political situation as it plays out. I highly recommend it. I'm not on any side here. I just want this to be figured out really quickly.

00:18:38 John Daub: I did ask very quickly about when this will all unfold. According to Reuters, the formal parliamentary vote will come sometime in the middle of the month, probably around October 20th, but some people say as early as October 14th. So there's still quite some time before Japan picks a prime minister. Despite the fact that Shionoya Takeichi is the leader of the LDP party, that party might not be the one that has the prime ministership because all of the coalition, all of those people, are going to have a vote. And since they're not the majority, they can pick somebody who's not from the LDP. And I've got to be honest with you, that person might get less done than Shionoya Takeichi. Because that party is going to have to work with the LDP which has 191 votes. And if they don't, when they have another election, the LDP is going to pick up a lot of seats.

00:19:44 John Daub: One way or the other, I think the best thing would be right now it looks like Shionoya Takeichi should take the prime ministership and if she fails, LDP is going to lose more power and in the next round of elections the other parties are going to come in and then it would have been a failure, or she becomes successful and the LDP picks up seats. Either way, things are going to work its way out. So I'm pretty confident in the end that Japan is going to be just fine but the infighting is very interesting and the way that the system works is it takes a lot to get anything done in Japan. It moves much more slowly than other countries around the world. And personally, I want to keep Japan, Japan. Westerners, everybody has an opinion. Leave Japan, Japan. Let the Japanese make the rules that they want. Let them pick the leader that they want and let the system stay in a Japanese way and I have a great deal of respect for that because I live here. I'm a part of the country in many ways so that's the way I want to keep it too.

00:20:49 John Daub: Alright guys, I'll keep you updated on this. It's a really interesting story and I know that some people are going to disagree with me and some people are going to agree with me. That's fine. It doesn't matter so much. She needs support. Everybody's going to see what happens in about a week or so. And then we will have a decision on who the new prime minister is. My gut says that it will still be Takeichi but it's going to take a lot of drama to get there perhaps. It's raining. Here's some money for an umbrella. I wish I had a trunk to sit in. That'd be a lot better if I had a trunk to sit in. Alright guys, I gotta go. I gotta take Leo to swimming practice. See you guys. Matane.