A happy winner doesn't look like this.

As so often, on a business basis, Fumio Kishida entered the room at the headquarters of the Liberal Democrats (LDP) in Tokyo.

A little awkwardly, the party leader marked the first constituency won by the LDP on the display wall with a red flower.

Four years ago, predecessor Shinto Abe had a beaming smile and the pose of the winner in the previous general election.

To Kishida, however, the traditional gesture on election night seemed rather annoying and uncomfortable.

Patrick Welter

Correspondent for business and politics in Japan, based in Tokyo.

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In fact, the election result of the Liberal Democrats that emerged in Japan on Sunday night is both a success and a defeat for the prime minister. The governing coalition of the dominant LDP with its small partner Komeito will retain the majority in the new lower house after the polls and the first counts. With that, Kishida has achieved his election goal. But compared to the result four years ago, the Liberal Democrats are threatened with losing dozens of their previous 276 seats on election evening. Even prominent representatives of the LDP are not immune. The party's number two, General Secretary Akira Amari, faced the loss of his direct mandate, as did former General Secretary Shintaro Ishihara. The LDP is heading for the worst election result since 2009, when it was voted out.

Kishida admitted that the party would lose seats.

Overall, however, he described the result as a “very valuable vote of confidence”.

After the election, the Prime Minister wanted to travel to Glasgow, Scotland, to attend the United Nations Cop-26 climate summit.

Prime Minister Kishida only recently in office

Political analysts spoke of a setback for the ruling party.

"The government will become more unstable," said Yu Uchiyama, a political scientist, of the FAZ. There is speculation whether Kishida will join the ranks of the "revolving door prime ministers" who will leave office after a year.

An upper house election is due next summer.

Kishida sees the general election as the starting point for his government. The 64-year-old politician only took over the office of prime minister at the beginning of October after predecessor Yoshihide Suga resigned after a hapless pandemic year. In competition within the party, Kishida stood out primarily as a fighter against the pandemic and with the idea of ​​a new Japanese-style capitalism. From his ideas of a central medical agency for the prevention of pandemics or a higher capital gains tax for the rich, however, nothing more could be found in the election manifesto of the Liberal Democrats.

It is so difficult for voters and political commentators in Japan to pinpoint a clear line by Kishida.

This is particularly true of economic policy, in which he alternates between the goals of growth and redistribution.

Without a clear perspective, the main dissatisfaction in the election was that Japan experienced the worst fifth coronavirus wave to date during the Olympic Games in Tokyo, which temporarily overloaded the medical system in large cities.

The corona situation has meanwhile changed drastically.

72 percent of the population are now fully vaccinated against the virus.

On election Sunday, fewer than 250 new infections with the coronavirus were reported across the country.

Opposition cannot benefit

With a low turnout of around 50 percent, the fragmented opposition did not benefit from the difficulties of the LDP. Four left-wing opposition parties around the Constitutional Democratic Party had pooled their strengths in many electoral districts and only allowed one candidate to stand.

The strategy of portraying nine years of neoliberal economic policy under the former Prime Ministers Abe and Suga as a failure, however, ultimately did not work - also because Kishida himself had taken on the issue of redistribution.

Only the Japanese Innovation Party, which is focused on Osaka, was able to significantly more than triple its number of seats from the previous eleven.

The political scientist Uchiyama sees as one reason why the party was the only one to speak of reforms and deregulation to strengthen growth.

In doing so, she has won many supporters of the Liberal Democrats who cannot make friends with Kishida.