Trump looms heavily as Japanese PM Ishiba survives a parliamentary vote

Japanese lawmakers decided on Monday to keep Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in charge, even though his coalition lost the majority in the lower house election last month because of a scandal.

Ishiba called the snap election right after taking office on October 1. Now he has to run a weak minority government while protectionist Donald Trump takes over in the US, tensions rise with foes China and North Korea, and pressure builds in Japan to lower the cost of living.

His coalition partner, the Liberal Democratic Party, got the most seats in the election, but they lost the majority they had held since 2012. This means that he needs small opposition parties to get his policies passed.

To show how unstable things are, the vote in parliament on Monday, which was shown on TV, went to a repeat for the first time in 30 years because no candidate could get enough support in the first round.

But Ishiba won in the end, as expected. He got 221 votes, which was a lot more than his closest rival, former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda, who led the biggest opposition Constitutional Democratic Party but wasn’t enough to get a majority in the 465-seat lower house.

Japan will have elections next year for the upper house, which is not as strong. The ruling coalition’s small majority could also be at risk there if Ishiba can’t rebuild trust in the government after a scandal involving donations that were not reported.

Soon, he will have to make a new budget for the fiscal year that ends in March. Voters and opposition parties are putting pressure on him to do this because they want him to spend more on welfare and take steps to stop prices from going up.

For acceptance, he needs at least one opposition party to back him up. The Democratic Party for the People (DPP), which is led by Yuichiro Tamaki, is most likely that party.

He has talked with Ishiba about working together, but on Friday, DPP members did not vote for Ishiba to stay as prime minister.

Tamaki is also in a tough spot after admitting on Monday to having an affair that was reported in a trashy magazine.

After being approved as prime minister, Ishiba chose three new cabinet ministers: one for transportation, one for justice, and one for agriculture. Two of them replaced LDP lawmakers who lost their seats in the election for the lower house.

Today, Ishiba has a lot of foreign events to get ready for, such as a meeting of the Group of 20 big economies in Brazil on November 18 and 19.

He is also trying to set up a stay in the US to meet Trump on the way to or from that meeting. Last Thursday, the leader of Japan had a “friendly” five-minute chat with the president-elect. During that time, he congratulated him on his election win.

Still, some Japanese officials are worried that Trump could hit Tokyo with protectionist trade measures again and demand that it pay more for having U.S. troops stationed there.

During Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, these problems were mostly solved by his close relationship with Shinzo Abe, who was Japan’s prime minister at the time. Ishiba wants to strengthen this relationship even more.