1. Ishiba Reversed LDP’s Downtrend But Not Strong Enough
As reported last time, Ishiba as new President of LDP was elected as the 102nd PM in the extraordinary Diet session on October 1 and formed his first cabinet on the same day.
And then, he dissolved the House of Representatives on October 9 and set a general election date as October 27.
It is just 8 days from the formation of the cabinet up to the dissolution of the lower house, which is the shortest record ever since the end of the WWII.
NHK’s monthly survey that was conducted on October 12 through 14 revealed that Ishiba Cabinet’s approval rating went up by 24 points to 44% from Kishida Cabinet’s last poll in September.
But this approval rating is fairly low as it is sort of a honeymoon period.
In fact, Kishida Cabinet’s very first approval rating was 49% according to the same NHK monthly survey in October 2021.
Although 75% of the respondents of the NHK poll said they strong or good level of interest in the forthcoming general election and 83% replied that they would cast their vote, 49% said the timing of the dissolution of the House of Representatives was not appropriate.
Following were the top seven issues in the respondents’ mind that dictate their voting attitude:
l Economy and inflation 34%
l Social security system 17%
l Political finance 13%
l Diplomacy and national security 11%
l Child policy and declining population 8%
l Disaster relief 6%
l Constitutional amendment 2%
In the meantime, the approval rating of the ruling LDP went up by 3.8 points to 35.1%, while that of the largest opposition party CDPJ also went up by 1.8 points to 8.4%.
2. The Ruling Parties Prospected To Keep The Majority Of The Lower House
According to Yomiuri’s special survey that was conducted on October 15 and 16 with regard to voters’ attitude, the ruling LDP and New Komei Party may lose some of the current seats of the Lower House individually while the coalition parties are prospected to keep the majority of the house.
Presently, LDP alone shares 247 seats, which is beyond the majority line of 233 and New Komei shares 32 seats.
LDP, this time, has 266 candidates for this election.
According to the survey results, around 100 candidates are in some advantageous position, while around 120 are in a dead heat competition and more than 40 are behind other parties’ candidates.
The largest opposition party CDPJ’s new president and ex-PM Yoshihiko Noda has been deploying strong campaigns to take over the political power from LDP/New Komei by reminding voters of the political finance scandal that involved tens of LDP’s incumbent representatives and emphasizing the necessity of punishing the ruling parties by changing the government.
CDPJ shares 137 seats out of the lower house while endorsing 238 candidates this time.
In the meantime, LDP and PM Ishiba announced earlier that the party decided against endorsing twelve incumbent representatives who are mostly former Abe faction members and were involved in the political finance scandal to draw the line.
3. Largest Ever Flow Of Inbound Visitors Spending Also Largest
Japan’s National Tourist Bureau announced on October 16 that the number of foreign visitors from January through September of this year went up by 54.7% to 26.9 million from the same period last year.
The bureau prospects that the number will continue to grow through the end of the year to reach 35 million, which is much higher than the highest record of 31.9 million marked in 2019.
In the meantime, Japan Tourists Agency announced on the same day that the aggregated amount that the foreign visitors spent from January through September increased by 61.7% to 5.86 trillion yen from the same period last year.
The amount itself already exceeded the annual record of 5.31 trillion yen, which was recorded in 2023.
The historic depreciation of yen encouraged more visitors to come to Japan and consume more for lodging, dining and shopping, the media reported.
Chinese tourist are coming back to Japan this year, which also contributed to those numbers.
The spending per foreign visitor also increased by 6.7% to 223,195 yen.
4. Female Executives Share A 16.8% Of Board Of Directors At Japan’s Major Companies
Keidanren, the Federation of Economic Organizations announced its survey results on October 16 that the share of female board members at 716 member companies that are listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Prime Market increased by 2.7 points to 16.8% from last year.
It is, however, far below 30% a government campaign goal to be achieved by 2030.
51 companies (7.1%) of the 716 members have already attained the 30% goal, while 11 companies (1.5%) have no female board members, the survey revealed.
5. Japan To Explore Common API For Next Generation Vehicles
METI and Japanese auto industry groups jointly announced on October 17 during Japan Mobility Show Biz Week at Makuhari Messe that car manufacturers, universities, ICT and semiconductor companies, etc. will cooperate with each other to establish a common API for next generation vehicles, namely Software Defined Vehicles (SDV).
Auto makers like Toyota, Honda and Nissan as well as major car parts manufacturers will define chassis control area such as opening the door and windows, wiper motions, etc. while the other members will define automatic driving, map information, insurance and so forth.
Although Japan presently keeps around a 30% share of the world gasoline engine cars, it has just a 3% share of the EV market, far behind Chinese and American manufacturers.
As EV should be the most promising SDV in the future, Japan, with the common API, would like to accelerate its own SDV development more efficiently