Upper House Election: Japan’s Ruling Coalition to Face More Difficulty Governing as It Loses Majority in Both Houses

The Yomiuri Shimbun

1:00 JST, July 22, 2025

The ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito will likely face more difficulty in the Diet after failing to secure a majority in Sunday’s upper house election means it has become a minority government in both the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors.

In addition to likely dealing with deadlock in the Diet, the government has still not found a resolution in ongoing tariff negotiations with the United States. The administration of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who is also LDP president, will likely struggle to manage the government.

“The truth is that our plan of providing cash benefits was not sufficiently understood by people,” said chairperson of the LDP Election Strategy Committee Seiji Kihara on Monday as a reason for the defeat. “We want to reexamine it.”

He said their plan for responding to rising prices, which is to provide ¥20,000 each to everyone and ¥40,000 each for children and low income earners, was not well understood by many members of the public.

The government and ruling parties plan to pass a fiscal 2025 extra budget bill to finance the cash benefits during an extraordinary Diet session which starts in autumn. However, during the upper house election campaigning, opposition parties have criticized the LDP’s plan as pork barrel spending.

The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which maintained its status as the largest opposition party in the latest lower and upper house elections, has proposed its own cash benefit provision as a bridge measure until a cut in the consumption tax is realized.

But CDPJ leader Yoshihiko Noda emphasizes that the party’s plan “is different from the ruling camp’s in terms of both financial resources and methods.” Thus, it is not likely the CDPJ will cooperate with the ruling parties’ plan.

As the ruling camp has also become a minority force in the upper house, it will become hard for it to pass budget bills and other bills, unless it can obtain the support of opposition parties by accepting their policy opinions or by other means.

“Handling Diet affairs will be complicated, and in some cases, it may be difficult to reach a conclusion in the Diet,” LDP Policy Research Council chairperson Itsunori Onodera told The Yomiuri Shimbun on Monday morning.

With the Aug. 1 deadline looming for an increase in the “reciprocal tariff” imposed by the U.S. on Japan, there is no clear path toward an agreement on the issue.

“The administration was rejected by voters in both the lower and upper house elections. How can it negotiate with the Trump administration?” said Shigeharu Aoyama, head of the LDP’s Osaka prefectural chapter, early Monday morning. He has demanded that Ishiba steps down.

Opposition parties had avoided directly criticizing the Ishiba administration’s negotiations with the U.S. government by positioning them as a national crisis, are changing their stance. Noda said, “If the current situation further worsens the national crisis, there is a possibility that we have to confront the administration with a stronger determination.”

The Ishiba administration as a minority government faces the risk that a no-confidence motion against his Cabinet passing in the lower house which could force the dissolution of the lower house or the resignation of his Cabinet.

On Sunday evening, Noda said “submitting [a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet] is also on the table.” Noda apparently is putting pressure on Ishiba, who has said he intends to stay in the prime minister post.

Komeito leader feels responsibility

“As the party leader, I feel responsibility about the decrease of our Diet seats,” Komeito leader Tetsuo Saito told reporters in the party headquarters before dawn Monday. “I am now deeply considering how I should take responsibility.”

For the upper house election, Komeito set a goal of maintaining 14 contested seats, but instead lost six seats mainly because the party suffered losses in electoral districts for the first time in 18 years.