{"id":14182,"date":"2026-10-06T02:32:52","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T02:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/langleyesquire.com\/?p=14182"},"modified":"2026-10-06T02:44:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T02:44:53","slug":"japanese-politics-updates-20261004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/langleyesquire.com\/en\/japanese-politics-updates-20261004\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese Politics Updates – October 4, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Weekly Briefing Synopsis<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The Emperor Crosses the Moat: 69 Days, Three Ministers, and a Yen in the Upper 157s<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good day. Saturday was glorious, today will be too, after a midweek typhoon that only skirted us. Yet another system is approaching to brush Kanto around Wednesday or Thursday. A further one is building in the Pacific toward Sports Day, a three-day weekend. I am hoping that one stays farther out to sea so I can report to you from some far off island next Sunday. Politics, on the other hand, will not skirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Diet opens tomorrow. Session 222 runs 69 days, through December 12, and the government intends to put 21 bills through it. The Emperor crosses the moat and opens the session, which the Constitution requires of him. PM Takaichi gives the policy speech the same day, and party questions follow on Wednesday and Thursday. People will be listening for two things. She has not yet made safe inside her own party: the cut in the food consumption tax from 8 percent to 1 percent, and a 10 percent reduction in the Lower House, about 45 seats. Not all her LDP cohorts have lined up behind either one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She came back from New York the day the five-day weekend ended, after 35 minutes with President Trump before her UN speech. That meeting did not produce a new defense number, and it did not get to the $550 billion Japan has said it will invest in the United States. What did come up was the yen. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama the same thing. The weakness is a problem for American trade. Meanwhile 160 is still the line they are trying to keep the currency away from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Yen and the Gap<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Friday the yen traded a full point, from just under 157 to the low 158s. It closed the Tokyo session in the upper 157s. It is weaker than it was earlier in the week, and it is still in a band, not yet back on the 160 tripwire. Tokyo inflation is running hot again. The September Tokyo core print, out Friday morning, was 2.7 percent. The gauge that strips out fresh food and energy was 3 percent. Food is the faster piece. The Bank of Japan is trying to tap that down, and the tapping is no longer only a domestic argument. Since President Trump took office the umbrella has been pulled in, and Japan is being told to carry more of what the United States used to carry from Okinawa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PM Takaichi cannot yet say how a two-year cut from 8 percent to 1 percent gets paid for. The working hole is about \u00a510 trillion over the two years. She has told the ministries to come back expansive on the industries she has marked for growth \u2014 chips, AI, defense-related work, and rare earths \u2014 and to show a return that covers the gap. Rapidus in Hokkaido, and the Taiwanese semiconductor build in Kumamoto, are the kind of project she wants that money pointed at. The government is putting more in. Real production is still several years out. The budget gets chewed on toward December, and it is not final by year-end. Although the ministries are good at explaining how much more they need, they are not to state generating a return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She will be on that hot seat after the speech. Defense spending sits in the same argument. Japan is around 2 percent of GDP now. A move toward 2.5 or 3.5 percent is a large bill on its own. She does not yet have the technical muscle to replace what the American umbrella still does. Catching up means buying technology, intelligence, and hardware from the United States. This is another trade flow running against her while the yen is this weak. A weak yen is also why the country is inexpensive to visit, and why inputs priced in dollars cost more yen than they used to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three Ministers, and the Upper House<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The cabinet she named in September kept the heavyweights. Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and Finance Minister Katayama are still there. Meanwhile, inside the party, Taro Aso is still vice president, with his brother-in-law Shunichi Suzuki still Secretary General. The trouble is three ministers of state who will draw arrows from the opening day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hiroshi Nakatsuka is Ishin\u2019s first cabinet minister, in the Regulatory-Reform chair. He was convicted in the Hirakata bid-rigging case, a suspended sentence that became final in 2013, and he is now carrying a fresh allegation that some of the Obayashi money reached him. Education Minister Seki and Agriculture Minister Yana come from the old Abe faction. They admitted taking the slush-fund money and not reporting it, in the kickback scandal that collapsed the factions two and a half years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The LDP has one faction left. Pundits are already saying she should remove the three of them before the members dedicate the session to defending them. Her tolerance for that kind of color is low, and the Bills in front of her are close enough to success or failure that a distraction is expensive. I think she gets the session through. Every government bill offered last time passed. On these three individuals, however, the jury is out: we will know more within two weeks\u2026 maybe sooner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ishin got what it had worked two years for, a seat inside the coalition, a cabinet chair, and five sub-cabinet posts, including a chance to learn how the building works. The pimples and the bruises travel with them. Two of the ten promises are still open, the 45-seat cut and the secondary-capital idea, and the seat cut is the one that lands on this session. The LDP holds the Lower House. By itself it is still about 24 seats short of a majority in the Upper House. Ishin\u2019s Upper House members do not close that gap completely. A Lower House override of an Upper House rejection is available, but it is politically untasty. Prime Ministers have lost the job that way. She knows the 2007 lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yuichiro Tamaki\u2019s Democratic Party for the People is the only opposition party of significance still standing intact, with something like 28 seats against an LDP near 250. Two weeks ago he was wagging a finger and calling the tax cut the battle line. This week his party is not totally in opposition. It is a crack in the opposition line. The other attack, and it will come, is that she does not sit the hours. Last session she was in the questioning chair about thirty hours. Abe sat about seventy, and Ishiba past a hundred. She reads the briefing papers herself, weekends included, and she is trying not to be on the hot seat every day of a 69-day session. The opposition will call that a refusal to explain how to pay for the tax cut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hayashi, and Next September<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Yoshimasa Hayashi was not fired. He did not put his name back in. Of the five who ran last October, PM Takaichi finished first, Shinjiro Koizumi second, and Hayashi third. Hayashi beat her among Diet members in the first round. He moved from the Upper House to the Lower House, which is the old signal that a member wants the premiership. Taro Nakayama, who hired me out of law school, made the same move and became foreign minister. The LDP presidential election is in September next year. Hayashi will not throw grenades. He will ask, in a cleaner voice than Tamaki, how she expects to pay for this & that. That question raises the shackles in the Kantei, but it burnishes him with voters who are not getting much out of the tax cut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also replaced Junichi Ishii as secretary general of the LDP in the Upper House. The press has her angry that last year\u2019s budget missed April 1 and closed almost a week late: I would not put it that way. He did not bring home the bacon. But the problem for the Prime Minister is that Ishii wasted no time to develop his own Upper House cohort. The Upper House is where favors are exchanged and collected, and Ishii has been very good at that. With his nose tweaked, he could use that collection of favors to close a gap like the one she has, but the opposite could be true, too. Remember: he is in Motegi\u2019s old group, and Foreign Minister Motegi is a central figure if next September becomes a race for President of the LDP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Peninsula<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

North Korea fired a ballistic missile yesterday morning from the east coast. Japan put the flight at about 680 kilometers, outside the exclusive economic zone. It is another test in a year that has already run well into double digits, built to carry a nuclear payload, and couched at Japan. PM Takaichi ordered the information gathered, and Tokyo filed a protest of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two other items sit behind that launch. On September 21 mines injured three South Korean soldiers were injured, two of them seriously, on the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone. Seoul blames mines planted by the North; Pyongyang denies it. The UN Command found an active North Korean mine south of the line and called it an armistice violation. And at the UN, President Zelenskyy said Ukraine had sent two captured North Korean soldiers to South Korea, men from the units Pyongyang traded to Russia for equipment and technology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a disclosure is electric within N.Korea and was supposed to be kept Top Secret. The families of those men are still in the North, and the prisoner lists being traded for Ukrainians do not match everyone in physical custody. The government in Seoul is softer on the North than the last one, hoping to make headway. The North has already written the South down as an enemy in its constitution. This will not be solved at a microphone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China, and the Visitors<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Takeshi Iwaya, former Foreign Minister and the member for Oita, took a delegation of about fifty to Beijing last week for the Association for the Promotion of International Trade. Foreign Minister Wang Yi received him and told him the relationship faces a severe situation and has to be normalized. Iwaya also sat with Vice Premier He Lifeng. It is the first meeting at that level since the November comment from Takaichi, who said a kinetic move on Taiwan would be an existential threat to Japan. That comment was not well-received. Iwaya is part of a more favorable China-leaning side of the LDP, which is why they accepted the request-for-an-invitation. There were courtesies, some finger-wagging, but a channel opened. She cannot yet call it a thaw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The visitor numbers follow that sentence. Through the summer Japan (the latest numbers available) is about 3 percent behind last year\u2019s pace. August alone was worse, down 9.6 percent, and China was the reason. Chinese arrivals in August fell 59 percent, to about 418,000, and the agencies are still not booking trips. South Korea is now first, with about 850,000 in August. The hotels are still full enough that a visitor would not guess the year is off the record. Japan needs to earn more, and to pay fewer yen for the same dollar inputs. A 59 percent Chinese visitor hole in the old top market does not help that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historical Frame<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On this day a year ago, October 4, 2025, Sanae Takaichi won the LDP presidency and became prime minister. The LDP presidential election comes around again next September. Hayashi finished third last time and beat her among Diet members in the first round, and he did not put his name back in for a cabinet chair. The Upper House problem she is watching is the one Abe ran into in 2007, when the LDP held the lower house, not the upper, and he was out by September. So there is broken glass everywhere she wants to put her feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q&A Highlights<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \n
  • Does PM Takaichi move Nakatsuka, Seki, and Yana before the three of them consume the 69-day session?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Can the 8-to-1 food-tax cut, and a 45-seat reduction the LDP does not fully want, clear an Upper House the coalition still does not control?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • If the American midterms hand both houses to the Democrats, how does Tokyo manage trade, defense, and diplomacy with a constrained White House?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • If President Trump and President Xi bargain, what does Japan do if Taiwan is part of the trade?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    In Closing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Tomorrow the Emperor opens session 222 and PM Takaichi gives the policy speech. Party questions run Wednesday and Thursday. The week also brings another typhoon skirt and, a week from Monday, a Sports Day weekend we are hoping stays clear & open. The session has to carry a tax cut she has not funded and a seat cut her own members do not want, in a chamber she does not control. Three ministers are the easy arrows. Hayashi is the slower one. The yen closed the week in the upper 157s, with 160 still the line both finance ministries are watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Thank you to everyone who joined and sent questions. We will be back next Sunday morning, October 11, 2026, at 8:20 a.m. JST, in the middle of the three-day weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Weekly Briefing Synopsis The Emperor Crosses the Moat: 69 Days, Three Ministers, and a Yen in the Upper 157s Good day. Saturday was glorious, today will be too, after a midweek typhoon that only skirted us. Yet another system is approaching to brush Kanto around Wednesday or Thursday. A further one is building in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[255],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nJapanese Politics Updates - 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Saturday was glorious, today will be too, after a midweek typhoon that only skirted us. Yet another system is approaching to brush Kanto around Wednesday or Thursday. 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