Japan 2022 Upper House elections July 10

[jaichind]

Kishida refrains from commenting on how this might impact this weekend’s scheduled election -- and doesn’t touch on whether it could be postponed or canceled.

[jaichind]

Local broadcaster NHK is citing unidentified sources as saying the gun appears to be “hand-made”. NHK played a close-up of the gun on the ground, and it does look like something taped together.

[jaichind]

Kyodo is citing Nara police as saying the suspect didn’t attack Abe because of his political beliefs.

If so it is likely the suspect is a disgruntled his lack of economic progress and shot Abe blaming him for poor state of economy. 

[jaichind]

In all of Japan in 2021, there were 10 gun-related incidents, according to the National Police Agency. One person died and four were injured. Eight of the 10 incidents involved organized crime.

[jaichind]

While rare, there are occasions of violence against politicians in modern Japan. In 2007, the mayor of Nagasaki, Iccho Itoh, was shot and killed in front of his campaign headquarters, and in 2002, Koki Ishii, a DPJ MP, was stabbed and killed in front of his home in Tokyo. There were three more incidents in the ‘90s -- all involving right-wing organizations.

[jaichind]

LDP instructs candidates to cease all campaign activities for the time being. I am sure other parties will follow. 

[jaichind]

The suspect told investigators he “had a gripe” with Abe so he thought to kill him, but that it was not politically motivated, NHK reports, citing the police.

Another source claims that the suspect told the police he had planned to shot "someone from a certain organization" (KP?)  But his target did not show up but Abe did so he shot Abe instead.  The police does not believe this story as per this source. 

[jaichind]

Wow.  Nikkie has 宮城(Miyagi) 福島(Fukushima) and 奈良(Nara) (for JRP) as lean opposition all due to the JRP surge.  奈良(Nara) is out of nowhere.  On the flip side, they have 岩手(Iwate) as lean LDP when everyone else has lean CDP.

It seems it was the Nikkei's projection that 奈良(Nara) might go JRP that led Abe to go campaign there leading to the attack that most likely ended his life.

[jaichind]

Since there are already early voting votes cast already I find it hard to believe they can delay this election.

[jaichind]

Various LDP bigwigs saying the election will go on.

It will be a LDP landslide.  I now have them at 66 seats with 20 PR seats and sweeping all 1- member districts except for 3 (青森(Aomori), 山形(Yamagata), and 長野(Nagano) as the JRP vote will now swing to LDP in those seats.  Depending on how the next couple of days go I might flip 山形(Yamagata) to LDP.  SDP PNHK will most likely fall below the threshold given the clear higher turnout that will take place.  PP most likely holds on.  Of the bigger parties, JRP will get hit the most in multi-member districts as their votes shift to LDP.


 

[jaichind]

Possible explosives have been found at the alleged suspect’s home, NHK reports.

[jaichind]

Other political implications.  The leader of the largest LDP faction is gone and it will be hard to fill Abe's shoes.  Given how much the intra-faction battles are over personality differences versus policy differences this could lead to another round of re-shuffling of the different LDP factional rivalries and alliances.  One possible winner would be Kono Taro.  It seems Abe is really out to get him and if Abe stayed around in LDP politics for another decade he could really retard Kono Taro's chances of being LDP leader.  Now that Abe is gone former PM and Aso faction leader Aso Taro will become the LDP party elder.  Kono Taro is in the Aso faction plus Kono Taro's father and former LDP Prez Kono Yohei being Aso's old benefactor all means the LDP hierarchy just got a lot friendlier to Kono.

[jaichind]

Off the top of my head what the PR vote will look like now

           Vote share     Seats
LDP          38.5%       20
KP            13.0%         7
PP              2.0%         1
PNHK          1.0%         0
JRP           13.5%         7
DPP            4.0%         2
CDP          14.0%         7
RS              4.0%         2
SDP            1.5%         0
JCP             7.5%         4
Others         1.0%

LDP at 38.5% which is close to the 2 Koizumi landslides of 2001 and 2005 (38.6% and 38.2%).  There were some chances of JRP getting to something like 15.5% or 16%.  Now that is all gone.

[jaichind]

Other political implications.  The leader of the largest LDP faction is gone and it will be hard to fill Abe's shoes.  Given how much the intra-faction battles are over personality differences versus policy differences this could lead to another round of re-shuffling of the different LDP factional rivalries and alliances.  One possible winner would be Kono Taro.  It seems Abe is really out to get him and if Abe stayed around in LDP politics for another decade he could really retard Kono Taro's chances of being LDP leader.  Now that Abe is gone former PM and Aso faction leader Aso Taro will become the LDP party elder.  Kono Taro is in the Aso faction plus Kono Taro's father and former LDP Prez Kono Yohei being Aso's old benefactor all means the LDP hierarchy just got a lot friendlier to Kono.

What about Shigeru Ishiba?

Yeah, he benefits too.  But by not running in the 2021 LDP Prez race he is to some extent saying he is out of the game. Kishida will be around for a while and by the time Kishida steps down it might be Kono will have too much support for Ishiba to a real threat to him.

[jaichind]

The opposition parties have confirmed that they will go back to campaigning tomorrow. Like jaichind, I believe a majority for LDP alone is now very likely. LDP-KP 2/3rds majority also possible. Despite that constitutional revision remains quite unlikely. The main concern for the Japanese electorate in the coming months is still going to be inflation.

I think the LDP will have to be careful about constitutional revision.  After this landslide election victory, they will have the numbers but they face the problem of JRP KP and LDP all have different ideas what the revision would be an aggressive push by LDP after the Upper House election could open themselves up to accusations that they are using the sympathy for Abe's assassination for politician gain.  I think they are better off leaving it alone for a year or two to deal with economic issues and for the wounds of Abe's assassination to heal then take up the issue.

[jaichind]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rxdRDZPqCw

Is the close-up video of Abe as he was being shot.  Since campaign stump speeches are covered by the media the quality is high.

[jaichind]

The way I am figuring it is that turnout will rise to where it was in 2021 when LDP got 19.9 million PR votes.  This time they will get around 22 million PR votes.  This will be the highest raw PR votes LDP will get since the 2005 LDP Koizumi landslide when LDP got 25.9 million PR votes.  In 2001 LDP got 38.6% of the vote but due to lower turnout, their vote total was 21.1 million PR votes.  The largest PR vote total record was the DPJ landslide in 2009 when it got 29.8 million PR votes.  I suspect this record might not be broken ever.

[jaichind]

TBS reports

"The suspect said he had a grudge against a certain religious group and so he attacked Abe since he had a relationship with that group. He heard that Abe was coming to Nara, so he decided to go ahead with the crime."

Not sure which religious group this is.  Sounds totally made-up story by the suspect.

[jaichind]

Japanese police on Friday named the suspected killer of former prime minister Shinzo Abe as unemployed 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, who told officers he had used a handmade gun.

"That's the suspect's assertion, and we have determined that (the gun) is clearly handmade in appearance, although our analysis is currently ongoing," a police officer in Nara region, where the assassination took place, told reporters.

[jaichind]

Wow.  Nikkie has 宮城(Miyagi) 福島(Fukushima) and 奈良(Nara) (for JRP) as lean opposition all due to the JRP surge.  奈良(Nara) is out of nowhere.  On the flip side, they have 岩手(Iwate) as lean LDP when everyone else has lean CDP.

Confirmed that Abe campaign stop was last minute so it was harder to set up security.  So it was the Nikkei poll on Nara rhat led to Abe going there last minute and leading to his assassination. 

[jaichind]

The fact that the LDP deployed their top gun, Abe, last minute to Nara based on a single projection from Nikkei shows

a) LDP internal polling has Nara at high risk of a flip to JRP
OR
b) LDP feel they have CDP's number and view JRP as a long term threat ergo they need to head off any JRK breakthrough at all costs

or both.

[jaichind]

It seems the assassin was able to disguise his homemade gun (all plastic) to look like a camera so everyone else thought he was taking a picture when he approached Abe from behind and was pointing the gun (which looked like a camera at Abe).

[jaichind]

Other things I learned from Japanese media coverage

1) Abe was going to campaign in  長野(Nagano) that day but last minute changed it to 奈良(Nara).  A reasonable assumption is that 奈良(Nara) has become competitive and given the sex scandal of the LDP candidate in 長野(Nagano) Abe did not want to appear with a tainted candidate ergo he changed his plans last minute

2) It seems the suspect is unemployed and lived in a tiny apartment whose rent was only around $280 a month.  It shows the difficult economic situation the suspect was living in and I can see him being disgruntled.

[jaichind]

NHK: According to someone affiliated with the ongoing police investigation, the suspect said that his mother had become heavily involved with the religious group and had messed up the family’s life by making huge donations, among other things

[jaichind]

The media is also pointing out another question that is not answered: how did the suspect know that Abe was going to come to 奈良(Nara) that day instead of the published schedule of 長野(Nagano)?  One media outlet said that various LDP campaigns around the country were getting phone calls asking if Abe will speak in their prefecture anytime soon.  It is possible one of the LDP operatives in 奈良(Nara) innocently told the suspect who cold-called them that Abe was coming to 奈良(Nara) that day.   

If this is not figured out in a comprehensive way I can see movies 20-30 years from now called "Abe" in the genre of "JFK" with all sorts of conspiracy theories.   Given Abe's bad relationship with the PRC since he stepped down as PM, I can see such an "Abe" movie having the PRC and Yakuza (why not) in it as villains.