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Japan to hold election on February 8 after the country’s first woman premier, Sanae Takaichi, dissolves parliament.
Published On 23 Jan 2026
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Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has dissolved parliament in advance of a snap election scheduled for February 8.
The speaker of Japan’s parliament on Friday read out a letter, officially dissolving the lower house as lawmakers shouted the traditional rallying cry of “banzai”.
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The dissolution of the 465-member lower house now paves the way for a 12-day election campaign, which officially begins on Tuesday.
Takaichi, the country’s first woman premier, had announced her intentions on Monday to call an election.
Elected in October as Japan’s first female leader, Takaichi has been in office for only three months, but she has seen strong approval ratings of about 70 percent.
She is hoping to capitalise on her personal popularity to help the governing party regain ground after major losses of public support in recent years.
The governing coalition of Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) has only a slim majority in the powerful lower chamber.
“It’s not clear if high public support for the Takaichi cabinet will actually lead to support of the LDP,” said Hidehiro Yamamoto, a politics professor at the University of Tsukuba.
“What the public are concerned about is measures to address inflation,” he told the AFP news agency.
Japan’s public broadcaster NHK said key election issues for the campaign will be to tackle rising prices for consumers as well as security issues amid rising tension with China.
Tokyo and Beijing have been embroiled in a diplomatic dispute since Takaichi made remarks in November suggesting that Japan could become involved if China takes military action against Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own.
A furious China has increased economic and diplomatic retribution against Japan as a result of Takaichi’s comments.
Japan’s Kyodo News agency said both the governing and opposition party camps have floated the idea of removing a consumption tax on food to ease household inflation.
Public discontent over rising prices largely contributed to the downfall of former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, whom Takaichi succeeded in October.
On Friday, closely watched government data showed the country’s inflation rate slowed in December, largely thanks to government subsidies for electricity and gas.
The 2.4 percent year-on-year rise in consumer prices, which excludes volatile fresh food, compared with 3 percent in November, was a notable slowdown, although higher than the central bank’s 2 percent target.
Rice has become a symbol of spiralling costs for people in Japan, with the price of the daily staple more than doubling in mid-2025 compared with a year earlier, before easing in recent months.
The price of the grain also rose more than 34 percent in December compared with last year, official data showed Friday.
People stand in line as they buy government-stockpiled rice aimed at resolving persistent price rises, sold at Ito-Yokado grocery store in Tokyo, Japan, in May 2025 [File: Issei Kato/Reuters]
Takaichi’s LDP has governed Japan almost uninterrupted for decades, albeit with frequent leader changes.
The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) has joined forces with another party, Komeito, hoping their new Centrist Reform Alliance can draw swing voters away from Takaichi.
Analysts say the election could be a close battle, depending on the success of the alliance, but the opposition’s chances of winning remain slim.
