Opposition parties to press Ishiba on consumption tax cut
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba remains opposed to a consumption tax cut, but opposition parties are expected to intensify calls for such measures after gaining more seats in Sunday's House of Councillors election.
Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner, Komeito, suffered a major setback in the upper house election, as the ruling bloc proposed cash handouts to address inflation as a key pillar of its campaign pledges.
Opposition forces have pledged to reduce or abolish the consumption tax, currently set at 10 percent for most goods and services and 8 percent for food and beverages.
With households continuing to struggle with rising prices for rice and daily necessities, how to tackle inflation emerged as the central issue in the upper house race.
The election results indicated voter support for opposition parties' proposals, with a Kyodo News exit poll showing that 72 percent of respondents favored a consumption tax cut, compared with 22 percent who preferred cash payouts.
Speaking on a television program after the polls closed, Ishiba reiterated that the consumption tax is a key source of revenue for medical and other social security programs, adding, "What will happen if the state's finances deteriorate further?"
"We struggled to show the public that we were proposing policies for the people, not for the sake of our political parties," he said.
However, the ruling coalition, which already lost its majority in the House of Representatives, or lower chamber, in the October election, may now have to pay greater attention to opposition demands to ensure the smooth passage of bills, potentially prompting debates over the consumption tax and government spending.
In the run-up to the election, financial markets reacted to projections of a ruling bloc setback, amid concerns that opposition gains could lead to looser fiscal policy and further worsen Japan's already poor fiscal health.
Long-term Japanese government bond yields are on the rise on concerns over potential increases in fiscal spending, with the benchmark 10-year yield rising to 1.595 percent on July 17, the highest level since 2008.
Japan's combined central and local government debt is projected to reach 1,330 trillion yen ($9 trillion) by the end of March next year, equivalent to 211 percent of the country's gross domestic product, according to the Finance Ministry.
The election outcome may also complicate the Bank of Japan's efforts to normalize its monetary policy after ending its unorthodox monetary easing framework, economists say.
The central bank may be forced to keep interest rates on hold if Ishiba is replaced by a successor who favors aggressive monetary easing, economists say.
© KYODO
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Kyodo News
an hour ago
- Kyodo News
Kirin launches 20-yr whisky aging service for life milestones
TOKYO - A new service launched by Kirin Brewery Co. lets customers purchase malt whisky at key life moments and age it for 20 years, offering tasting samples along the way to experience the flavor's evolution. The initial offering, launched June 6 on the crowdfunding platform Makuake, sold out the same day. The major Japanese brewer hopes to roll out the service on a larger scale next year. The full package, priced at 110,000 yen ($745), ages whisky in barrels at a distillery in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture, near Mt. Fuji. Customers receive six 100-milliliter samples over the years, with a final 700-milliliter bottle delivered after two decades. Customers also have the option of enclosing a letter to their future selves or children, turning the experience into a time capsule. "We hope people will enjoy the way whisky matures alongside their own lives and those of their families," said Kyosuke Kojima, the 34-year-old Kirin Brewery employee behind the project.
SoraNews24
2 hours ago
- SoraNews24
Why does Häagen-Dazs Japan have two different types of green tea ice cream, and do we need both?
Green Tea isn't the only green tea ice cream Häagen-Dazs makes these days. Like many of Japan's sweets suppliers, Häagen-Dazs Japan is continually rotating special limited-time flavors into its lineup. Their newest, which went on sale July 22, is Gyokuro, named after the green tea of the same name. Now if you're thinking 'Wait a second, I could have sworn I'd seen green tea Häagen-Dazs in Japan before this,' don't worry, you haven't been having dessert delusions. Not only does Häagen-Dazs Japan already have a green tea flavor, Green Tea (or 'Guriin Tii,' as it's pronounced in its official in-Japanese rendering) is one of their permanent flavors. In other words, the new Gyokuro flavor hasn't pushed Green Tea out of convenience store/supermarket freezer cases. Right now, Häagen-Dazs Japan has two different green tea flavors on sale, and that made us curious as to just how different they actually are. First, though, just what is gyokuro? As defined by the Japan Tea Central Association, gyokuro is a green tea made using leaves harvested from plants grown under covers to shade it from the sun for roughly 20 days, with the covers made of materials such as reeds or cloth and put in place when the ichibancha (first-harvest) buds begin to show. As you can probably guess, this delicate cultivation adds time and expense to the production process, but the smaller, pricier yields are worth it to green tea enthusiasts, who hold gyokuro's extra-deep flavor in high esteem. ▼ A cup of gyokuro tea Gyokuro's premium status is reflected in Häagen-Dazs' ice cream version. Whereas our local 7-Eleven branch was selling the brand's regular Green Tea flavor for 325 yen (US$2.25), the Gyokuro set us back 370 yen, and that's actually less than the suggested retail price of 400 yen. Oh, and the Gyokuro Häagen-Dazs is slightly smaller too, with its tub containing 100 milliliters (3.4 ounces) of ice cream, 10 fewer than the Standard Green Tea's. We started with a visual check. It's a little hard to see in camera-captured images, but when viewed with the naked, tea-loving eye, the Gyokuro Häagen-Dazs is a brighter shade of green than the Green Tea. Since neither ice cream uses any artificial coloring or aromas, we think it's safe to credit the difference to the quality of the powdered gyokuro leaves and gyokuro extract that Häagen-Dazs puts into the new flavor. ▼ Green Tea on the left, Gyokuro on the right Sliding a spoon into each, we didn't notice any contrast in consistency between the too, suggesting that they contain similar ratios of cream as well, so this was feeling like it really was going to come down to a matter of the two types of tea themselves in terms of any differences in flavor . We stared with the Green Tea to establish a baseline, and it tasted like ordinary, average matcha ice cream. To be clear, that's not a criticism. Japan has high standards for sweets across the board, and especially so for green tea desserts, so an ordinary, middle-of-the-pack green tea ice cream is still very, very tasty. However, we wouldn't say that the Häagen-Dazs Green Tea dramatically distinguishes itself from most other authentic matcha ice creams in Japan. But the Häagen-Dazs Gyokuro? Ah, now this was something special! While the difference in flavor is noticeable when drinking a cup of gyokuro compared to standard green tea, we weren't sure if that would carry over to their ice cream forms. It definitely does, though, and the Gyokuro Häagen-Dazs has much stronger tea notes. With the Green Tea, there's an element of sweetness that sticks with you all the way through the flavor profile and lingers into the aftertaste. The Gyokuro, though, gives you just a quick initial sensation of sweetness on the tongue, but by the time you swallow, it's just the rich tea notes that are lighting up your taste buds, with even a touch of umami, we wrote while in our taste-testing notes while nodding in satisfaction. So yes, it turns out there's a reason for the Häagen-Dazs Green Tea and Gyokuro to both exist, since they're both delicious, but in different ways. However, we should note that if green tea desserts don't make up as major a part of your diet as they do ours, the flavor of the Gyokuro isn't going to beat you over the head with its characteristic charms, so you might want to arrange a little green tea ice cream ceremony for yourself and try them both in the same sitting to really appreciate their differences. After all, double desserts are perfectly acceptable if they're part of a cultural experience, right? Photos ©SoraNews24 ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter! [ Read in Japanese ]
Yomiuri Shimbun
4 hours ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
‘Japanese MAGA' Conservatives Gain Foothold in Diet; Disenchanted Voters See LDP as Ineffective, Elitist
The July 20 House of Councillors election showed that the foundation of Japan's political order has crumbled. Japan, which had been seen as the most stable democracy among the Group of Seven countries, has finally joined the political turbulence seen elsewhere in the world. The election's biggest impact on the current political situation, of course, is that the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, already a minority in the lower house, have now lost their majority in the upper house as well. But the long-term impact on Japan's political scene will come from the rise of the conservative party Sanseito, whose 'Japanese First' campaign pledges brought it rapid progress and enabled it to establish a bridgehead in the Diet. Sanseito, which could be described as the Japanese version of the MAGA movement in the United States, won 14 seats in the election. The 7,425,053 votes it received in the proportional representation segment was the third highest total for any party, overtaking the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. It was a surprising leap. According to its web page, Sanseito was founded in 2020 with the idea that 'there is no political party we want to vote for, so we will create one from scratch.' In the election campaign, it displayed right-wing stances including opposition to excessively accepting foreigners. The party's founder and current leader, Sohei Kamiya, stressed in his street speeches: 'Under the motto of 'Japanese First,' we will make Japanese wealthy. In order to do so, we must defend our land and our life [from foreigners], a role the LDP hasn't been able to fulfill.' You can see the similarity with U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign pledges and MAGA stance. As The Yomiuri Shimbun's Washington Bureau Chief, I covered the 2016 U.S. presidential election in which the MAGA movement, then called the 'Trump phenomenon,' arose for the first time. Trump mobilized 'forgotten people,' mainly white people who suffered from the effects of liberal political agendas on issues such as globalism, diversity and climate change. The Democracy Fund Voter Study Group found in 2016 and 2017 surveys that Trump voters had anti-immigrant, anti-globalism and anti-Clinton feelings. About half of them, who were core Trump voters, felt frustrated with agendas advanced by the establishment or political elites, such as building up the global economy, transforming industries that emit carbon dioxide and putting emphasis on diversity. Such policies pursued by the administration of President Barack Obama, which were likely to have been continued if Hillary Clinton had succeeded him, ultimately had negative impacts on MAGA supporters' lives and incomes. The Obama administration had been seen as not caring much about manufacturing bases moving abroad, taking a hostile view of the coal industry, and prioritizing diversity over religious beliefs. That's why they got really excited about Trump's 'America First' campaign pledges. A feeling of being excluded, ignored or not spoken for by the political elites is something that MAGA and Sanseito voters have in common. After the death of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and especially after Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba took office, these voters have been feeling the LDP has weakened its conservative and hawkish stances on foreign policy and policies regarding foreigners. They regard the Ishiba Cabinet as 'panda huggers' who are not stern enough toward China. Feeling frustration over an increasing inflow of foreigners, they have baselessly claimed that foreigners have taken advantage of Japan's social system and receive better treatment than Japanese. They have also claimed foreigners cannot obey Japanese rules and customs. In short, they fear that Japan's land and culture will go unprotected and be destroyed by foreigners because the weak-kneed Ishiba administration and old parties such as the LDP, Komeito and the CDPJ have put forward no measures to deal with the problem. Economically, they regard the LDP as a defender of establishments including big companies, rather than ordinary people who have suffered from inflation, especially after revelations that LDP Diet members had underreported revenue from political fundraising parties. So conservative voters including LDP supporters — especially those who voted for former economic security minister Sanae Takaichi, known for her hawkish stance, in the last LDP presidential election — ran out of patience and went looking for a party that would speak for them. Sanseito won them over to its side with hawkish campaign slogans such as 'Don't destroy Japan anymore' and 'At this rate, Japan won't be itself.' Another commonality between the MAGA and Sanseito movements is that they are driven by social media. Before now, newspaper and TV programs decided which topics had news value in a responsible, fact-based manner, but now social media makes those decisions in an irresponsible manner, sometimes swayed by foreign influence operations, based on the rules of the attention economy. In the United States, the government disclosed that Russian organizations conducted influence operations through social media in the 2016 presidential election and following ones. In Japan in this upper house election, social media expert Ichiro Yamamoto reported that Russian organizations carried out the same type of influence operations, trying to spread critical opinions about the government's policies on foreign nationals by using bots, which are digital tools that can be used to automatically perform repetitive tasks like reposting or giving out many 'likes.' How will Sanseito's leap affect Japanese politics? It's too early to be sure, but Sanseito voters will likely continue to show their presence in elections to come, just as MAGA has done. This means Japanese politics will become more divisive, confrontational and populist rather than rational, conciliatory and responsible, echoing the way MAGA has affected U.S. politics. On top of that, as Japan has a parliamentary cabinet system, its politics will become more and more confused, as has happened in European democratic countries. Political Pulse appears every Saturday. Satoshi Ogawa Satoshi Ogawa is the deputy chief of the President's Office of The Yomiuri Shimbun.
