Commentary: Japan’s leader has lost his ‘mandate of heaven’

Shigeru Ishiba is clinging on to power after the latest rebuke from the electorate. With crucial trade talks on the line, it’s time for him to go, says Gearoid Reidy for Bloomberg Opinion.

Shigeru Ishiba was long considered an outside prospect to become Japan’s leader – so much so that he once said it would take the involvement of the gods themselves. “If I were ever to become prime minister, it would probably be when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) or Japan was in serious deadlock,” he wrote in his book published last year. “Unless I receive a mandate of heaven, it’s unlikely to happen.”

After Sunday’s (Jul 20) humiliation at the polls, whatever mandate from heaven he once commanded is lost. The LDP suffered a devastating loss in the Upper House elections. Ishiba had already set himself the low bar of retaining a majority in the chamber along with long-time coalition partner Komeito. It failed to achieve even that, even if the final results were better than exit polls had suggested. It’s a rebuke from the electorate that has few parallels outside of times of extreme economic distress, such as when the LDP was ejected from power in 2009 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

“Only their Emperor has a mandate from heaven”
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Mr Retain Mike, you are Fully Correct. Thank you.

Romans 13:1
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

Nah, just Obama put Rahm Emannuel in Japan to push them farther left and globalist, and they failed massively. Sanseito is the Japanese MAGA party and they got 16 seats(?) while Kokumin (kind of like if David Sacks had a party) got 16 as well? Those were spots LDP/Komeito lost.

Now the coalition will HAVE to be more conservative as the opposition is Rikken (old democrats, only have support in north Japan/hokkaido where there’s a lot of handouts). Isshin no Kai lost a few, but that’s because Sanseito is gaining power.

This is the first time I’ve seen a maga party in Japan, and their campaigners are everywhere. I talked to a few in Enoshima.

The post comes from information I put together about Japan's surrender after the dropping the atomic bombs. Here is the excerpt from the essay.

For the final palace meeting, Hirohito reluctantly invited Baron Hiranuma, who had fiercely disapproved the Pearl Harbor attack. He had maintained the United States would not be provoked into war by Japanese conquest of British, French, and Dutch colonies. The baron was also a renowned prosecutor who could ask the hard questions now essential. He asked Foreign Minister Togo to consider whether he had ever made concrete proposals to the Russians. He asked the war ministers if they had any counter measures to the relentless air attacks by the American Army and Navy. Hiranuma reminded Hirohito that the Emperor’s spiritual essence was the foundation for Japan’s future and endured independent of any government imposed by surrender. He asked whether a final battle was truly necessary to preserve that spiritual essence. There was no rebuttal to his questions, but the War Faction remained unyielding.

Though the two factions remained at impasse, the two atomic bombs allowed Hirohito, the Son of Heaven, to speak the “Voice of the Crane” in the sweltering, underground bunker. The bombs would be regarded as a force of nature equivalent to an earthquake or typhoon against which even a god/king was helpless. Only submission to such a force of nature could be proportional to the absolute disgrace of surrender following over 2,600 years of martial invincibility. Only Hirohito could make that submission, because he held the sacred, heaven created throne inherited from Imperial ancestors. He would bear the unbearable, conclude the war, and transform the nation.

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