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Takaichi wins, with Koizumi falling surprisingly short in the lawmaker votes - he didn't even win all of Hayashi's votes. Probably in part down to lawmakers not wanting to ignore the constituency votes, but also a pretty clear sign of a party running scared of populist challenges from its right.

Hopefully the opposition will finally get their shit together and win a majority in the next election.

as an australian [australia's constitutional framework is extremely similar to japan's], I'm watching it as a stress test for institutions like ours. 100% it'll be horrible, but I think it'll be less horrible than people might think: morrisson couldn't do half of what he wanted, here.

It's a bit of a silver lining: yes, we get the mad Thatcherite as PM and that's pretty awful in itself, but she inherits a lame duck government and is more likely than not to fail miserably and further sink the LDP. That would at least open up the political scene for actual change, for once.

Lower House election before end of the year? Or will she try to work with Sanseito and other right-wing parties to have some conservative coalition?

i think cooperation with sanseito would doom them. any voters not on board with that level of racism/nationalism will move to to the kokumin minshuto and anyone into that would keep voting for sanseito.

I agree, though I wouldn't underestimate just how bad some of these people are at the kind of strategic thinking required for minority government. I do think they'll try to maintain a cordon around Sanseito, at least at first, but wouldn't be too surprised if they break it quite often.

I don't think she'll try to work with Sanseito - Ishin is more likely. She's a boon to Sanseito though, even if she and her supporters seem to believe, naively, that her being in charge somehow negates Sanseito's raison d'etre.