Japan votes with new PM on shaky ground

Japan voted on Sunday in its tightest election in years, with new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and his juggernaut Liberal Democratic Party facing potentially their worst result since 2009.

Opinion surveys suggest the conservative LDP and its junior coalition partner risk falling short of a majority, a result that could deal a knockout blow to Ishiba.

The 67-year-old former defence minister took office and called a snap election after being narrowly selected last month to lead the LDP, which has governed Japan for almost all of the past seven decades.

But voters in the world's fourth-largest economy have been rankled by rising prices and the fallout from a party slush fund scandal that helped sink previous premier Fumio Kishida.

"I made my decision first and foremost by looking at their economic policies and measures to ease inflation," Tokyo voter Yoshihiro Uchida, 48, told AFP on Sunday. "I voted for people who are likely to make our lives better."

Ishiba has pledged to revitalise depressed rural regions and to address the "quiet emergency" of Japan's falling population through family-friendly measures such as flexible working hours.

But he has rowed back his position on issues including allowing married couples to take separate surnames. He also named only two women ministers in his cabinet.

The self-confessed security policy "geek" has backed the creation of a regional military alliance along the lines of NATO to counter China, although he has cautioned it would "not happen overnight".

Several polls by Japanese media have found that the LDP and its coalition partner Komeito might struggle to get the 233 lower house seats needed for a majority.

Ishiba has set this threshold as his objective, and missing it would undermine his position in the LDP and mean finding other coalition partners or leading a minority government.

"We want to start afresh as a fair, just and sincere party, and seek your mandate," Ishiba said at a rally on Saturday.

Local media speculated that Ishiba could potentially even resign immediately to take responsibility, becoming Japan's shortest-serving prime minister in the post-war period.

The current record is held by Naruhiko Higashikuni who served for 54 days -- four days more than British leader Liz Truss in 2022 -- just after Japan's 1945 defeat in World War II.

In many districts, LDP candidates are neck-and-neck with those from the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), the second-biggest in parliament, led by popular former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda.

"The LDP's politics is all about quickly implementing policies for those who give them loads of cash," 67-year-old Noda told his supporters on Saturday.

"But those in vulnerable positions... have been ignored," he added, accusing the government of offering insufficient support for survivors of an earthquake in central Japan.

Noda's stance "is sort of similar to the LDP's. He is basically a conservative," Masato Kamikubo, a political scientist at Ritsumeikan University, told AFP.

"The CDP or Noda can be an alternative to the LDP. Many voters think so," Kamikubo said.

Ishiba has promised not to actively support the candidates running in the election despite being caught up in the funding scandal.

"I want to focus on young candidates rather than those who have had a long career, because they may bring something different," said a 63-year-old voter who gave her surname as Taniyama, adding she had "made my decision by elimination".

Mitsuyuki Ikezoe, 86, said he had voted for the LDP because he was "worried North Korea or Russia may invade Hokkaido" in northern Japan.

But "Ishiba may be treated dismissively by the United States because he is new", and if Donald Trump becomes president again, "he will not give Ishiba the time of day," Ikezoe said.

Voter turnout as of 2:00pm local time (0500 GMT) was 19.14 per cent, down from 21.49 per cent at the same time in the previous lower house election three years ago, according to the internal affairs ministry.

Polling stations will close at 8 pm (1100 GMT).

Roughly 20 per cent of the country's population who have the right to vote already cast their ballots by Saturday in the early voting system, the ministry said.