(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – The appointed cabinet of prime minister Naoto Kan has dramatically lost public backing in Japan, according to a poll by Kyodo News. 36.3 per cent of respondents approve of Kan’s team, down 28.5 points since June.
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – The appointed cabinet of prime minister Naoto Kan has dramatically lost public backing in Japan, according to a poll by Kyodo News. 36.3 per cent of respondents approve of Kan’s team, down 28.5 points since June.
In August 2009, Japanese voters renewed the House of Representatives. Final results gave the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) a victory with 308 of the 480 lower house seats at stake. Yukio Hatoyama, the DPJ leader, was sworn in as prime minister in September.
Aside from a brief period in the 1990s, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had administered Japan’s government for more than five decades.
On Jun. 2, the DPJ’s Yukio Hatoyama tendered his resignation, citing a broken election promise over the permanence of an American army base in the Okinawa prefecture. Hatoyama had also been embroiled in a corruption scandal over campaign funding irregularities.
On Jun. 8, Kan, a former finance minister, took over as prime minister. Since the retirement of Junichiro Koizumi in September 2006, Japan has had five different heads of government: Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda and Taro Aso of the LDP; and Hatoyama and Kan of the DPJ.
On Jul. 11, Japanese voters renewed half of the House of Councillors. Final results were disappointing for the governing DPJ. With the support of the People’s New Party (PNP) and an upper house member from the New Party Nippon (NPN) elected in 2007, the DPJ coalition controls 110 of the 242 seats at stake, well short of a majority.
DPJ secretary general Yukio Edano commented on the election results, saying, "There’s no doubt the public has a negative view of us. You can see that in the election results. We think it’s best to humbly accept it and take sincere steps to improve."
Polling Data
Do you approve or disapprove of Naoto Kan’s cabinet?
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Jul. 2010
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Jun. 2010
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Approve
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36.3%
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64.8%
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Disapprove
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52.2%
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23.6%
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Source: Kyodo News
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,025 Japanese adults, conducted on Jul. 12 and Jul. 13, 2010. No margin of error was provided.
