Japan's Ordinary Diet Session Ends

Japan’s PM Ishiba Survives the Ordinary Diet Session 2025


By Takuya Nishimura, APP Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun.The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun.
You can find his blog, J Update here.
June 23, 2025. Special to Asia Policy Point

The Ordinary Session of the Diet closed on June 22. Despite the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP’s) minority in the House of Representatives, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba survived: the Diet passed the FY2025 budget bill by the end of March, and Ishiba avoided a no-confidence resolution. As he had to make concessions to the opposition parties, Ishiba failed to complete parts of his agenda such as political funds control and the separate surname system. The vulnerability of Ishiba’s position may affect the coming Upper House election in July.

The recently concluded session was the first time in over thirty years that the leading parties had to deal with a minority government in the House of Representatives. The last time was in 1994 when an anti-LDP coalition led by Tsutomu Hata lost its majority when the Socialist Party’s seceded from the coalition government. In the ordinary session this year, the LDP and its partner Komeito were able to accommodate enough policy concerns of some opposition parties to gain a majority to pass the FY2025 budget. The budget was the critical issue in the first half of the session.

Although Ishiba was at first not able to find an opposition party to vote for the budget, the Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Ishin-no Kai) eventually offered a helping hand. This support came after Ishin, the LDP, and Komeito reached a deal to add support for high school tuition to the bill. The Diet enacted the bill in the nick of time, by the end of March when FY2024 ended.

Ishin’s co-leader in charge of Diet affairs, Seiji Maehara, who had been the head of a small party advocating free education before joining Ishin last October, paved the way for the deal. Maehara was a minister in the administration of Democratic Party of Japan (2009-2012) when Ishiba was the policy chief of the LDP, which was then an opposition party. Maehara and Ishiba had debated policy in the Diet and have maintained their personal relationship since then.

Maehara also played a key role in the second half of the ordinary session. It is not unusual for the opposition parties to consider a no-confidence resolution at the end of a session. Maehara blocked this adventure. As the leader of one of the major opposition parties, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ), Yoshihiko Noda, was reaching a final decision whether to move forward with the resolution, Maehara announced that he thought Ishiba would dissolve the Lower House and go to a double election of both Houses as soon as a no-confidence resolution bill was submitted.

The Constitution of Japan states that the prime minister must resign when the Diet passes a "non"-confidence resolution -- unless the Lower House is dissolved. Maehara said that Ishiba would immediately dissolve the Lower House as soon as a no-confidence resolution bill was submitted without waiting for a House vote on the resolution. The Constitution empowers the prime minister to dissolve the Lower House at any time.

Noda ultimately refrained from the submission of a no-confidence resolution bill, afraid of a political vacancy brought by the double election at a particularly uncertain time in Japan and the world. That is, the security situation in the Middle East is worsening, tariff negotiations with the Trump administration are dragging on, and rice prices in Japan are highly volatile.

Ishiba cannot be said to have been successful in pushing his agenda through the Diet session. He failed to make good on his promise to enact legislation on political donations from companies and organizations by the end of March. Five opposition parties and the LDP each submitted bills to revise the Political Funds Control Act. But none of them garnered majority support. The bill was postponed to the next session.

Other items fell by the wayside. The LDP could not conclude internal discussion over creating a separate surname system for married couples, although the opposition parties were ready for it. The party also failed to wrap up debate on stable succession to the Imperial Throne, an issue that the Speakers of both Houses had hoped to enact legislation by the end of this Diet session. The conservatives in the LDP were reluctant to change rules for surnames and royal succession.

The failures may affect the Upper House election, which will take place July 20. In the recent election of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly (June 22), the LDP lost a considerable number of seats due to voters’ complaints about mismanagement of political funds. In the absence of substantial support for the LDP, opposition parties were able to scoop up votes, but the results did not show that voters favored a particular party over the others. By all appearances, Ishiba has yet to establish a stable voter base for the Upper House elections, which will determine his administration’s fate.