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."

People vote during the general election at a polling station set up at a local school in Tokyo on Sunday. AFP

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.

Agence France-Presse