Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi will dissolve parliament on Friday, paving the way for an early election on February 8 that she hopes will translate her strong public polling into a large majority in the lower house.
It was a “very heavy decision” to “determine Japan’s course with the people”, Takaichi told a news conference in Tokyo.
The country’s first female leader and her cabinet have enjoyed high public support since taking office in October.
But his party is lagging behind in the polls and the move is risky. This is Japan’s second general election in as many years and will test the appetite for his plans to increase public spending when the cost of living is at the forefront of voters’ minds.
Elected as prime minister by lawmakers on 21 October, Takaichi is now seeking a public mandate in the House of Representatives, Japan’s most powerful house.
Since the day he took office, Takaichi said, he has “always worried that the Takaichi cabinet has not been tested in an election where the public chooses the government”.
“Does Sanae Takaichi deserve to be prime minister? I want to ask the sovereign people to decide,” he said at the news conference.
The campaign for the vote to elect 465 lower house MPs, who serve four-year terms, will begin on 27 January.
His Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has governed Japan almost continuously since 1955. It currently holds 199 seats – including three held by its independent partners – in the House of Representatives, the most of any party. The LDP’s coalition with the Japan Innovation party gave it a weak majority, with just enough seats to govern.
A protégé of former conservative PM Shinzo Abe and self-confessed admirer of Margaret Thatcher, Takaichi is known as the “Iron Lady” of Japan.
He came into office promising economic growth after years of stagnation.
Takaichi is a proponent of heavy government-led spending to spur economic growth – a reversal of the kind of stimulus measures seen in Japan under “Abenomics”. His first few months in office have seen soaring personal poll ratings – no Japanese PM has been more popular since Abe, in 2012.
In December, his cabinet approved a record defense budget of nine trillion yen ($57bn; £43bn). It comes amid growing concern over China, where Tokyo has described its neighbor’s military activities in the region as its “biggest strategic challenge”.
Takaichi has found himself the target of China’s ire since last November, when he commented suggesting that Japan could respond with its own self-defense forces if China attacked Taiwan. The diplomatic spat that followed led to bilateral relations falling to their lowest point in more than a decade.
Meanwhile, Takaichi maintained closer ties with the US. During US President Donald Trump’s visit to Japan in October, the two leaders praised each other and signed an agreement on rare lands. They also signed a document heralding a new “golden age” in US-Japan relations.
Opinion polls show that while the LDP remains unpopular among Japanese residents, Takaichi and his government record approval ratings of 60-80%.
This popularity is what Takaichi hopes will help the LDP get a “single majority” in parliament and push bolder policies more quickly, Dr Seijiro Takeshita, a professor of management at the University of Shizuoka, told the BBC World Service’s Asia Specific podcast.
“He wants to strengthen his position so that things can go more smoothly at a later stage,” Takeshita said.
But the snap election gamble has its own set of risks.
The LDP leadership is on shaky ground, and Takaichi is the country’s fourth PM in five years. The terms of his predecessors were cut short by falling public support and scandals.
His immediate predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba, also announced a snap election shortly after taking office – leading to one of the LDP’s worst results and costing the party its majority in the House of Representatives.
Another challenge appears in the form of a new, unified opposition, the Centrist Reform Alliance, formed last week by Japan’s largest opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and the Komeito party, the LDP’s former coalition partner.
Takaichi said that the dissolution of the parliament was done only “after the establishment of a perfect system” that ensures no disruption of economic policies that affect livelihoods and increase prices.
What Takaichi hopes is that “people will trust him to keep his promises”, Dr Jeffrey Kingston, a professor of Asian studies at Temple University in the US, told the BBC.
His high approval rating “is only going to drop so he wants to lock in the benefits of a long honeymoon”, he added.