Snap Election

Japan’s ruling coalition secured a commanding parliamentary majority Sunday, handing Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi a historic mandate to pursue tax cuts that have unsettled investors and defense spending increases aimed at countering China’s regional influence.

Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party captured 316 of 465 seats in the lower house, the party’s strongest performance on record. Combined with its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party known as Ishin, the government now controls 352 seats, a two-thirds supermajority that allows it to override the upper chamber, where it lacks similar dominance. The result grants Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister, substantial legislative freedom …