Now in the fourth year of his second term as prime minister of Japan, Shinzō Abe accomplished a remarkable victory in July’s (half) upper house national election. He not only led his own Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to an outright majority, for the first time in twenty-seven years, but, with his coalition partners, he secured a two-thirds, or super, majority (163 seats in the 242-seat house), enabling him to contemplate revision of the Constitution — something his post-1945 predecessors could only dream of.

But despite his unquestioned mandate and string of electoral victories, Abe is not a popular prime minister. His latest triumph rested on the vote of just 21 percent of the electorate (35.9 percent of the 54 per cent of eligible voters who actually voted).

Among newly enfranchised eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, the voting rate was only 51 and 39 percent respectively, showing a palpable lack of enthusiasm, and overall, the support he gained was grudging.