Japan PM Takaichi’s Cabinet Approval Falls to Record Low 49.1%

The symbolic weight here is the breach of the 50% line more than the size of the decline, since a cabinet that had stayed above that threshold now sits below it for the first time. The immediate audience is domestic — Takaichi's own party, coalition partners and the Japanese public — but for markets the relevance is whether a weaker mandate constrains fiscal and policy decisions, given how much of the Japan trade rests on political stability. Whether the slide continues into the next survey, or stabilizes, is the open question worth tracking.