The Japanese legislature, known as the Diet, is set to meet for an extraordinary session to vote for the next prime minister.
The vote on Tuesday follows the collapse of a 26-year-old partnership earlier this month between the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the smaller Komeito party after Sanae Takaichi took the helm of the LDP.
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The LDP has been the dominant force in Japanese politics since the 1950s, but over the past two years, it has lost its majority in both legislative houses after failing to address a series of problems, including a major corruption scandal and Japan’s cost-of-living crisis.
Now, the LDP is at risk of losing power completely unless it can bring another opposition party to its side.
Some Japanese media reports suggested on Sunday that the LDP had reached an agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Ishin) to form a coalition that would ensure that Takaichi is elected prime minister. But details of the partnership remain unclear, and the two sides have yet to confirm it.
Who is Sanae Takaichi, and why is she controversial?
Takaichi, 64, is the former protege of late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a member of the LDP’s conservative faction.
She was chosen to replace Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba as head of the LDP after he stepped down in September. Takaichi ran on a platform of aggressive fiscal expansion to resolve Japan’s ongoing economic problems.
Takaichi is also known as a foreign policy hawk who wants to strengthen Japan’s military, and she holds conservative views on same-sex marriage.
Following her election as LDP leader on October 4, the LDP and Komeito held policy negotiations. They hit an impasse when Takaichi failed to address Komeito’s concerns about corporate donations, according to Jeffrey Hall, a lecturer at Japan’s Kanda University of International Studies.
The disagreement follows a recent LDP scandal that revealed that party members had diverted more than 600 million yen (approximately $4m) of donations to a slush fund.
“[Takaichi] didn’t give them what they considered a serious answer on their concerns about corruption scandals, and they wanted more serious regulations around funding, especially corporate donations,” he told Al Jazeera.
Can Takaichi still become the next prime minister?
Takaichi still has the chance to become Japan’s first female prime minister, but experts say it will take some horse-trading.
The LDP has 196 seats in the lower house of the Diet, and Takaichi needs at least 233 seats to secure a majority. She could do this by negotiating with one of Japan’s other opposition parties, like the Japan Innovation Party.
Conversely, if opposition parties worked together, they could form a new government, but experts like Kazuto Suzuki, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy, say this would be challenging due to ideological disagreements.
The situation is very different from 2009, when the LDP last lost power, to a unified opposition, for three years.
“If the opposition is able to rally for the unified candidate, it is possible that Takaichi will lose, but more likely, Takaichi will win not by majority but as the first of the two candidates [in a run-off vote],” Suzuki said.
“But even if Takaichi wins, she is based on a very small minority,” he said. “It will be extremely difficult for Takaichi and the LDP to conduct policies of their own.”
Who could challenge Takaichi for the top job?
Experts say that Takaichi’s most likely challenger is Yuichiro Tamaki, 56, the leader of the conservative Democratic Party for the People (DPFP).
While the party holds 27 seats, it could secure a majority if it cooperated with the centre-left Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), which holds 148 seats, and the Japan Innovation Party, which holds 35 seats.
The DPFP and the CDP were once part of the same party but split due to ideological differences over foreign policy and the future of Japan’s military.
The Japan Innovation Party and the DPP also clash over policies like economic reform and deregulation, according to Stephen Nagy, a professor of politics and international studies at Japan’s International Christian University.
“There are a lot of contradictory positions that will make it unlikely they can form a coalition,” Nagy said.
In a more likely scenario, the Japan Innovation Party will form a coalition with the LDP, he said. They share views on major policy concerns like the United States, China, Taiwan, immigration, and the future of the imperial family.
What does this mean for Japan and the LDP?
Experts say the LDP will likely retain its hold over the government for now, but Takaichi will be a much weaker prime minister than many of her predecessors.
“The bigger question is whether she will survive more than a year, and there are external factors like the US relationship and [US President Donald] Trump’s unpredictability, and internal factors such as the direction of the economy and whether she’ll make decisions about Yasukuni shrine,” said Nagy, referring to the shrine to Japan’s war dead that includes war criminals.
Takaichi will also have to find a way to work with Japan’s other parties, and that means negotiating or softening her stance on more controversial policies.
Kanda University’s Hall said this could be a watershed moment for Japanese politics, especially if the opposition parties can retain their support from voters.
“We have a situation where there are several centre-right parties, there’s a far-right party, and there are a few smaller left-wing parties. There just simply isn’t the math for one party to put together a stable coalition with a partner that agrees with it on the big issues,” he told Al Jazeera.
“With this kind of multi-party democracy, they’re going to have new norms develop, where parties are more willing to compromise if they want to form a government – and if they don’t… then we’ll see no-confidence votes that oust prime ministers,” he said.
