TOKYO - The approval rate for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's Cabinet slipped to 55.8 percent, the lowest point since she took office last October, a Kyodo News poll showed Sunday, amid lingering uncertainty in the resource-poor country over the economic fallout from the Middle East conflict.
In the weekend telephone survey, which took place after the United States and Iran reached a preliminary peace deal that included Tehran reopening the Strait of Hormuz, 54.7 percent of respondents said there is no need to send the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to the key waterway to ensure the safe passage of commercial vessels, while 36.6 percent thought otherwise.
With households continuing to struggle with elevated prices, the largest share of respondents, 43.9 percent, said they would support lowering the consumption tax rate on food and beverages from the current 8 percent to 1 percent if doing so would allow the measure to be introduced sooner, while 22.6 percent favored cutting the rate to zero, as pledged by the ruling parties, regardless of how long implementation may take.
Takaichi's Cabinet support rate has continued to decline in recent months, falling 5.5 percentage points from the previous survey in May. Its disapproval rate rose 1.1 points to 27.9 percent during the two-day survey from Saturday.
The ruling coalition of Takaichi's Liberal Democratic Party and the Japan Innovation Party pledged to freeze the 8 percent consumption tax for two years during the February general election campaign as a measure to counter inflation.
But a 1 percent plan for two years starting April 2027 has recently been proposed by the LDP's tax policy chief at a meeting of the cross-party national council on taxation and social security, given that changing the tax rate to zero would require more time to adjust retailers' cash register systems.
The poll, meanwhile, showed that the public was divided over a proposal to tackle the dwindling number of imperial family members by enabling certain male descendants from the former 11 collateral branches, which lost their royal status some 80 years ago, to join the imperial family, with 44 percent approving the idea and 45.4 percent opposing it.
The number of heirs eligible to take over the Chrysanthemum Throne, as well as the entire imperial family, has continued to decrease as the Imperial House Law limits heirs to a male who has an emperor on his father's side, while female members must leave the family upon marriage to commoners.
