Consumers voice Japan inflation worries ahead of general election

Meanwhile, an 82-year-old woman from Tokyo’s Toshima Ward voiced her wish for a lower tax rate on food. “Even though I live on a pension, prices are increasing and taxes are high. I can’t live like this. I would be grateful if the tax rate on food goes down.”

In the Nihonbashi Kabutocho financial district of the capital, a company executive in her 50s questioned Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s decision to dissolve the Lower House at the start of this year’s ordinary Diet session.

“We’re already having an election although the (new) prime minister hasn’t done anything yet” since taking office last October, said the woman, from the city of Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, a Tokyo neighbor.

The executive, who previously worked at a securities company and experienced the heyday of Japan’s asset inflation-driven bubble economy through the early 1990s, said that recent record-high stock prices did not reflect actual living conditions: “I want tax revenues to be spent on measures related to livelihood.”

Company worker Konosuke Yamada, 40, of Nerima Ward, said he does not understand what Takaichi wants to achieve through the upcoming election. “She has not fulfilled her accountability, and I think the public does not support the dissolution (of the Lower House),” he said.