Shigeru Ishiba’s done.

He was actually done months ago, in July, when a lackluster result for LDP in elections for Japan’s upper-house underscored what it’s fair to call pervasive disaffection among the Japanese electorate. LDP lost its lower-house majority last year.

Like most of its major developed nation peers, Japan’s experiencing an upsurge of right-wing populism. The ringleader, 47-year-old Sohei Kamiya, has been described as a “mini-Trump.”

Kamiya’s message is straight from the playbook: The Japanese political establishment’s corrupt and globalists are plotting against the country which is experiencing a “silent invasion” of foreigners, many of whom are criminals. The best policy, Kamiya argues, is one that puts “Japan first.”

While campaigning under the banner of his party, Sanseito, for an upper-house seat in 2022, Kamiya published a pamphlet which, among other things, detailed a shadowy conspiracy wherein a cabal of international bad actors “affiliated with Jewish capital” was bent on monetizing COVID containment protocols in Japan.

In its formative days, Sanseito charged $700 (give or take) for a series of “seminars” hosted by Kamiya under the banner of a “Consciousness Reform University.” According to The Asahi Shimbun, Kamiya listed “Was Hitler Really a Great Evil?” as a curriculum discussion topic.

As El País put it, summarizing remarks from a former seminar instructor at Kamiya’s “university,” “the program[s] served to forge a wide network of contacts that would later expand the party’s support base.” Less politely, Kamiya used his “courses” to brainwash converts, then turned them into Sanseito voters.

Again: The playbook’s not just familiar, it’s boilerplate. It’s the same vapid demagoguery right-wing populists have used for a century. Suggesting, as one Japanese sociologist did in the El País peice, that Sanseito’s success “isn’t due to a simple surge of populism” but rather to generalized frustration with “a political system that has failed them,” seems to miss the point. Surging populism’s everywhere and always associated with the perception among voters that the existing political order isn’t working for everyday people. That’s what populism is. Quite literally.

So, while Sanseito’s growing clout — they won 14 seats in July’s upper-house elections — may not represent Japanese “electing a specific figure or party,” as the same sociologist put it, it’s absolutely emblematic of a populist “surge” — “simple” or not.

Bottom line: This is a tough climate for the post-Abe LDP which, having led the country 93% of the time during the post-War period, is synonymous with the “establishment.” The July election suggested that although voters are indeed amenable to the policy platform of what I’ll call the “sane” opposition, some Japanese, especially younger voters, are increasingly sympathetic to a Trumpian bent.

You might recall that Ishiba’s excuse for sticking around as PM following the upper-house elections was something about wanting to finish the job on trade negotiations with Trump. In reality, he just wanted to see if his position might become tenable again if he held on for a few weeks. It didn’t, and now he’s done.

“I feel a great sense of regret,” Ishiba said Sunday, referring to LDP’s electoral setbacks which left the party in the minority in both chambers of the Diet. “Having seen the US trade negotiations through, I feel this is the right time to step down,” he added.

To reiterate, he didn’t have a choice. Every day he stayed on as PM was another day Ishiba lost an informal no confidence vote, and he was about to face a formal motion: The party was prepared to hold an early leadership vote this week. That would’ve meant LDPers picking sides, which in turn would’ve weakened the party further. As Ishiba put it Sunday, sticking around for a vote on whether to pull forward a leadership election “could’ve created irreversible divisions within the party.”

And so, markets will have to grapple again (which is to say as they did in July) with questions about fiscal rectitude and specifically a lack thereof in Tokyo. There’s virtually no prospect of Japan moving in a more fiscally conservative direction after Ishiba, so one can only assume his departure will be seen as another insult to injury moment for the global DM long-end which, notwithstanding last week’s Treasury rally, continues to trade heavy.

The investor consensus will be higher long-end yields, a steeper curve and, at least for a time, a weaker currency. It’s the same trade as gilts and the pound. We saw shades of it in USTs and the dollar in April.

As the figure above reminds you, super-long JGBs are, um, under pressure. And that’s me being very polite.

At almost 3.30%, 30-year JGB yields are perched near an all-time high for the tenor, and 20-year yields rose last week to the highest since 1999.