Disaster at the polls has shattered the fantasies of Japan’s embattled prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, for a much greater role for Japan as a military power.

Mr. Ishiba, clinging to the post he has held for only a few weeks, is no longer pursuing one of his fondest dreams, an “Asian NATO.” Nor is he talking about revising Article Nine of Japan’s postwar constitution banning the nation’s military from joining in foreign wars.

Fighting to piece together a new coalition in the lower house of the Diet or parliament that elects the prime minister, Mr. Ishiba is too busy drumming up the seats he needs to keep his job after last weekend’s dismal showing of  his ruling Liberal-Democratic Party. For him and his allies, there’s no time to worry about foreign threats and crises.

A long-time teacher near Tokyo, Shizue Yoshida, talking to the Sun, saw the problem for the LDP as revulsion over the “money politics” of LDP leaders.  “The keen interest of Japanese people is not defense or security but daily life,” she said, “The main issue is how the LDP has been very bad about money.”

The pressure for reform at home is so overwhelming, as 67-year-old Mr. Ishiba picks up the pieces from the loss of the LDP-led majority in the lower house, that it’s easy to forget how strongly he wanted to lead Japan’s emergence as a military superpower. Japan, he said before the debacle at the polls, should stand up to Communist China and Russia as an equal to its ally, America.

Washington, putting its best face on the mess, is talking up relations with Japan as though all is well.

“The U.S.-Japan alliance has been the cornerstone of peace, security, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and across the world for over seven decades,” said the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, in a carefully crafted statement. 

Washington and Tokyo, Mr. Miller said, would work together “across our broad agenda of regional and global issues” — including “trilateral relations” with South Korea.

As the fighting in Ukraine boils on, however, Mr. Ishiba cannot forget his rationale for an “Asian NATO” even if he’s mired in a domestic crisis. The fact that Ukraine was not a member of NATO, he believes, accounts for its plight in a war in which NATO nations provide arms and ammunition but no armed forces.

“Ukraine today is Asia tomorrow,” Mr. Ishiba said in an article published by Washington’s Hudson Institute. “Replacing Russia with China and Ukraine with Taiwan, the absence of a collective self-defense system like NATO in Asia means that wars are likely to break out because there is no obligation for mutual defense.”

Considering the danger, Mr. Ishiba made clear, “the creation of an Asian version of NATO is essential to deter China.” But how could Japan lead an Asian NATO when constitutionally hamstrung by its “no war constitution” — rammed through during the American post-war occupation?

Incredibly, Mr. Ishiba, a former defense minister, came up with a scheme that would have once seemed anathema — a new law authorizing Japanese troops to fight enemies anywhere.

“The geopolitical crisis surrounding our country has risen to the point where war could break out at any moment,” he wrote for the Hudson Institute. “To deal with this crisis, the enactment of the ‘National Security Legislation’ is urgently needed. The ‘Basic Law on National Security’ is one of the pillars of my foreign and national security policy.”

These days, those words are quoted to show how detached he was — and maybe still is — from everyday concerns.  Said the Japanese school teacher, Ms. Yoshida,  “People are not happy about economic conditions while some politicians enjoy crazy sums of money.” 

Or, as one veteran analyst of Japanese affairs, requesting anonymity, told the Sun: “Domestic issues like political reform and the economy dominate. He wants revision (of the constitution) but is not rabid about it. That’s not a major topic right now.” 

Voters “are concerned about money politics in the LDP and the economy,” he said. “Ishiba will (should) focus on cleaning up the LDP and the economy.”