Photo/Illutration A customer looks at the bread offerings, which have become more expensive due to soaring wheat prices, in Tokyo’s Taito Ward on April 28. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

“The prices of beer and ‘chuhai’ (flavored soda mixed with shochu liquor) are going up in October,” warned a notice I saw at a local supermarket the other day, reminding shoppers to stock up before this month ends.

The utility bills I get at home show rapidly rising gas and electricity charges.

The government’s consumer price index tells me I am not imagining that things are getting more expensive.

The figure in August was as much as 2.8 percent higher than one year ago and was said to represent the biggest year-on-year rise in 30 years and 11 months.

During the last surge, the nation’s asset-inflated economic bubble had just burst, and the effects were most conspicuous for the prices of everyday commodities, such as food and clothing.

The “misery index,” an economic indicator, is calculated by adding the inflation rate to the unemployment rate. Formulated in the United States in the 1960s, it established the theory that changes of government tend to occur in years when the misery index is high.

In fact, Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush all lost their election bids in high misery index years.

The world today is being shaken by price hikes triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Australia had its first change of government in nine years and France’s ruling party suffered a crushing defeat in the general elections.

Both were results of voters’ frustrations with their governments’ inability to bring prices under control.

In Italy, where people are struggling with an 8 percent-plus inflation rate, an ultra-right party may do well in the upcoming general elections at the end of this month.

In Japan, too, the unpopularity of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s administration is becoming more pronounced. In every opinion poll conducted over the past week by several media organizations, the Cabinet received higher disapproval than approval ratings.

The public is obviously not in favor of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s involvement with the former Unification Church, now formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, nor of the government’s decision to hold a state funeral for former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

But these reasons aside, people are also quite fed up with the high prices of goods, which are hurting their household finances.

A senryu satirical haiku by Toru Kondo, which recently ran in the poetry section of The Asahi Shimbun, goes to the effect, “How woeful/ price hikes are monopolizing autumn.”

A seemingly endless escalation of living expenses may even determine the lifespan of the administration.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 22

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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