Japanese elections are normally regular, boring affairs.
This early election was neither.
The dramatic vote follows a political financing corruption scandal revealed last year that implicated senior lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and cabinet members, tarnishing the party's image and provoking public anger.
The electorate made this anger felt during this election and sent a strong message to the PLD, punishing it at the ballot box.
According to best estimates, the PLD, in power almost continuously since 1955, has lost the majority of its single party in the country's powerful lower house.
The PLD also lost its majority as a governing coalition. Its junior coalition partner, Komeito, lost several of its seats, including that of its leader, meaning that even with its partner, the LDP is still unable to secure the 233 seats it needs to obtain the majority.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba made a political gamble that backfired.
He and the LDP underestimated the extent of the population's anger and, more importantly, their willingness to act on it.
But it was the perfect storm: a corruption scandal that saw dozens of ruling party lawmakers investigated for pocketing millions of dollars from proceeds from political fundraising events, while Japanese households struggled with inflation, high prices, stagnant wages and a sluggish economy.
To stay in power, the PLD will now have to form a coalition with the other parties it just fought in the elections, and it will do so from a position of significant weakness. This means that it must enter into negotiations and make concessions in order to survive.
It's hard to overstate how rare this is. The LDP has always enjoyed a secure and stable place in Japanese politics.
The ruling party has a strong record of governance – and when the opposition took power in 1993 and 2009, for three years each time, it ended badly.
Since the PLD returned to power in 2012, it has managed to win one election after another without any challenge. There has long been a resignation to the status quo, and the opposition remains unconvincing to the public.
“I think we (the Japanese) are very conservative,” Miyuki Fujisaki, 66, told me a few days before the elections.
“It is very difficult for us to question and make changes. And when the ruling party changed once (and the opposition took power), nothing ultimately changed, which is why we tend to stay conservative,” she added.
Ms. Fujisaki told me she wasn't sure who to vote for this time, especially with the corruption scandal hanging over the LDP. But as she has always voted for the PLD, she was going to do the same this election.
The results of these elections reveal a larger story about the state of Japanese politics: a ruling party that has been dominant for decades and an opposition that has failed to unite and become a viable alternative when the public needed it.
In this election, the LDP lost its majority. But no one really won.
Japan's ruling party suffered a setback at the polls – but not enough to be expelled.
Jeffrey Hall, a lecturer at Kanda University of International Studies, told the BBC that although voters want to hold their politicians accountable in elections, “in voters' minds there is no “There's really no one else” that they trust to run the vote.
In these elections, the largest opposition party – the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) – made significant progress. But observers say these results have less to do with voters' support for the opposition than with voters' anger against the PLD.
“This election seems to be about voters who are fed up with a party and politicians they view as corrupt and dirty. But they don’t want to appoint a new leader,” Mr Hall said.
This leaves Japan with a weakened ruling party and a fragmented opposition.
Japan has long been seen as a model of political stability – a haven for investors and a reliable diplomatic partner in an increasingly unstable Asia-Pacific.
This political chaos in Japan is worrying not only for its public, but also for its neighbors and allies.
However the LDP comes to power, it will do so weakened, with its hands tied to coalition concessions.
The task of turning around the economy, creating coherent wage and social protection policies, and maintaining overall political stability will not be easy.
It will be even more difficult to regain the trust and respect of a politically weary public.
