日本首相解散国会众议院

The move follows the prime minister's decision this week to postpone a planned increase in the sales tax after figures released earlier this week showed the economy had slipped into recession.

The snap election is expected to be held on December 14th.

Shinzo Abe's current four-year term is due to end in late 2016, meaning it's only half complete.

Koichi Nakano, an international politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, calls the move cynical.

"Maybe it's a very harsh way of putting it but it's a very cynical move on the part of the governing parties to prioritize their own interest before the one of the country and the voters. And the voters are not given a real choice because the opposition parties are disunited, and they don't really have electoral campaign promises that are worked out, given that an election was not expected. So the voters will probably feel that they are deprived of a real choice."

Based on today's media poll, Abe's support has fallen to 39 percent, the lowest since he took office in 2012.

37 percent say they will vote for Abe's Liberal Democratic Party. However, only 13 percent plan to vote for the main opposition Democratic Party.

Yang Bojiang is the deputy director of the Institute of Japanese Studies with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

He predicts that Abe is likely to win the snap election but the LDP may lose a couple of seats, which may help opposition parties to consolidate.

"Based on the falling support rate of Abe's cabinet and party over the past two years, the LDP could lose over 10 seats. This may change the absolute advantage of the ruling party, and provide an opportunity to the opposition, especially the Democratic Party, to regain some seats. It could enable the opposition parties to unite."

Meanwhile, Yang says Japan's latest GDP figure unveils problems within the Abenomics strategy.

"On one hand, Abe plans to stimulate domestic consumption, but meanwhile, he raised the sale tax from 5% to 8% in April. Inevitably, the tax hike held back consumption. Consumption plus investment in facilities accounts for about 60 percent of the country's GDP. So the GDP figures show the tax has a strong impact on the economy's growth."

The latest figure shows that growth in the world's third largest economy shrank at an annualized rate of 1.6 percent in the June-September period, the second straight quarter of decline. Japan's economy is now in a technical recession.

Abe has vowed to revive the country's economy with a mix of hyper-easy monetary policy, expanding public utilities while stimulating investment.

For CRI, I'm Wang Mengzhen.