Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has moved to dissolve parliament barely three months after taking office, setting the stage for a snap general election in early February that she hopes will consolidate her grip on power and strengthen her authority within the ruling bloc, the nation’s Kyodo News has reported.

The lower house of parliament will be dissolved on Friday, January 23, triggering an election two weeks later on February 8 to choose all 465 members of the House of Representatives. The chamber is the more powerful of Japan’s two houses and determines the composition of government.

Takaichi, who became Japan’s first female prime minister in October, has enjoyed unusually strong approval ratings since entering office, with polls consistently placing public support between 60 and 80%. Her Liberal Democratic Party remains the largest force in the lower house, holding 199 seats including those of allied independents. Together with the Japan Innovation party, however, the governing coalition retains only a narrow working majority, a vulnerability that appears to have sharpened the prime minister’s appetite for an early test at the ballot box.

A long-time conservative and a follower of the late Shinzo Abe, Takaichi has aligned herself closely with a more assertive national security stance, approving a record JPY9 trillion ($57bn) defence budget in December as concerns grow in Tokyo over China’s expanding military footprint in the region. Her comments late last year on Japan’s possible response to a Taiwan contingency being seen as hostile by Japan further strained already fragile ties with Beijing, pushing bilateral relations to their lowest level in years.

Analysts have immediately seen the decision to seek an early mandate as carrying risks given that the LDP has seen several prime ministers come and go in recent years, with previous leaders undone by scandals or collapsing support. Takaichi’s immediate predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba, misjudged a similar snap election, delivering one of the party’s worst results and losing its lower-house majority.