Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)

Liberal Democratic Party 自由民主党 or 自民党
President	Shinzō Abe
Secretary-General	Sadakazu Tanigaki
Spokesperson	Yuriko Koike
Councillors leader	Hidehisa Otsuji
Representatives leader	Shinzō Abe
Founded	15 November 1955 (1955-11-15)
Headquarters	11-23, Nagata-cho 1-chome, Chiyoda, Tokyo 100-8910, Japan
Membership  (2012)	789,000
Ideology	Conservatism Liberal conservatism[1] Social conservatism Economic liberalism
Political position	Centre-right[2] to Right-wing[3]
International affiliation	None
Colors	Green and Blue
Councillors	115 / 242
Representatives	291 / 475
Prefectural assembly members[4]	1,153 / 2,725
Municipal assembly members[4]	1,656 / 32,070
Website
jimin.jp
Politics of Japan Political parties Elections

The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (自由民主党, Jiyū-Minshutō), frequently abbreviated to LDP or Jimintō (自民党), is a major conservative^[5] political party in Japan. It is one of the most consistently successful political parties in the world,^[6] having continuously been in power since its foundation in 1955, with the exception of a brief 11-month period between 1993 and 1994, and from 2009 to 2012. In the 2012 election it regained control of government. It holds 295 seats in the lower house and 115 seats in the upper house. Just like current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe many present and former LDP ministers are also members of the openly revisionist organization Nippon Kaigi.^[7]

The LDP is not to be confused with the now-defunct Liberal Party (自由党, Jiyūtō), which merged with the Democratic Party of Japan, the main opposition party, in November 2003.^[8]

History

Ideology

Seal of the Liberal Democratic Party

The LDP has not espoused a well-defined, unified ideology or political philosophy, due to its long term regimes. Its members hold a variety of positions that could be broadly defined as being to the right of the opposition parties. The LDP traditionally identified itself with a number of general goals: rapid, export-based economic growth; close cooperation with the United States in foreign and defense policies; and several newer issues, such as administrative reform. Administrative reform encompassed several themes: simplification and streamlining of government bureaucracy; privatization of state-owned enterprises; and adoption of measures, including tax reform, in preparation for the expected strain on the economy posed by an aging society. Other priorities in the early 1990s included the promotion of a more active and positive role for Japan in the rapidly developing Asia-Pacific region, the internationalization of Japan's economy by the liberalization and promotion of domestic demand (expected to lead to the creation of a high-technology information society) and the promotion of scientific research. A business-inspired commitment to free enterprise was tempered by the insistence of important small business and agricultural constituencies on some form of protectionism and subsidies.^[9] The LDP opposes the legalization of same-sex marriage.^[10]

Structure

At the apex of the LDP's formal organization is the president (総裁, sōsai), who can serve two three-year terms (The presidential term was increased from two years to three years in 2002). When the party has a parliamentary majority, the party president is the prime minister. The choice of party president is formally that of a party convention composed of Diet members and local LDP figures, but in most cases, they merely approved the joint decision of the most powerful party leaders. To make the system more democratic, Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda introduced a "primary" system in 1978, which opened the balloting to some 1.5 million LDP members. The process was so costly and acrimonious, however, that it was subsequently abandoned in favor of the old "smoke-filled room" method — so-called in allusion to the notion of closed discussions held in small rooms filled with tobacco smoke.

After the party president, the most important LDP officials are the Secretary-General (kanjicho), and the chairmen of the LDP Executive Council (somukaicho) and of the Policy Affairs Research Council or "PARC" (政務調査会 seimu chōsakai).

The LDP is the most "traditionally Japanese" of the political parties because it relies on a complex network of patron-client (oyabun-kobun) relationships on both national and local levels. Nationally, a system of factions in both the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors ties individual Diet members to powerful party leaders. Locally, Diet members have to maintain koenkai (local support groups) to keep in touch with public opinion and gain votes and financial backing. The importance and pervasiveness of personal ties between Diet members and faction leaders and between citizens and Diet members gives the party a pragmatic "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" character. Its success depends less on generalized mass appeal than on the so-called sanban (three "ban"): jiban (a strong, well-organized constituency), kaban (a briefcase full of money), and kanban (prestigious appointment, particularly on the cabinet level).

Factions

The LDP has 3 major factions:

Heisei Kenkyukai (from the Liberal Party – Right Liberal)

• Supported by local farmers, the construction industry, blue-collar workers, the defense industry, Japan Post workers, and discriminated village peoples.
• This faction led economic development from 1960 to 1988. They promote international cooperation with China and Korea, a Gasoline Tax, construction of Highways/Shinkansen (Bullet Train), and protection of small farmers, Japan Post workers and discriminated peoples.
• Founded by diplomat Shigeru Yoshida. Succeeded by Eisaku Satō, Kakuei Tanaka, Ryutaro Hashimoto, Shigeru Ishiba.

Kouchi Kai (from Liberal Party – Keynesian economics and Right Liberal)

• Supported by the established Liberal party of the bureaucracy, white-collar workers, doctors, small merchants and small factory people.
• This faction led economic development from 1960 to 1988. They promote international cooperation with China and Korea, a Government bond/Consumption Tax for National Medical care and National Banks which financially support small firms, as well as Free trade Policy.
• Founded by diplomat Shigeru Yoshida. Succeeded by Hayato Ikeda, Kiichi Miyazawa, Sadakazu Tanigaki, Makoto Koga.

Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyukai (from Japan Democratic Party – Nationalist)

• Supported by Japan Business Federation, established authoritarian bureaucracy, war widows from WW2.
• This faction promotes decreasing taxes for high income taxpayers, decreasing taxes for large companies, depending on the US for national defense issues, visits to Yasukuni Shrine in order to garner support from Nationalist voters without any special interest payments, returning the constitution to support the political system of the pre-WWII era, decreasing road/railway construction, decreasing medical care, eliminating overtime pay for white-collar workers, changing permanent employment to temporary employment, eliminating labor unions, free trade for car exports, removing protection for small farmers, privatization of Japan Post and the layoff of Japan Post workers.
• 1955 GHQ changed their policy from anti-fascist to anti-communist, and released Nobusuke Kishi (Class A war criminals, a member of Hideki Tōjō's Militarist Cabinet, father of Shintarō Abe and grandfather of Shinzō Abe) from Sugamo Prison. Kishi founded the Japan Democratic Party (No relation to the current JDP)
• The faction was suppressed by Heisei Seisaku Kenkyukai and Kochikai from 1960 to 1990 but because of a failure of the Heisei Seisaku Kenkyukai and Kochikai leadership it led the LDP from 2002 to 2008, mainly under Junichiro Koizumi.
• Founded by Nobusuke Kishi. Succeeded by Takeo Fukuda, Junichirō Koizumi, Shinzō Abe, Yasuo Fukuda.

Membership

The LDP had over five million party members in 1990, but by 2012 it had around 800,000.^[11]

Performance in national elections until 1993

Election statistics show that, while the LDP had been able to secure a majority in the twelve House of Representatives elections from May 1958 to February 1990, with only three exceptions (December 1976, October 1979, and December 1983), its share of the popular vote had declined from a high of 57.8 percent in May 1958 to a low of 41.8 percent in December 1976, when voters expressed their disgust with the party's involvement in the Lockheed scandal. The LDP vote rose again between 1979 and 1990. Although the LDP won an unprecedented 300 seats in the July 1986 balloting, its share of the popular vote remained just under 50 percent. The figure was 46.2 percent in February 1990. Following the three occasions when the LDP found itself a handful of seats shy of a majority, it was obliged to form alliances with conservative independents and the breakaway New Liberal Club. In a cabinet appointment after the October 1983 balloting, a non-LDP minister, a member of the New Liberal Club, was appointed for the first time. In 18 July 1993, lower house elections, the LDP fell so far short of a majority that it was unable to form a government.

In the upper house, the July 1989 election represented the first time that the LDP was forced into a minority position. In previous elections, it had either secured a majority on its own or recruited non-LDP conservatives to make up the difference of a few seats.

The political crisis of 1988–89 was testimony to both the party's strength and its weakness. In the wake of a succession of issues—the pushing of a highly unpopular consumer tax through the Diet in late 1988, the Recruit insider trading scandal, which tainted virtually all top LDP leaders and forced the resignation of Prime Minister Takeshita Noboru in April (a successor did not appear until June), the resignation in July of his successor, Uno Sosuke, because of a sex scandal, and the poor showing in the upper house election—the media provided the Japanese with a detailed and embarrassing dissection of the political system. By March 1989, popular support for the Takeshita cabinet as expressed in public opinion polls had fallen to 9 percent. Uno's scandal, covered in magazine interviews of a "kiss and tell" geisha, aroused the fury of female voters.

Uno's successor, the eloquent if obscure Kaifu Toshiki, was successful in repairing the party's battered image. By January 1990, talk of the waning of conservative power and a possible socialist government had given way to the realization that, like the Lockheed affair of the mid-1970s, the Recruit scandal did not signal a significant change in who ruled Japan. The February 1990 general election gave the LDP, including affiliated independents, a comfortable, if not spectacular, majority: 275 of 512 total representatives.

In October 1991, Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki failed to attain passage of a political reform bill and was rejected by the LDP, despite his popularity with the electorate. He was replaced as prime minister by Miyazawa Kiichi, a long-time LDP stalwart. Defections from the LDP began in the spring of 1992, when Hosokawa Morihiro left the LDP to form the Japan New Party. Later, in the summer of 1993, when the Miyazawa government also failed to pass political reform legislation, thirty-nine LDP members joined the opposition in a no-confidence vote. In the ensuing lower house election, more than fifty LDP members formed the Shinseito and the Sakigake parties, denying the LDP the majority needed to form a government.

Recent political history

After a victory in the Japan general election, 2005, the LDP held an absolute majority in the Japanese House of Representatives and formed a coalition government with the New Komeito Party. Shinzo Abe succeeded then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi as the president of the party on 20 September 2006. The party suffered a major defeat in the election of 2007, however, and lost its majority in the upper house for the first time in its history.

The party's support continued to decline, with prime ministers changing rapidly, and in the 2009 House of Representatives elections the LDP lost its majority, winning only 118 seats, marking the only time they would be out of the majority other than a brief period in 1993.^[12][13] Since that time, numerous party members have left to join other parties or form new ones, including Your Party (みんなの党, Minna no Tō), the Sunrise Party of Japan (たちあがれ日本, Tachiagare Nippon),^[14] and the New Renaissance Party (新党改革, Shintō Kaikaku). The party had some success in the 2010 House of Councilors election, netting 13 additional seats and denying the DPJ a majority.^[15][16] The LDP returned to power with its ally New Komeito after winning a clear majority in the lower house general election on 16 December 2012 after just over three years in opposition. Shinzo Abe became Prime Minister for the second time.^[17]

In July 2015, the party push for expanded military powers to fight in foreign conflict through Shinzo Abe and the support of Komeito party.^[18]

Election results

General election results

Councillors election results

See also

• Politics of Japan
• List of political parties in Japan
• History of Japan
• New Komeito
• Honebuto Hoshin

References

•  This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Library of Congress Country Studies.
• Japan Country Studies - Library of Congress

Bibliography

• Helms, Ludger (2013). Parliamentary Opposition in Old and New Democracies. Routledge Press. ISBN 1-31797-031-4. 
• Henderson, Jeffrey (2011). East Asian Transformation: On the Political Economy of Dynamism, Governance and Crisis. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 1-13684-113-X. 
• Köllner, Patrick. "The Liberal Democratic Party at 50: Sources of Dominance and Changes in the Koizumi Era," Social Science Japan Journal (Oct 2006) 9#2 pp 243–257.
• Krauss, Ellis S., and Robert J. Pekkanen. "The Rise and Fall of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party," Journal of Asian Studies (2010) 69#1 pp 5–15, focuses on the 2009 election.
• Krauss, Ellis S., and Robert J. Pekkanen, eds. The Rise and Fall of Japan's LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions (Cornell University Press; 2010) 344 pages; essays by scholars
• Scheiner, Ethan. Democracy without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

External links

• (English) The official website of Liberal Democratic Party

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