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Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)
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The , frequently abbreviated to LDP or , is a centre right, conservative political party and the largest party in Japan and one of the most consistently successful political parties in the democratic world. It has ruled for most of the years since its founding in 1955. It is not to be confused with the now-defunct , which merged with the Democratic Party of Japan, the main opposition party, in November 2003.
After a striking 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.
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The , frequently abbreviated to LDP or , is a centre right, conservative political party and the largest party in Japan and one of the most consistently successful political parties in the democratic world. It has ruled for most of the years since its founding in 1955. It is not to be confused with the now-defunct , which merged with the Democratic Party of Japan, the main opposition party, in November 2003.
After a striking 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. On 12 September 2007 Abe abruptly resigned his position as Prime Minister; he was replaced by Yasuo Fukuda. Fukuda in turn resigned on 1 September 2008, being replaced by Taro Aso.
History
Basic principles
Unlike the leftist parties, the LDP did not espouse a well defined ideology or political philosophy. Its members held a variety of positions that could be broadly defined as being to the right of the opposition parties, yet more moderate than those of Japan's numerous rightist splinter groups. 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, needed to prepare for the strain on the economy posed by an aging society. Other priorities in the early 1990s included promoting a more active and positive role for Japan in the rapidly developing Asia-Pacific region, internationalizing Japan's economy by liberalizing and promoting domestic demand, creating a high technology information society, and promoting 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.
Structure
At the apex of the LDP's formal organization is the president (Japanese: sosai), who can serve two three-year terms (The presidential term was increased from two years to three years in 2002). While the party maintained a parliamentary majority, the party president was the prime minister. The choice of party president was 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.
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 (seimu chosakaicho).
The LDP was the most "traditionally Japanese" of the political parties because it relied 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 tied individual Diet members to powerful party leaders. Locally, Diet members had 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 gave the party a pragmatic "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" character. Its success depended 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, white-collar workers, the defense industry, Japan Post workers, and discriminated village peoples.
- This faction led economic development from 1960-1988. They promote international cooperation with China & 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 Sato, Kakuei Tanaka, Ryutaro Hashimoto, Shigeru Ishiba.
Kouchi Kai (from Liberal Party--Keynesian economics& 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 1960-1988. They promote international cooperation with China & 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, Teiichi Tanigaki.
Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyukai (from Democratic Party-Nationalist)
- Supported by Keidanren (keiretsu), established Authoritarian bureaucracy, war widows from WW2, and NetUyoku (Ultra nationalistic working poor).
- 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 the bureaucrat dominated political system from before WWII, 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 Shinske Kishi (A-class War Criminal,the member of Tohjyo Militarist Cabinet,and Grand Father of Shintaro 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 1960-1990 but because of a failure of the Heisei Seisaku Kenkyukai and Kochikai leadership it led the LDP from 2002-2008, mainly under Junichiro Koizumi.
- Founded by Shinsuke Kishi. Succeeded by Takeo Fukuda, Junichiro Koizumi, Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda.
Performance in National Elections until 1993
see: Elections in Japan
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 the 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.
Yet 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.
See also
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