Japan’s ruling LDP at the end of postwar history

Author: Andrew Levidis, ANU

The creation of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1955 was a turning point in Japanese political history. Five years past the midpoint of the 20th century, Japanese political leaders joined hands to unite a divided conservative movement into one of the most efficient machines of political power in modern times.

For over 70 years, the LDP has been an indispensable vehicle for harmonising elite competition and sharing power among fractious ruling groups. As a historically rooted institution, the LDP resembles not so much a party as a political order — the eponymous 1955 system. This order – like the founders of the LDP – was haunted by the chaos and violent upheavals of the prewar empire; and steeled by a system of money politics, bureaucratic interest, and partnership with the United States.

Since the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, the dominant political personality of the 2010s, the LDP is at a crossroads. This historical conjuncture echoes the political and diplomatic reorganisation of the 1970s, what historian Fumio Fukunaga called the ‘second post-war’.

Across conservative media, there is murmuring of new competition and conflict as party leaders seek to manage generational shifts, demographic decline and the erosion of party power. It is an intriguing moment to review the shifting terrain of conservative politics, the broader ascendance of political forces directed against the LDP and the consequences for the established order.

From one perspective, the LDP’s dominance over Japanese politics appears unassailable. Despite the recurrence of political violence, including the assault on Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in April 2023, party rule is not threatened by extremists. In the National Diet, the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP: Rikken minshutō) split by factionalism and a tendency towards splintering is not a serious party of power.

Yet important developments over 2023 hint at the changing climate of party rule in Japan. The relationship between religion and public life is being re-evaluated. Conservative religious movements and their affiliated organizations such as the Association of Shinto Shrines have been a key part of the electoral machine that delivered LDP victories for decades.

The political murder of Shinzo Abe on 22 July 2022 by Tetsuya Yamagami, motivated by anger over his mother’s involvement in the South Korea-headquartered Unification Church, provoked moral outrage over the role of religious organisations in Japanese politics. This outrage intensified with press coverage of the LDP’s collaboration with the Unification Church which, shorn of the anti-communist politics of the Cold War, resembles little more than a political protection racket.

As victims provided televised testimonials of the abuse of women and exploitative solicitation rampant in the Unification Church, the Kishida government moved to quell public disquiet and dissolve the church in Japan. Yet as scholar of Japanese religion Levi McLaughlin has written, the decision to invoke the Religious Juridical Persons Law deepened tensions within the two-party coalition.

Kōmeitō, the ‘Clean Government Party’, supported by the Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai, joined conservative LDP parliamentarians to express concerns over the precedent the dissolution might set for state–religion relations. The November 2023 death of Kōmeitō founder and Soka Gakkai International president, Daisaku Ikeda, has further rocked coalition politics and the stability of elite government in Japan.

The decline of the LDP’s machinery of electoral mobilisation comes as the party contends with emboldened competitors in the struggle for power. Nippon Ishin no Kai (Ishin), a party deeply rooted in the city politics of Osaka and western Japan and Sanseitō, a populist party on the nationalist right, have emerged as national political parties. Both are capable of drawing off enough discontented voters to force a realignment on the Japanese right and potentially a new electoral coalition.

The Ishin and Sanseitō parties have racked up nationwide electoral victories in the Lower House, governorships and prefectural assemblies. Their electoral platforms connect regional devolution to the revision of the post-1945 constitutional order and the expansion of the nation’s military establishment. Ishin and Sanseitō party leaders’ views on everything from the war in Ukraine to Pax Americana are noteworthy. One of Ishin’s founders, former Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto, initially urged Ukraine to surrender to Russia and has expressed unease with Japan’s subordination to the United States. Sanseitō leaders draw on an older internationalist discourse of Japan as a civilizational bridge between the ‘global south’ and the West, to outline a vision of Japan-centred Asian regionalism.

Within the LDP, Kishida’s authority is in question. A political scandal involving 500 million yen (US$3.4 million) in kickbacks has engulfed cabinet and deputy ministers, further eroding the position of the prime minister. Key to the longevity of Kishida’s reign has been the disorganisation of the Abe faction, still the largest in the LDP. Despite moves to retrieve ground surrendered in 2023, the Abe faction has been staggered by the loss of cabinet positions and the arrest of faction member Yoshitaka Ikeda for alleged violation of fundraising laws.

To shore up his position, Kishida replaced chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, with Yoshimasa Hayashi, a member of his faction, Kōchikai. Faced with hostility from the LDP’s right-wing over the allocation of positions within party and government, Kishida has mused publicly about reforming LDP politics through dissolution of party factions and a return to a non-factional era. The negative response of party leaders to Kishida’s statement has been manifest. Ex-premier Tarō Asō vehemently rejected the factional dissolution movement as an effort to centralise power and political funding in the prime minister’s hands.

Given its track record, the LDP might well weather these challenges. Historically, the party has shown a remarkable capacity to maintain its political hegemony. Yet past is not prologue. The international and domestic environment the LDP has relied upon for over 70 years is now breaking down. Party unity and the LDP’s monopoly on the premiership is being tested. As party politics and the context of elite competition for power is transformed, new questions are being asked about the crisis of capitalism, social divisions and international relations. Postwar history it appears is restarting in a new key.

Andrew Levidis is Lecturer and Research Fellow in modern Japanese history at the Australia–Japan Research Centre, The Australian National University.

This article is part of an EAF special feature series on 2023 in review and the year ahead.

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