Political Parties

Hitoshi Abe, Muneyuki Shindō and Sadafumi Kawato

1 The 1955 System

In October 1955, the previously divided right and left wings of the Japanese socialist movement were unified, creating the Japan Socialist Party (jsp),1 and, in November, the conservative Liberal and Democratic parties combined to form the Liberal Democratic Party (ldp). The influence of these events— the emergence of the two major actors in the postwar party system—on the course of Japanese politics between 1955 and 1993 was of such moment that the political system thus created is still commonly referred to as the “1955 system.” The characteristics of this system included the following, first, between them, the jsp and the ldp won over 80 percent of the vote and held over 90 percent of the seats in parliament. What evolved, however, was not a two- party system in which the two major parties alternate in power, but a “pre- dominant party” system in which the ldp held power continuously. The parliamentary strength of the jsp was never more than about half that of the ldp; consequently, some described the situation as a “one-and-a-half- party” system. Without alternation in power, the best that can be said is that there were “pseudo-turnovers” of ruling power among the coalitions of factions within the ldp that controlled the cabinet. The battles for power previously fought among the multiple conservative parties were now carried on within the ruling ldp. The result was intense competition and rivalry among factions within the ldp. The exercise of political power within the government was as much a reflection of the factional dynamics within the ldp as it was the will of the people, the press of issues, or any desire for good government. Second, the leitmotif of domestic Japanese politics between the 1950s and 1990s was the opposition between the Right and Left. The Right and Left fought it out on the following ground.

Source: Abe, Hitoshi, Muneyuki Shindō and Sadafumi Kawato, “The Political Parties,” in Hitoshi Abe, Muneyuki Shindō and Sadafumi Kawato, The Government and Politics of Japan, transl. by James W. White, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1994, pp. 115–139.

1 In 1991, the party changed its English name to the Social Democratic Party of Japan, however, the Japanese name, Nihon Shakai Tō, remained unchanged For this reason—and to avoid confusion with the Democratic Socialist Party and the Social Democratic League—we shall refer to the party as the Japan Socialist Party, or jsp.

In foreign policy and defense, the conservatives supported a role for Japan as a member of the Western camp of industrial democracies, while the Left unceasingly advocated unarmed neutrality. In public security, policing, and justice, the conservatives had had a strong interest in social control and domestic public order, while the Left attacked this as an invasion of the rights and freedoms of the people. The conservatives stressed tradition and the status quo of the structure of society, while the Left attacked those traditions that were putatively con- nected to prewar militarism, viewing ldp support for tradition as an attempt to re-create the repressive political climate of the 1930s.2 These cleavages set the tone for political debate and constituted the fundamental political bat- tleground of Japanese politics. What was missing was mutual trust and any common ground that would make compromise between ruling and opposition parties possible. The ldp saw the Left as desiring to create some sort of totalitarian socialism, while the Left feared that the ldp wanted to re-create a totalitarian fascism. Third, separate conflicts over each of these issues converged in parliament. The 1955 system emerged just as the social chaos that accompanied defeat and occupation had come to an end and parliament and the political parties were beginning to assert their leading role in the political system.3 The ldp was able to monopolize governmental power, but it was not able to enact all of its poli- cies into law. The ldp was never able to win the two-thirds majority in parliament necessary for constitutional revision, and vehement opposition, both in parliament and in the streets, deterred the ldp from pushing other measures. In this sense, the jsp and the other parties of the Left, which supported and defended the postwar Constitution, were able to perform the role of an ef- fective opposition by frustrating the aims of the ldp to enhance the position of the emperor, rearm Japan, and strengthen the central government by revis- ing the Constitution. In other Words, although “the Opposition does not initiate or carry through major policy decisions,” nevertheless “the Opposition parties do affect decisions in certain ways by their very presence.”4 The opposition freely used in- traparliamentary tactics of obstruction and boycott, and extraparliamentary

2 Kyōgoku Jun-ichi, Gendat Minshusei to Seijigaku (Contemporary Democracy and Political Science), Iwanami, 1969, pp. 225–26. 3 Takabatake Michitoshi, “Taishū Undo no Tayōka to Henshitsu” (Diversification and Deterioration of Mass Movements), in Nihon Seiji Gakkai, ed., Gojūgonen Taisei no Ketsei to Hōkai (The Formation and Breakdown of the 1955 System), Iwanami, 1979, p. 323. 4 J. A. A. Stockwin, Japan. Divided Politics in a Growth Economy, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982, p. 167.