Expecting a New Style of Japanese Politics as Parties Battle for the Center

A Political “Has-Been” Revived

Until recently, Ishiba Shigeru was regarded as a has-been within the Liberal Democratic Party. It was only after revelations that some factions of the LDP had been diverting undeclared proceeds from fundraising events into slush funds and kickbacks, propelling the party into crisis, that Ishiba managed to make a comeback. On the opposition benches, meanwhile, former Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko has also made a comeback from his devastating defeat in the lower-house snap election he called in 2012, a defeat that saw him step down as head of the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan; he has now been tapped as the new leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. Indeed, the clash between these two leaders at the upcoming lower house election is about to bring about a new kind of chemical reaction in Japanese politics.

After the favorite, Koizumi Shinjirō, was eliminated from the leadership race, Ishiba beat rival Takaichi Sanae in a runoff, making him LDP leader. How should we view this development?

While the leadership contest was a factionless affair, taking place after every LDP faction, other than that led by former Prime Minister Asō Tarō, had been disbanded, some still voted based on their loyalties to their factions and personal relationships. This was in a sense expected—after all, politics is a struggle for power in which emotion mixes with desire. Having watched the LDP’s internal hierarchy over the last 10 years, my honest reaction was, “good on Ishiba for making a comeback and winning the deciding vote.”

Stand back from the situation, however, and you get a slightly different perspective. This is a case of the LDP’s trademark “pendulum logic” striking again. This pendulum is a strategy that has enabled the LDP to cling onto power by changing its leader periodically, like a weight swinging from left to right.

Ishiba was on bad terms with two party powerhouses and former prime ministers, Abe Shinzō and Asō Tarō, and this saw him relegated to a sort of opposition within government from midway through Abe’s term. Ishiba’s own faction, the Suigetsukai, which he launched in 2015, was forced to effectively disband at the end of 2021 under pressure from Abe. Within the LDP, Ishiba was viewed as a has-been. Under a power structure that was headed up by first Abe, then Abe’s successor, Suga Yoshihide, and finally by Kishida Fumio, another politician who never escaped Abe’s influence, Ishiba was relegated to 10 years on the margins. Ishiba’s prime ministership indeed represents a pendulum that has swung from the margins to the mainstream. Ishiba’s selection effectively spells a change of government.

Ishiba has always called things as he sees them—not only with the latest donations scandal, but also with other political issues—indifferent to disapproval from his own party. For this reason, his reputation within the LDP was not good. By the same token, he was popular with voters, and always came toward the top of the preferred prime minister list, something that helped him become leader. It just goes to show, you never know what’s going to happen in politics.

At the same time, the new leader’s election is also a reflection of the tenacity of the Liberal Democratic Party, whose chief aim is staying in power. I believe it is evidence of what you could call the wisdom—the survival instinct, even—of a highly adaptable party that will do anything for its own survival, even joining forces with the Japan Socialist Party in 1994.

However, there are major questions over how well the Ishiba-led government will be able to function. With party factions scrapped, the old structures are gone. There is no clear center of power, and it is unclear how the new prime minister will bring together his scattered Diet members. The LDP, which turns 80 next year, is about to become the subject of a great experiment, and will be forced to find the answer to this question as it goes along.

Noda-Led CDPJ Aims for a Centrist Government

Under the slogans “this is the eve of a new government,” and “not on my watch,” Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan leader Noda Yoshihiko hopes to relive the dream that was the Democratic Party’s 2009 election win over the LDP. The CDPJ’s strategy is clear. In terms of a left (liberal) to right (conservative) continuum, the CDPJ wants to move from its current liberal position into the center. By moving from the Communist Party–aligned left to the LDP-aligned right, the CDPJ is going after the point on the political spectrum occupied by the largest number of voters, and aims to win the votes of both less-loyal LDP voters who turned away from the party after the donations scandal, and uncommitted moderate and centrist conservatives.

This approach has been corroborated academically. American political scientist Anthony Downs (1930–2021) theorized that not many voters occupy the fringes, and that most voters occupy the center of the political spectrum. His theory holds that if a political party wants to maximize support it needs to move to the center, where there are the most votes to be had. Therefore, if the CDPJ wants to get into power, it needs to move its entire party to the right.

However, in the leadership race, Noda only received nine more votes from fellow Diet members than rival Edano Yukio. In recent elections, the CDPJ can credit support from the Japanese Communist Party for its success in many districts. It cannot be denied that the CDPJ is strongly liberal and left-leaning. When the party announced its new leader, in a move calculated to shift the party closer to the center, it promptly attracted criticism from liberals. While it is unlikely that Diet members with such an opposition mentality will accept Down’s theory, Noda is also aiming to form alliances with other opposition parties. The LDP stands to gain from a divided opposition. The CDPJ therefore hopes to put opposition candidates head-to-head against ruling coalition members in electoral seats, to the greatest extent possible.

Noda often compares the opposition to the Japanese honeybee, and the government to its natural predator, the giant hornet: “In one-on-one combat, the bee will be eaten by the hornet. However, by working together to form a lethal ‘bee ball,’ in which each bee vibrates its thorax muscles to create heat, a group of bees can ‘cook’ a single hornet alive. The temperature at the center of the bee ball reaches 47 or 48 degrees Celsius. Hornets can only tolerate temperatures of 45 degrees, while Japanese honeybees can tolerate temperatures of nearly 50. While the hornet attack results in the death of a dozen or so honeybees, the rest survive.”

It remains to be seen whether the opposition parties, like Japanese honeybees, will be able to join forces to defeat the ruling LDP/Kōmeitō coalition. Will the CDPJ be able to come to an arrangement with the Japan Innovation Party on districts in which both parties have candidates, or to work more closely with the Democratic Party for the People? Both of those parties face their own internal challenges, and neither Innovation nor the DPFP have any intention to cooperate with the CDPJ. Meanwhile, the Communists are moving to put forward candidates who will compete directly with the CDPJ.

If the CDPJ wants another term in government, it will also need to achieve internal consensus on national security. As things stand, the party is condemned to spend its life in opposition, like the Socialists of days gone by. As University of Tokyo Professor Sakaiya Shirō predicted, a new version of the “1955 regime”—referring to the year when the LDP took power it would hold stably for almost four decades—continues to this day, having begun with the long-lived Abe Shinzō administration of 2012–20. Noda’s attempt to dismantle this regime and seize power risks precipitating a crisis that could divide his own party.

Politics Beyond 2024

In a sense, it was Noda’s centrist, conservative leanings that led to the selection of Ishiba, who was seen as being a kind of opposition within government, with common ground with moderate conservatives. This was based on the feeling that Takaichi Sanae, who has expressed hardline conservative beliefs, could have missed the center. The selection of the moderate Ishiba is certain to dilute Noda’s sway. The Ishiba/Noda combination reduces the political daylight between the LDP and the CDPJ. If this results in a political battle for the center, it will usher in a new style of politics for 2024.

In the past, the CDPJ has been liberal-leaning, while conservatives remained loyal to the LDP, meaning that the latter did not have to worry about this balance so much. In the future, however, if the LDP fails to win the votes of moderate conservatives and centrists, it is guaranteed to struggle electorally.

The LDP is also home to a certain conservative faction that holds strong views on official visits to Yasukuni Shrine by prime ministers, whether married couples should have the right to use separate names after marriage, and the legality of female emperors. There are, meanwhile, also CDPJ Diet members who share common ground with the Japanese Communist Party on issues of constitutional revision and national security. Both parties are therefore deeply divided due to these conflicts of values and philosophies.

Political science tells us that in a two-party system, if voters’ political affiliations are distributed along a bell curve, policy will veer to the center. However, I believe that due to radicalization by social media and the weakening of the center, the electorate has become polarized, and we are approaching something closer to three mountain peaks populated by progressive liberals, moderate centrists, and hardline conservatives, respectively. If this is the case, political rivalries, including those within parties, will become more pronounced, and the government will lose its ability to promote social cohesion, causing unrest.

We are at a turning point in Japanese politics, and we are about to find out whether the change of party leadership and the upcoming general election will usher in a new style of politics, or whether it will result in conflict and division.

(Notes: Discussion on the political positions of parties is taken from my 2008 book Seiji o miru me nijūshi no keikensoku (Twenty Four Rules of Political Commentary). Discussion on honeybee defense mechanisms is based on my column published in the Kakushin section of the March 25, 2024, Nikkei morning edition.)

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: From left, Takaichi Sanae, Kishida Fumio, and Ishiba Shigeru join hands at an event for Diet members to celebrate the election of a new leader on September 27, 2024, at LDP headquarters, Nagatachō, Tokyo. © Jiji.)