Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party Faces an Identity Crisis

From its origins in 1955 as a US-sponsored bulwark against the Left, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party has dominated Japanese politics for seven decades. It now faces a new electoral challenge from parties of the populist, xenophobic right.

Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is easily the most successful political party in the developed capitalist world. While other long-standing parties of government have gone into crisis and decline, from the Italian Christian Democrats to Ireland’s Fianna Fáil, the LDP has retained its position at the head of the Japanese state through all the transformations that its society has undergone over the past seven decades.

The LDP was established in November 1955, shortly after the reunification of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) the previous m