The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 69, No. 1 (February) 2010: 5–15.
© The Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 2010 doi:10.1017/S0021911809992555

The Rise and Fall of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party1
ELLIS S. KRAUSS AND ROBERT J. PEKKANENTHE SUMMER 2009 ELECTORAL victory of the opposition Democratic Party ofJapan (DPJ) over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) holds
historical significance, not only for political scientists but also for the people ofJapan, and possibly for the country’s Asian neighbors and the United States aswell. The LDP can boast of being the most successful political party operating
in a democracy since the mid-twentieth century. The party held power nearlycontinuously from its formation in 1955, a scant three years after the end of
the U.S. occupation. In the House of Representatives (the lower but substantiallymore powerful house in Japan’s bicameral system), the LDP compiled anamazing record: the party did not lose a single election in more than a half
century, until August 30, 2009, when the Democracy Party of Japan won astunning upset victory.
Generations of Japanese have grown up knowing no governing party otherthan the LDP. The only interruption to the party’s rule was a brief ten-month
period in 1993–94, when a small group split from the LDP to seize power aspart of a disparate coalition that did little more than pass an electoral reformbill before falling apart. Much more significant than that episode, this electoral
result seems likely to have important implications for the way in which Japan’s
democracy works. Nearly 60 percent of LDP incumbents were turned out, andmany sitting and former ministers, even a former prime minister, lost theirseats. For the DPJ, on the other hand, election night brought only smiles.
The party captured an amazing 308 of the 480 seats in the Diet—an all-time
record—and only seven DPJ district candidates did not find their way into theDiet. The DPJ more than doubled the LDP’s 119 seats.
What makes this election result even more surprising is that in the last Houseof Representatives election in 2005, the LDP engineered its greatest triumph

Ellis S. Krauss (ekrauss@mail.ucsd.edu) is Professor in the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies
at the University of California, San Diego.
Robert J. Pekkanen (pekkanen@u.washington.edu) is Associate Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School ofInternational Studies at the University of Washington.
1
Our arguments here about the nature of the LDP organization reflect positions that we develop ina book to be published by Cornell University Press in 2010 (Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen,
The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP: Party Organization as Institutions). However, this article isfocused on the interpretation of the 2009 election, while the book’s central argument concerns
the party’s institutional origin and development.

6Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen

ever, earning a stunning two-thirds supermajority. How could the LDP go fromriches to rags in such a short span?
We will briefly review the LDP’s rule in order to set the stage for what we can
expect to change now that the DPJ is in power, and provide some recent context
to explain why the LDP lost so big in 2009.2
HALF AN ETERNITY OF LDP RULE: 1955–2009

The LDP presided over Japan’s early postwar poverty and then its economic“miracle” from the 1960s to the 1980s; the 1980s “bubble” and subsequent recovery; a huge pollution crisis in the 1970s that made Japan the most polluted nation
on earth, and then a successful environmental movement that led it to pass thestrictest environmental legislation in the industrialized world; the Cold War
and the end of the Cold War; cycles of conservative fiscal policy and massive government debt; and highly unpopular leaders and hugely popular leaders. It evensurvived for a decade and a half after an electoral reform that was designed to end
its control over government.
As a popular saying once went, it seemed the party would rule Japan for “halfan eternity.” Of the “uncommon democracies” ruled by parties for twenty or
more years—Japan, Sweden, Italy, and Israel—by 2009, only the LDP wasleft.3 How did the LDP manage to stay in power for so long? Why has it
finally lost power, just a few years after its great electoral success? And what
will the LDP’s loss of power mean for Japan and the world?
THE ’55 SYSTEM

Journalists and academics have referred to the period from 1955 to 1993 as“the ’55 System.” During these years, the LDP was the dominant party, but at thesame time, it was decentralized and fragmented, had weak prime ministerial leadership, shared policy-making influence with the elite national bureaucracy, andwas confronted by the main opposition party, the leftist Japan Socialist Party(an early rival, but by the 1980s, not a threat to power). During this period,
Japan had a single nontransferable vote multimember district electoral system.
This sounds more complicated than it is. Essentially, it meant that each voter
cast one vote for one candidate—just like U.S. voters—but each district
elected multiple representatives. It worked in the same way as the U.S. congressional electoral system, but instead of one winner in each district, the top three,
In 1993, the LDP “won” the election, in the sense that it won by far the most seats of any party andreturned almost all incumbents—even if it did not go on to form a government because almost all
the opposition parties unprecedentedly united in an unwieldy coalition that soon splintered.
3
See T. J. Pempel, ed., Uncommon Democracies: The One Party Dominant Regimes (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1990).
2

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four, or five vote getters were elected as well, depending on how many seats wereallocated to a particular district (based on population).
Under these conditions, many factors helped keep the LDP in power, eventhough the party was not terribly popular with a majority of the deeply politicallydivided Japanese. Indeed, the LDP’s vote share declined monotonically from1955 until 1980, but the splintering of the opposition allowed the LDP to maintain a majority. In addition, the electoral playing field was not exactly equal:malapportioned districts allowed rural voters, who were generally strong supporters of the LDP, to give the party more seats than it otherwise might havereceived.
Other factors played a role as well. As Ethan Scheiner has pointed out,
Japan’s fiscal centralization and unitary state encouraged clientelistic relationships, which the LDP took full advantage of in order to mobilize support.4
Competing LDP representatives in each district developed patron–client
relationships with local assembly politicians and served as “pipelines” to bringpork-barrel benefits to local voters, especially to conservative bastions in rural
areas. The LDP also developed relationships with powerful support groups
that generated votes for the party: postmasters (influential in rural communities),
farmers, and construction workers.
The elite national bureaucracy implemented industrial policies that facilitated rapid economic growth after the 1960s and created affluence, employment,
and surplus expenditures that could be distributed through these networks. With
low crime and unemployment rates, and with ever-increasing collective andindividual goodies sent down the political pipeline, the LDP seemed a good
bet for many Japanese to entrust their government to.
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE LDP: THE GOOD AND THE BAD

The LDP’s organization developed in a way that allowed the party to takeadvantage of these political conditions, and for years, the LDP flourished. But
by the 2000s, the downside of the party’s organization had become apparent:
these institutions had turned into handicaps, putting the brakes on the party’s
attempts to compete in the twenty-first century—when image and policy
matter, and voters increasingly are detached from political loyalties.
Three features defined the LDP’s organization: (1) candidate-centeredpersonal support organizations, called kôenkai, instead of party branches; (2)formal and exclusive factions of legislators; and (3) a main policy-formulating
body, the Policy Affairs Research Council (PARC), that stood outside the legislature. Many LDP legislators now view these structures as the cause of the 2009
election catastrophe.
4

See Ethan Scheiner, Democracy without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in a One-Party
Dominant State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen

Although Japan’s government should have functioned as a centralizedWestminster-style system, with a strong prime minister, top-down cabinet government and policy making, and votes mobilized by party image and policy
stances, in reality, it was anything but. Much of the vote was mobilized by candidates through kôenkai, organizations in local districts that provided recreational
activities and personal favors to constituents. Voters tended to support candidates
in return for these benefits, or for the candidate’s personal appeal or ability tobring pork to local districts.
The LDP fragmented into five major and several other minor factions, whose
existence had little to do with policy differences. Diet members loyally supported
their leader in their quest to become prime minister. These members recruitedand maintained the loyalty of individual representatives by helping them get
nominations for their candidacies, obtain funds to maintain their kôenkai andcontinue their electoral campaigning, and secure key appointments to party,
parliamentary, and government positions. The latter were all determined byseniority in the faction, not by age.
Some of the key positions provided were on the PARC, the party organ
through which all legislative bills had to pass before being sent to the Diet.
Long service on the specialized policy divisions and committees of that body provided expertise and contacts that allowed representatives to become influential
brokers and gatekeepers for policies in that area, which, in turn, helped them
gain more votes in their districts and funds from interest groups.
As vote gathering, distribution of offices, and policy making were all decentralized, and the cabinet was chosen by factional proportionality, the prime minister was a relatively weak leader. The government was distinguished by collective
rather than individual leadership, and policy making was a bottom-up rather thana top-down process.5 Some political scientists attribute these characteristics of
the LDP solely to the incentives of the single nontransferable vote electoral
system and intraparty competition. Although the electoral system did provide
some motivation for this unusual organization, internal party rivalry andconflict, sequences of decisions made by political entrepreneurs, and systematicorganizational processes may have been as important.
These organizational structures had many downsides. Kôenkai cost hugeamounts of money, as did the maintenance of factions and close relationships
with politicians, bureaucrats, and interest groups. Over time, these relationships
bred structural corruption. When a series of scandals from the mid-1970s to thelate 1980s reached as high as a former prime minister (Kakuei Tanaka) and a top
LDP kingmaker (Shin Kanemaru), the public had had enough. “Reform” became
the buzzword of the early 1990s. With the Cold War ideological cleavages a thing
5

Our forthcoming book advances novel arguments about the origin and development of kôenkai,
PARC, and factions. Drawing on insights from historical institutionalism, we demonstrate the centrality of sequence, complementary institutions, and negative externalities to these institutions.

Asia Beyond the Headlines

9of the past and Japan mired in a deep economic recession, the LDP’s popularity
sunk, and the party began to unravel. More than thirty LDP representatives split
from the party in 1993 after it failed to pass electoral reform, forming smaller
parties that joined with the opposition and thus setting the stage for the LDP’sloss of power. When this coalition broke up a year later, however, the LDP
rose like the proverbial phoenix, and for fifteen more years, it continued togovern, albeit in coalition with smaller parties.

WHY DID THE LDP FINALLY LOSE?

Why did it all go wrong for the LDP in 2009? Four short-term and four longterm factors can be identified. In the short term, the LDP had to contend with apension records debacle, poor campaigning and leadership from the prime minister, skillfully coordinated opposition at the district level, and a downturn in thebusiness cycle. The long-term factors probably are more important to scholars,
and thus we devote more time to them here. In this category, we include
the loss of the LDP’s “safe” rural base, an electoral system that magnified
the effects of vote swings, volatile voters, and—perhaps most important—thefailure of the LDP organization to adapt after the long successes of the ’55
System.
In 2007, the public became incensed when it came to light that the bureaucracy had lost an estimated 50 million pension records. The LDP lost the 2007
House of Councilors election in no small part because of this fiasco, and lingering
anger undoubtedly soured the 2009 House of Representatives campaign for theparty. Neither Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2007 nor Taro Aso in 2009 was astrong campaigner for the party, and their unpopularity was another albatross
around LDP candidates’ necks. In 2009, too, the DPJ skillfully coordinated its
campaigns with the opposition parties, including the Social Democratic Partyof Japan (the erstwhile Japan Socialist Party), the People’s New Party, Your
Party, and even the Japanese Communist Party. This prevented the opposition
from splintering its votes among rival candidates, instead unifying them behindthe strongest candidate in an effort to overthrow the LDP.
Turning to long-term causes, one result that stands out is the LDP’s defeat inrural areas. For those who stopped following Japanese politics in the 1990s, it
must seem astounding that the LDP could lose in the countryside. After all,decades of LDP majorities had been built by winning solidly in rural areas,
while staying more or less competitive in the suburbs and cities. In 2009,
however, the DPJ beat the LDP in the most rural quarter of the country—
winning thirty-five seats to the LDP’s thirty-three.6 The loss is attributable toseveral factors. First, Prime Minister Jun’ichirō Koizumi (in office from 2001
6

We thank Ethan Scheiner for providing this data and analysis.

10Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen

to 2006) did much to break up the old LDP machine of postmasters, construction, and farmers’ groups. After the postal privatization of 2005, postmasters
actively turned against the LDP, while cuts in spending demobilized the party’s
construction allies. The DPJ captured the farm vote by promising even greater
subsidies than the LDP, which was hamstrung by the need to make concessions
in multilateral negotiations, such as those with the World Trade Organization.
The widening economic gap in Japanese society (kakusa shakai) hurt rural
areas and fostered their willingness to turn to the DPJ. The LDP lost importantallies in local government because of municipal mergers, which reduced 3,232
local governments in 1999 to 1,821 in 2006. Shrinking the number of local
governments meant shrinking the number of local politicians—mayors,
local assembly, and so on—who had turned out the LDP vote in years past.
One consequence of Japan’s single nontransferable vote electoral system wasthat electoral results translated votes into seats roughly proportionally. In 1993,
however, Japan adopted a new electoral system that combined single-member
districts—the winner-take-all system employed in the United States—with a proportional representation tier. Because most seats (300 out of 480) are located insingle-member districts, and the two tiers are not linked by any formula, Japannow has a much more majoritarian system. Under this system, much smaller
vote swings translate into large shifts in seats. So, although the DPJ increased
its share of the district vote only by about 12 percent, it more than quadrupledits number of seats—from fewer than 20 percent to 74 percent.
Another story of this election is Japan’s increasingly unsettled electorate.
American voters are used to discussions of “swing” voters, who support different
parties in succeeding elections. In Japan, the preferred term is “floating” voter,indicating a lack of firm connection to a party. In the past two decades, voters
have become decreasingly amenable to channeling their votes through social networks and kôenkai. Instead, they pick their party after soaking up media reports.
As a result, their votes are much less predictable from election to election. They
vote based on party label, leadership image, and policy concerns rather thanlasting identification with any political party or social connections.
The LDP never figured out how to win the votes of these increasingly influential floating voters, and its failure to adapt to this new electoral reality underlies
its fall from power. Although the LDP shifted the composition of its cabinet to be
more appealing to voters, it did not reconfigure its basic party organization inorder to succeed in an electoral environment populated by floating votersand colored by the powerful influence of mass media. Instead, factions, thePARC, and kôenkai continued to constitute the fundamental building blocks ofthe party.
Although the new electoral system reduced the number of LDP candidates
in a district (to one), factions persisted. With only one representative per district,the factions’ influence on nomination was undercut, and a new campaign financelaw destroyed their funding function. All that remained was factions’ control over

Asia Beyond the Headlines

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appointment to positions. This was enough to keep them in existence,7 but withthe other functions undermined, factions had less influence over and loyalty fromtheir members. Today, faction leaders can no longer count on all of theirmembers’ support in party presidential elections. Weakened factions alsomeant the potential for greater prime ministerial influence. Indeed, Prime
Minister Koizumi ended the practice of appointing cabinet members by factional
proportionality, giving the prime minister more control over and in the cabinet.
Other aspects of the new electoral system reinforced prime ministerial leadership. With one representative per district in single-member districts andthe proportional representation tiers voting for the party, the image of theparty and the party leader became much more important in voter decisions.
This electoral reform combined with another long-running transformationthat had begun decades before: the rising influence of television in politics.
Beginning in the early to mid-1980s, a few political leaders finally discoveredthat their television image could be useful in gaining support. Under the oldelectoral system, which emphasized personal loyalty to candidates, this had
only limited consequence for party support. Now, however, the enhanced influence of the party’s and party leader’s image multiplied the importance of theformer and gave the party leader greater resources. Administrative reforms
that took effect in 2001 gave the Cabinet Office and the prime minister more
influence in the policy-making process.
One of the greatest changes brought by the electoral reform, however, was achange in the environment for party competition. The single-member district tierand its one representative per district gave strong incentives for smaller parties tounite in order to gain pluralities in local districts, and for electoral competition
based on policy differences. After a bewildering sequence of splits and recombinations, the main opposition party to emerge was the Democratic Party of Japan.
In the 2003 lower house election, the DPJ pioneered party “manifestos,” whichsoon became required for all parties, and won more seats than the LDP in the
proportional representation tier. For the first time in the postwar era, an opposition party with pragmatic centrist views challenged the LDP in an environment inwhich voters cared more about policy than they had under the ’55 System.
The electoral reform, however, did not change other ’55 System aspects ofpolitics; indeed, it reinforced them. For example, kôenkai retained their value
to candidates even under the new single-member district tier. Party and party
image still were not enough to gain the largest plurality in local districts, so personal votes remained important. Indeed, now that the proportion of the vote inThis is because of “negative externalities,” meaning that a Diet member loses out by not joining afaction—and loses out incrementally more when more of his or her colleagues are in a faction. For afuller discussion, see Krauss and Pekkanen, forthcoming; see also Ellis S. Krauss and Robert
Pekkanen, “Explaining Party Adaptation to Electoral Reform: The Discreet Charm of the
LDP?” Journal of Japanese Studies 30, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 1–34.

7

12Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen

the single-member districts determined whether a losing candidate could be
revived as a “zombie” winner under proportional representation, mobilizing
the personal vote through kôenkai became an even more valuable asset to
LDP politicians. The reform also did not fundamentally change the PARC and
the influence of veteran policy experts there.
The contradictory effects of these reforms and changes came to a head underPrime Minister Koizumi. He was thrust into office in 2001 by a rebellion of local
party branch leaders against the prospect of losing an upper house election becauseof the profound unpopularity of the incumbent Prime Minister Yoshirō Mori.
Koizumi was an economic and political reformist who stood against the LDP
more than the opposition parties, and more in support of voters’ passion for political and economic change than for his own party’s prior principles and record.
After a few years of having economic reforms in some policy areas watereddown by resistance from veteran experts in the PARC, Koizumi confronted the“resistance forces” within the LDP over his pet policy project, the privatizationof postal services. When they defected on the vote, preventing its passage in theupper house, he threw lower house resisters out of the party and called a lower
house election in September 2005. Focusing on postal reform almost exclusively
and the need for change in the LDP during the campaign, and leveraging his
popular television image, Koizumi won an overwhelming victory as urban votersdefected to the LDP. The LDP won a majority of 60 percent, its greatest electoral
victory ever, and Koizumi’s postal reform package passed easily. Koizumi was thefirst postreform prime minister to realize and take advantage of the party’s dependence on its leader to win elections and the new resources the changes gave theparty leader.
After Koizumi stepped down as prime minister in 2006, however, everythingfell apart for the LDP. Three prime ministers, Abe, Yasuo Fukuda, and Aso,squandered Koizumi’s legacy. Abe switched focus to foreign and security issues
and away from domestic policy, and he appeared to backtrack on reform by allowing eleven former “rebels” on postal privatization reform back into the party. His
cabinet appointees suffered from a series of financial and bureaucratic scandals,
tainting his administration with the prospect of a return to ’55 System. After his
precipitous resignation after a year in office, his successor, Fukuda, a flexible andwell-meaning son of a former prime minister, tried to reverse the LDP’s slide, butalso ignored reform policy and projected a hopelessly insecure and boring
television image. Aso was much more charming and energetic on television,
but he was unable to control or unite internal party forces and factions,seemed even more antireform than his two predecessors, and could not findan issue or policy to focus on. He also struggled with the upper house, which
after the 2007 election was controlled by the opposition DPJ for the first time,reflecting increasing voter disgust with LDP rule.
The problem was not just that these three prime ministers seemed incompetent in picking up Koizumi’s mantle. They were; but none of this would have

Asia Beyond the Headlines

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mattered under the ’55 System, in which media-challenged, scandal-ridden, andincompetent prime ministers never undermined the LDP enough to push it frompower. The structural changes elaborated here underlay these leaders’ problems.
Now with party leader image and television mattering so much more, the LDP
could no longer afford mediocre and relatively unpopular leadership.
Even more deeply, the LDP became ensnared in contradictions thatemerged from its partial adaptation to the new era. For twenty years, thepublic had wanted change in the tight party/bureaucracy/interest group triangle
that had governed Japan under the ’55 System. They wanted cleaner politics, anda party that could clearly enunciate policies to lead it. Koizumi provided these in
his capacity to draw together the new resources that electoral and administrativereform and the television era provided. But this also created intraparty conflict as
the old forces of resistance to change still had enough power within the factions
and PARC to push back after his departure, especially when subsequent leaders
did not have a popular base of support to draw on. The more his successors caved
in to the intransigents, the more the LDP seemed to retreat to its prereform
ways, and the more unpopular it became among urban reform-minded voters.
On the other hand, Koizumi’s economic reform policies, which cut back on
wasteful pork-barrel expenditures, also hurt the party in the long run. Koizumi
sacrificed the party’s loyal rural base in 2005 in order to win urban votes. By
2009, rural voters were deserting the LDP in droves. Urban votes are more
numerous, but more fickle. Without the charisma and showmanship of
Koizumi at the helm, without his emphasis on reform policies, and held backby the organizational legacies of the past, the LDP simply could not attract
urban voters in this age of media and independent voters. The LDP finallybecame caught in its own paradox, a result of its halfway move to become
more centralized and modern after the reforms of the 1990s. In the new environment, it needed to appeal on policy grounds and party leader image to the urban
independent voters who craved and responded to reform and that Koizumi
managed to capture. Yet to hold on to its traditional base of support especiallyin rural areas, and to keep party unity in the face of the continuing influenceof factions and veteran PARC pork-barrel policy specialists, it had to cling to
the policies of the past, the very policies that urban voters rejected. In theend, this halfway transformation wound up alienating voters of all stripes.

WHAT DOES THE ELECTION OF 2009 MEAN?

The most important change that the DPJ is quite likely to carry out is to challenge the preeminence of the elite bureaucracy. The centerpiece of the party’s
campaign was to stress putting policy-making power and responsibility squarelyin the hands of politicians. If it follows through, we can expect more overt diminution of bureaucratic influence on policy, a trend that has been going on under14

Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen

the surface for some time. Of course, bureaucrats read the newspapers too, andthey know what the DPJ has been saying. It remains to be seen whether they will
quietly go along or whether they will find ways to torpedo the DPJ’s policies.
Perhaps more significantly, it remains to be seen whether the gains from a
politician-controlled process will outweigh the demoralization and sidelining of
the elite national bureaucracy, particularly as Japan’s politicians lack resources
available elsewhere, such as skilled policy staff and ready access to powerful
think tanks.
Second, the DPJ does not have the baggage of the LDP’s extensive PARC
policy-making apparatus—its leaders have been key in gaining policy consensus.
There is the real possibility that the DPJ will be a much more top-down policymaking party. On the other hand, DPJ policies have not yet had to be internallyconsistent, and the mechanisms by which leaders will be able to gain a policy
consensus within the party is unclear. The DPJ made a point of having all
members sign its manifesto, to be sure. But agreeing to an often vague statementof irreconcilable principles is dwarfed by the challenges of passing a budget in thecurrent economic climate, and choosing among favored ideas and campaign
promises.
Third, on economic policy, some members of the DPJ may be even more
economically liberal than the LDP, and indeed, they may resemble Koizumi
more in this regard than what the LDP did before and after him. The DPJ is
not composed of market fundamentalists, however. It differs from them, andfrom Koizumi, in wanting to stimulate consumer demand. Many of its policies,
such as subsidies for families with children, cutting the gasoline tax, andfreeing toll roads, go in this direction. This policy seldom finds coherent
expression as a philosophy, however, and the DPJ will also face enormousbudgetary pressures.
Fourth, on foreign policy, although there are nationalist and very conservative members in the DPJ, the party is likely to deemphasize neo-nationalist
issues, such as having its leaders visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. We
can expect better relations for Japan with its East Asian neighbors. The DPJ’s
call for a more equal relationship with its military ally, the United States, havecaused some nervous flutters in Washington. It is unknown whether these willamount to anything or whether they will be sidelined as the DPJ focuses on its
domestic agenda, although excitement surrounding the run-up to the fiftiethanniversary of the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty signing could force the issue.
This brings us to the most significant consequence of the 2009 election: alternation of power. More than any policies that the DPJ may or may not implement,
the fact that the opposition became the government matters. The shift in powerbrings a concomitant and irreversible shift in party–bureaucrat and party–interest
group relations; the game is new. Voters, too, awoke on August 31 to their own
power to make and break governments. Do not expect another “half an eternity”
of DPJ rule. The Japanese electorate will surely kick the DPJ out if it disappoints.

Asia Beyond the Headlines

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More importantly, the forces that the DPJ rode to victory, the demolished ruralbase, liberated support groups, floating voters, magnified electoral swings, andmore influential media preclude any but the most deluded DPJ partisans fromdreaming of a half century in power.
What about the LDP? Will it break up, or fade into extinction? Those are certainly real possibilities, but it is more likely that the LDP will lick its wounds, andsearch for a path back to power while it discovers the joys of needling from the
opposition. We believe that electoral defeat may provide an unprecedented
stimulus for internal party reorganization. It would not be surprising to see atransformed and reinvigorated LDP come out swinging hard in the next election.
It may spend a few election cycles in the wilderness, but unless it breaks up or
another new party emerges to supplant it, the LDP’s eventual return to poweris likely. The very forces that unleashed the DPJ victory and thus transformed
Japan in this historic election may guarantee it.