An LDP-Ishin coalition making Takaichi PM is all but in the bag

Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Ishin no Kai leaders aretoutingthe progress forging a partnership after two days of negotiations. While Ishin no Kai’s participation in a coalition government has not been finalized, the talks have progressed to the point thatit appears that LDP leader Sanae Takaichi’s election to the premiership is all but assured.

The negotiations have not been without friction. Ishin no Kai has had toacceptthat the LDP will not commit to reducing the consumption tax on foodstuffs to zero, a pledge from Ishin no Kai’s upper house manifesto.

The party has also had to yield on its demand for a ban on corporate political donations, which would be virtually impossible for the LDP to accept after it parted ways with Komeito over the Buddhist party’s more modest proposal for restricting political donations.

However, Ishin no Kai has insteaddemandedthat the LDP accept its longstanding proposal for a 10% reduction in the number of Diet members and commit to moving it through the Diet during the forthcoming session. Of course, the party also expects that the LDP will support its plan for an “auxiliary capital” in the Kansai region and a proposal to reduce social insurance premiums.

The demand for the reduction in the number of legislators has been metwithskepticism from within the LDP but wasacceptedby party leadership, though hammering out the details could be contentious.

Meanwhile, the LDP’s Osaka chapter isanxiousabout the implications of a coalition with Ishin no Kai for its electoral fortunes, though there have been no details about whether and how the two parties will coordinate electorally. LDP Secretary-General Suzuki Shunichi sought to provide reassurance when hemetwith Rui Matsukawa, the acting head of the Osaka LDP on Friday.

Nevertheless, despite Ishin no Kai’s misgivings – and its own leaders’ warnings that a coalition could prove fatal to the party –thereappearsto be little standing in the way of the two parties concluding a coalition agreement before the Diet votes next week on the next prime minister. The parties are aiming tofinalizean agreement on Monday, October 20.

Tamaki’s leadership bid all but finished

In light of the progress in negotiations with the LDP,Ishin on Kai informed the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) and Democratic Party for the People (DPFP) that it would not be continuing negotiationswith them regarding the possibility of electing the DPFP’s Yuichiro Tamaki as prime minister instead of Takaichi. As a result, the CDP and DPFP will abandon efforts to coordinate. Instead, itappearsthat each party will back its own leader, ensuring a futile runoff between Takaichi and CDP leader Yoshihiko Noda.

Diet vote on track

As a result of the aforementioned shifts,the CDP has accepted the inevitable andagreedto hold a vote for the premiership when the Diet opens for an extraordinary session on Tuesday, 21 October. The extraordinary session will run for fifty-eight days until 17 December.

Noda and Saito meet

CDP leader Noda Yoshihiko and Komeito leader TetsuoSaito metfor the first time after Komeito decided to end its coalition with the LDP. The two leaders discussed cooperation on political finance reform and policies to counter inflation, and alsoexpressedtheir opposition to the Ishin no Kai plan to slash the number of Diet members. Komeito in factreferredto the plan to reduce the number of lawmakers as a “declaration of war” against it and other parties.

Noda was particularly effusive about the possibility for partnership between the two parties, reflecting both the degree of policy alignment between the two parties and the potential electoral benefits for the CDP if the two parties are able to work together.

Murayama Tomiichi dies at 101

Tomiichi Murayama, the Socialist Party leader who was elevated to the premiership at the head of an awkward coalition with the LDP and the New Party Sakigake in 1994,passed awayon Friday at the age of 101. It is perhaps a fitting moment to remember Murayama, who headed an unlikely but consequential government.

Japan faces a period of instability and fluidity much like the moment that led to Murayama’s premiership, with the LDP without a parliamentary majority after major corruption scandals, coalitions breaking and forming, and the public unsure of what to make of it all.

Meanwhile, Murayama’s premiership was perhaps the last time Japan had a politically relevant left-wing opposition, as the political center of gravity has shifted steadily rightward over the past three decades – and his Socialist Party’s willingness to compromise long-held positions on the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) and the US-Japan alliance to hold power with the LDP hastened its slide to irrelevance. Naturally this display of realism by Murayama has been praised by current LDP leaders, including both Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Takaichi.

I discussed the right wing’s response to the formation of the Murayama government in my bookThe Iconoclast. Not only did his premiership undermine the left, it also unintentionally contributed to the rise of the nascent new conservative movement in the LDP, both by

• fueling conservatives’ anger at the LDP’s old guard for its willingness to make compromises, such as the one that brought Murayama to power, and by
• giving them a new target to mobilize against: Murayama’s 1995 statement apologizing for Japan’s aggression during World War II.

The Chinese and South Korean governments haveofferedtheir condolences in appreciation for the Murayama Statement.

As Shinzo Abe wrote about this moment in his 2006 book, “By making the leader of a party with public approval of only five or six percent prime minister, naturally the dissatisfaction within the party [the LDP] was amplified. The opposition was especially large from people who had become representatives who approved of the LDP’s ideas, who, if I had to say, belonged to the conservative mainstream.”

After retiring in 2000, Murayama was occasionally active in politics even as his former party, now the Social Democratic Party of Japan, saw its seats total dwindle. He was the second-longest-lived former prime minister after Naruhiko Higashikuni.

Longtime Japan politics and policymaking analystTobias HarrisheadsJapan Foresight LLC.

This article wasoriginally publishedon his Substack newsletterObserving Japan.