Japanese politics are often looked over by the West. This makes sense, as people assume? Japan’s politics have next to no bearing on our lives. However, Japanese politics are a very interesting topic for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is that Japan has been run as a de facto one party state for most of its existence after the Second World War.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been in power almost steadily since the 1950s, with only two short interruptions. Whenever the LDP’s popularity begins to stagger, they will lose an election by a narrow margin, only to regain power the following term, commonly referred to as the 1955 system. 

A change in government in Japan is very difficult, as the people must rely mainly on media for their information. Both the LDP and the media have taken substantial amounts of money from corporate donors. The Japanese opposition parties in May 2024 made a proposal to ban corporate donations, which the LDP rejected, ostensibly because that’s how they stay in power. The media, too, has taken tons of donations from the LDP and corporations, and while most media branches keep their donors anonymous, many corporations and politicians themselves have admitted to this. This political stagnation has led to apathy within the Japanese public with only 20% of Japanese youth believing that political activity is worthwhile. This is a key factor in making a change in government extremely difficult.

 Campaign laws also hinder political change. Japanese politicians are also not allowed to go door knocking, and their campaigns are strictly regulated, barring large rallies and other events. Instead, they can only campaign by the sides of busy roads, with their speeches prohibited from exceeding 45 minutes by law. This makes it much harder for smaller political parties to advertise their campaigns, helping the larger parties, particularly the LDP.

Furthermore, the LDP’s name is the pinnacle of irony. It’s not liberal at all, in the Western sense, being primarily conservative and in some cases even nationalist. It is also not at all democratic, with their prioritizing of the needs of megacorporation’s over the needs of the common people. Real “democracy” in Japan falls inside the LDP itself. The LDP is far from being a single ‘party’. Rather, it is a party of parties. This is due to the party being mostly split into several factions, each of which have a rivalry. This leads to more people  supporting the LDP at large, while backing their own faction. This factional system prevents voters from leaking to other parties. This allows for a dominant-party democracy, led by the LDP, making it nearly impossible for any other political party to win an election.

This is often not how an outsider thinks when it comes to Japanese politics. In fact, the uninformed might believe that Japan is similar to any other Western democracy. For anyone who may be interested on the subject of politics, Japan’s modern government system is certainly an interesting rabbit hole to go down.