Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)
자유민주당 (일본)
A Japanese conservative party formed in November 1955 by the merger of the Liberal Party and the Japan Democratic Party (the “conservative merger”). Together with the Japan Socialist Party it made up the “1955 system” and governed alone for 38 years until 1993. Apart from two spells in opposition, 1993–1994 and 2009–2012, it has been the longest-serving ruling party in postwar Japan.
In depth
According to the Japanese source, the Liberal Democratic Party was launched at a founding convention on 15 November 1955 by the merger of the Liberal Party and the Japan Democratic Party, alarmed by the rise of the Japan Socialist Party. After the Socialists, split into left and right wings, reunited on 13 October, pressure from business ended the struggle between Yoshida Shigeru and Hatoyama Ichirō and the conservative merger was achieved, creating a single conservative party with 299 members of the House of Representatives and 118 of the House of Councillors. The source traces the party to Itagaki Taisuke’s Liberal Party and to the prewar Rikken Seiyūkai and Rikken Minseitō. In the 1958 general election the LDP and the Socialists together took more than 99 percent of the seats, establishing the LDP-dominated “1955 system”. The source also says it later emerged that from 1954, just before its formation, until 1964 the party received funding from the US Central Intelligence Agency; the US government has acknowledged this, while the LDP denies it.
For a long time the party leadership was weak and politics ran on bargaining between “factions” formed by senior politicians; the source attributes this to the multi-member constituency system, which required several candidates per district, and says it bred money politics. In the 1960s it led the high-growth era through the Ikeda cabinet’s income-doubling plan and the long Satō government; in the 1970s Tanaka Kakuei’s money scandal, the Lockheed affair of 1976 and the party’s first loss of a majority in that year’s election brought an era of near parity with the opposition.
In 1993, after a no-confidence vote against the Miyazawa cabinet, the party fell short of a majority in the ensuing election and Hosokawa Morihiro’s non-LDP, non-Communist coalition took power, ending the single-party rule maintained since the party’s founding. In June 1994 it returned to government in a coalition with the Socialists and Sakigake under Socialist chairman Murayama Tomiichi as prime minister, and from 1999 it governed in coalition with Kōmeitō. From 2001 Koizumi Jun’ichirō held power for a long period under the banner of “structural reform without sanctuaries”.
In the August 2009 election it won only 119 seats, handing power to the Democratic Party and losing its position as the largest party in the House of Representatives for the first time. Winning 294 seats in December 2012, it returned to power with Kōmeitō, and Abe Shinzō’s dominance continued until 2020. The coalition with Kōmeitō ended in October 2025, after which the party has governed in cooperation with Nippon Ishin no Kai.