Social Democratic Party (Japan)

1980s

In the double election of July 1986 for both Diet houses, the party suffered a rout by the LDP under Yasuhiro Nakasone: its seats in the lower house fell from 112 to an all-time low of eighty-five and its share of the vote from 19.5 percent to 17.2 percent. But its popular chairwoman, Takako Doi, led it to an impressive showing in the February 1990 general election: 136 seats and 24.4 percent of the vote. Some electoral districts had more than one successful socialist candidate. Doi's decision to put up more than one candidate for each of the 130 districts represented a controversial break with the past because, unlike their LDP counterparts, many Japan Socialist Party candidates did not want to run against each other. But the great majority of the 149 socialist candidates who ran were successful, including seven of eight women.

Doi, a university professor of constitutional law before entering politics, had a tough, straight-talking manner that appealed to voters tired of the evasiveness of other politicians. Many women found her a refreshing alternative to submissive female stereotypes, and in the late 1980s the public at large, in opinion polls, voted her their favorite politician (the runner-up in these surveys was equally tough-talking conservative LDP member Shintarō Ishihara). Doi's popularity, however, was of limited aid to the party. The powerful Shakaishugi Kyokai (Japan Socialist Association), which was supported by a hard-core contingent of the party's 76,000-strong membership, remained committed to doctrinaire Marxism, impeding Doi's efforts to promote what she called perestroika and a more moderate program with greater voter appeal.

In 1983 Doi's predecessor as chairman, Masashi Ishibashi, began the delicate process of moving the party away from its strong opposition to the Self-Defense Forces. While maintaining that these forces were unconstitutional in light of Article 9, he claimed that, because they had been established through legal procedures, they had a "legitimate" status (this phrasing was changed a year later to say that the Self-Defense Forces "exist legally"). Ishibashi also broke past precedent by visiting Washington to talk with United States political leaders.

By the end of the decade, the party had accepted the Self-Defense Forces and the 1960 Japan-United States Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. It advocated strict limitations on military spending (no more than 1 percent of GNP annually), a suspension of joint military exercises with United States forces, and a reaffirmation of the "three nonnuclear principles" (no production, possession, or introduction of nuclear weapons into Japanese territory). Doi expressed support for "balanced ties" with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). In the past, the Japan Socialist Party had favored the Kim Il-sung regime in Pyongyang, and in the early 1990s it still refused to recognize the 1965 normalization of relations between Tokyo and Seoul. In domestic policy, the party demanded the continued protection of agriculture and small business in the face of foreign pressure, abolition of the consumption tax, and an end to the construction and use of nuclear power reactors. As a symbolic gesture to reflect its new moderation, at its April 1990 convention the party dropped its commitment to "socialist revolution" and described its goal as "social democracy":^[17] the creation of a society in which "all people fairly enjoy the fruits of technological advancement and modern civilization and receive the benefits of social welfare." Delegates also elected Doi to a third term as party chairwoman.

Because of the party's self-definition as a class-based party and its symbiotic relationship with the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (Sōhyō), the public-sector workers' confederation, few efforts were made to attract non-union constituencies. Although some Sōhyō unions supported the Japan Communist Party, the Japan Socialist Party remained the representative of Sohyo's political interests until the merger with private-sector unions and the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengō) in 1989. Because of declining union financial support during the 1980s, some Japan Socialist Party Diet members turned to dubious fund-raising methods. One was involved in the Recruit affair. The Japan Socialist Party, like others, sold large blocks of fund-raising party tickets, and the LDP even gave individual Japan Socialist Party Diet members funds from time to time to persuade them to cooperate in passing difficult legislation.

1990s

The JSP acquired seventy seats (down from 137) in the July 1993 House of Representatives election, while the LDP lost its majority in the lower house for the first time since the 1983 general election and was out of government for the first time in 38 years. The anti-LDP coalition government of Morihiro Hosokawa was formed by reformists who had triggered the 1993 election by leaving the LDP (Japan Renewal Party, New Party Sakigake), a liberal party formed only a year before (Japan New Party), the traditional centre-left opposition (Kōmeitō, Democratic Socialist Party, Socialist Democratic Federation) and the Democratic Reform Party, the political arm of the Rengō trade union federation, together with the JSP. In 1994, however, the JSP and the New Sakigake Party decided to leave the non-LDP coalition. The minority Hata cabinet lasted only a few weeks. The JSP then formed a "Grand Coalition" (dai-renritsu) government with the LDP (and the New Party Sakigake) under Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, leader of the party from 1993 to 1996. Most of the other parties from the anti-LDP coalition forced back into opposition, united to form the New Frontier Party, overtaking the JSP as second largest political party in Japan. In the 1995 election, the JSP lost the election.

In January 1996, the New Socialist Party split off, Murayama resigned as Prime Minister, and the JSP changed its name from the Japan Socialist Party to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as an interim party for forming a new party. However, a movement for transforming the SDP into a new "social-democratic and liberal" party was unsuccessful. Under Murayama's successor Ryūtarō Hashimoto (LDP), the SDP remained part of the ruling coalition. Long before the disappointing result in the 1996 election, the party lost the majority of its members of the House of Representatives, mainly to predecessors of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) that was formed in 1996, but also some to the NFP and other opposition parties. After its electoral defeat in the 1996 general election when it lost another 15 of its remaining 30 seats in the lower house, the SDP left the ruling coalition which it had entered as the second largest force in Japanese politics as a minor party.

Recent events

The Social Democratic Party won six seats in the general election of 9 November 2003, compared with 18 seats in the previous elections of 2000. Its motives against the Self-Defense Forces have reverted into abolishing it in the long term, returning into its opposition against the force it had applied in the 1950s.

Doi had been the leader since 1996, but she resigned in 2003, taking responsibility for the election losses. Mizuho Fukushima was elected as the new party leader in November 2003. In the Upper House Elections of 2004, SDP won only two seats, thus having five seats in the Japanese Upper House and six seats in the Lower House. In 2006 the party unexpectedly gained the governorship of the Shiga Prefecture. Democratic Party made large gains and the SDP maintained its base of 7 seats in the 2009 elections, becoming a junior partner in a new left government coalition. However, in May 2010 disagreements over the issue of the Futenma US base led to the sacking of Fukushima from the cabinet on Friday 28 May, and the SDP subsequently voted to leave the ruling coalition.^[18]

As of October 2010, the SDP had six members in the House of Representatives^[19] and four members in the House of Councillors.^[20]

Following the 2012 general election the party retained only six seats in the whole of the Diet, two in the house of representatives and four in the House of Councillors. In 2013 the count lowered to five seats.

In 2013 the party's headquarters in Nagatacho, where the party's predecessor the Japanese Socialist Party had moved in 1964, were demolished. The headquarters moved to a smaller office in Nagatacho.^[21]

During the nomination period of the July 2016 House of Councillors election, the party signed an agreement with the Democratic, Communist and People's Life parties to field a jointly-endorsed candidate in each of the 32 districts in which only one seat is contested, thereby uniting in an attempt to take control of the House from the LDP/Komeito coalition.^[22] The party had two Councillors up for re-election, and fielded a total of 11 candidates in the election, 4 in single and multi-member districts and 7 in the 48-seat national proportional representation block.^[23]

In the 2017 general election, the party managed to hold to its two seats it had prior to the election. Tadatomo Yoshida declined to run for re-election when his term expired in January 2018. Seiji Mataichi was elected unopposed in the ensuing leadership election and took office on 25 February 2018.^[24][25]

General election results

Councillors election results

House of Representatives

• Kantoku Teruya (Okinawa-2nd)
• Hajime Yoshikawa (Kyushu PR, contested Oita-2nd)

House of Councillors

Up for re-election in 2019

• Seiji Mataichi (National PR)

Up for re-election in 2022

• Mizuho Fukushima (National PR)