The Dissolution of Factions within Japan’s LDP: An Unfinished Revolution

As a big-tent party meant to bind together the conservative spectrum in the wake of a disastrous war and nearly 10 years of American-led occupation, the LDP from the very start relied on internal factions to provide the kind of oppositional politics that could not be counted on from the traditional opposition benches in the Diet. [...] Even the overhaul of the electoral system undertaken in 1995 with the amendment of the Public Offices Election Law (kōshoku senkyo hō, 1950) did not fundamentally alter the necessary conditions for the continuing relevance of factions. [...] Alternatively, they could use the faction’s services to pool the funds into one large slush fund for all the faction members to dip into according to need.7 This loophole obviated the need for reporting such slush funds or kickbacks, as factions remained beyond the purview of the law. [...] The resulting pool of funds, according to prosecutors, reached approximately 675 million Japanese yen (US$ 4.5 million) for the numerically-strongest Abe faction alone, with the Nikai faction a close second with 264 million Japanese yen (US$ 1.7 million).8 The fallout of the prosecution, and the subsequent series of indictments and arrests of junior lawmakers, initially followed a predictable scri. [...] Given the absence of external opposition, internal policy factions provide the only checks-and- balances (albeit from within the same party) to the actions of the executive, as they constrain the prime minister from taking any action that might affect him in the next party polls.