Political Party Systems and Democratic Development in East and Southeast Asia by Wolfgang Sachsenröder Ulrike E. Frings

Author:Wolfgang Sachsenröder, Ulrike E. Frings [Wolfgang Sachsenröder, Ulrike E. Frings]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138332959
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Japanese Communist Party (JCP)

The Japanese Communist Party has the longest history among Japan’s political parties, with its origin as an underground political association which started in 1922.12 After World War II, the JCP became an official political party by winning five seats in the April 1946 general election. Three years later, the party increased its representation in the lower house to 35 seats by receiving 3 million votes, almost ten per cent of the total votes. However, it was purged by the American occupation authority and lost all its seats in the following election in 1952. Throughout the 1950s, its representation was limited to one or two seats in the lower house.

At the end of the 1960s, however, the JCP began to make significant gains by receiving support largely from the non-unionized workers in small factories in urban areas. The party captured 14 seats in the 1969 general election, and more than doubled that number to 38 in the following election in 1972 by again receiving about ten per cent of the total votes. Some LDP leaders perceived a communist threat, and tried to gear up their parties to squash the JCP in each electoral district. On the other hand, the communist leaders tried to maintain the momentum of their growing popularity by reforming their party.

In their effort, the JCP began to emphasize its independence from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party. The Cultural Revolution in China and the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the public outcry that followed, demonstrated to the JCP a need to draw away from Beijing and Moscow and to pursue a more peaceful road to power. In the 1970s, the JCP abandoned the Leninist concept of proletarian dictatorship, and adopted a new expression of establishing ‘workers’ power’, while strengthening its attack against the LDP government for being controlled by the American imperialists.

Despite such efforts, the JCP had begun to experience a slow decline of political support starting in the early 1980s. The floating and protest voters, on which the JCP relied for their expansion, became more careful about casting votes for the party as it became a significant political power. Furthermore, the inability to promote a united front with other opposition parties showed JCP’s political weakness (Berton, 1992, p. 123) Many voters saw the JCP as unrealistic party which would oppose whatever policies the other parties presented. In the general election in 1990 and 1993, the JCP gained only 16 and 15 seats, respectively.

In the 1996 election the JCP increased its representation in the lower house to 26 seats. The new electoral law which introduced the proportional representation (PR) districts provided the party a significant political advantage. The JCP received 13 per cent of the total votes in the PR districts, electing 24 members to the lower house. This success possibly stemmed from its organizational strength. The voter turnout of the election was 59.6 per cent, a record low since World War II for a lower house election.

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