[Global Times special correspondent in Japan Wang Jun Global Times reporter Zheng Xuan Global Times special correspondent Wang Hui] Editor's note: Takashi's road to becoming Japan's new prime minister has not been smooth sailing. After being elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party on October 4, she was widely regarded as Japan's new leader. However, the Komeito Party's withdrawal from the ruling coalition forced her to win over the Japan Reform Association to become prime minister. On November 15, the Liberal Democratic Party will celebrate its 70th anniversary. Against this background, the twists and turns in Takashi's career as prime minister and the Liberal Democratic Party's successive electoral defeats in the past two years have revealed that the party faces many problems and deep challenges. American political scientist Curtis bluntly said that the Liberal Democratic Party has been in decline for a long time. There are also views that the party has failed to address the long-term challenges facing Japan. "The failure to respond to Japan's strategic policy challenges and the loss of the Liberal Democratic Party's dominance in elections are two sides of the same coin." Curtis said this.

The number of party members is declining + identity crisis troubles

"Japan's Liberal Democratic Party has been in a state of decline for a long time." After the party's presidential election, Curtis, a political science professor at Columbia University in the United States, wrote online on October 12th that one of the manifestations of this phenomenon is the declining number of Liberal Democratic Party members.

The data released by the Democratic Party in September this year showed that the number of party members entitled to participate in this election was about 91,6 million, more than 140,000 fewer than in the previous election. Curtis noted that in 1991, the number of members of the Democratic Party had exceeded 5.4 million and reached a peak. The Japan Times also recently published an article entitled "On the occasion of its 70th birthday, the Democratic Party is trying to find the fountain of youth", saying that the Democratic Party set the goal in 2014 to increase the number of members to 1.2 million, but in 2024 the number of party members was about 102 million, which is 6.2 million fewer than in 2023.

The Japan Times said that the country's deeper social changes, including population aging, population decline, and widening differences and political preferences between urban and rural voters, pose fundamental challenges to the Liberal Democratic Party's recruitment and maintenance of a solid party base. Chen Yang, a visiting researcher at the Center for Japanese Studies at Liaoning University, said in an interview with a reporter from the Global Times that for a political party, the reduction in the number of party members is not just a numerical issue, but also a matter of organizational vitality and social foundation. The decline in the number of Liberal Democratic Party members means that the "connection points" between it and Japanese society are decreasing and social identity is declining. Curtis also mentioned that faction was once one of the decisive features of the Liberal Democratic Party. Although the factions within the Liberal Democratic Party have not completely disappeared, they are now much weaker.

The support rate of the Liberal Democratic Party is also declining. According to the information released by Japan's Asahi Shimbun public opinion survey data website, in November 1955, the support rate of the Liberal Democratic Party when it was founded was 48%. From 1955 to 1993, before the Liberal Democratic Party stepped down and became an opposition party for the first time, the party's average support rate remained between 40% and 60%. From 1993 to 2009, before the Liberal Democratic Party became the opposition party again, the average support rate of the party remained between 30% and 40%. Since then, during Shinzo Abe's administration from 2012 to 2020, the average support rate of the Liberal Democratic Party has also remained in this range. However, since Abe stepped down in 2020 to the present, the party's average support rate has remained around 30%, and even lower. situation. According to a poll released by Asahi Shimbun in September this year, the support rate of the Liberal Democratic Party at that time was 26%, compared with 20% in July and August.

What has dropped with the approval rating is the Liberal Democratic Party's ability to control Japanese politics-from being "dominant" in the Senate and House of Representatives, to having to unite with other political parties to form a ruling coalition, and now becoming a "minority ruling party" in both houses of Congress. Before the Senate election in July this year, a poll jointly released by Nihon Keizai Shimbun and TV Tokyo on June 30 showed that when asked about the ideal regime framework, 32% of respondents said that they "govern jointly with the public and cooperate with opposition parties on different policies", accounting for the highest proportion. After the election, a poll released by the Asahi Shimbun on August 17 showed that when asked "how the ruling coalition should govern the country given that neither the Democratic Party nor the Democratic Party has won more than half of the seats in the House and Senate," 70% of the respondents said that "it is better to cooperate with the opposition party on different policies," accounting for the largest proportion.

"An identity crisis is plaguing the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan." According to a report by Bloomberg in September this year, the Liberal Democratic Party has controlled Japanese politics for most of the past 70 years, but now it is not sure what it represents or who to follow. Worst of all, the party seems to have forgotten how to win the election.

According to the website of Saudi Arab News, when evaluating the presidential campaign of the Liberal Democratic Party, Curtis said that the five candidates agreed that the Liberal Democratic Party was facing an existential crisis, but failed to make suggestions on how to get rid of the crisis.

¡°Dominating Japanese politics¡± VS ¡°failed to address core challenges¡±

"The establishment of the Liberal Democratic Party is a turning point in Japanese political history." According to the website of the East Asia Forum of the Australian National University and AFP, after Japan's defeat in World War II, the country's leftist forces formed the Japanese Socialist Party. Later, under the impetus of the CIA, Japanese conservatives decided to merge the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party in 1955, thus forming the Liberal Democratic Party. Since its inception, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan has dominated Japanese politics for most of its time. The Liberal Democratic Party is not so much a political party as a political order, that is, the "55-year system". This order was plagued by the chaos and violent unrest of prewar Japan, and reinforced by the country's money politics, bureaucratic interests, and the system of Japan-US relations after the war.

When summarizing the history of the Liberal Democratic Party over the past 70 years, Bloomberg and many other European and American media mentioned that it is the "most dominant political machine","one of the most successful political parties" and "universal electoral machine" in Western countries. The East Asia Forum website said that for 70 years, the Liberal Democratic Party has been an indispensable tool in coordinating Japan's elite competition and sharing power within the ruling clique. Nihon University scholar Fumobu Iwai told AFP that the Liberal Democratic Party was associated with post-war Japan's economic miracle, especially among elderly voters in rural areas. According to Chen Yang, the Liberal Democratic Party not only coordinates the tripartite relationship between government, government and finance, but also consolidates the foundation of grassroots support through community systems such as the Agricultural Association. In an interview with a special reporter from the Global Times in Japan, Liu Di, a professor at Kyorin University in Japan, said that the Liberal Democratic Party government's three policies are worth mentioning, including the universal pension insurance system, the national income doubling plan and the "Three Non-Nuclear Principles."

However, after the Japanese bubble economy collapsed in the 1990s, economic stagnation, population aging and other problems followed.The long-term ruling self-government party has problems in the distribution of interests, policy innovation and social trust.Many scholars say that in the face of internal and internal problems, the self-government party has not developed a strategy from a long-term perspective, but has chosen short-term interests, leading to Japan's many core problems not being effectively addressed.

Japanese law university professor Shamatsu IIuan said in an online analysis that since the 21st century, Japanese real wage increases have been stagnant. Starting in 2022, prices have been rising, so more and more people think life is difficult. In 2024, the "political black gold" scandal inside the Democratic Party has also been exposed. In criticism of Japanese public opinion, the Democratic Party held presidential elections, and Shamatsu was elected for reforms. After Shamatsu has been asked to resign because of failing to clear results. Shamatsu believes that the two-year election failure of the Democratic Party is not due to stone break, but to his predecessor. Despite the Japanese political stability during Abe's reign, the Democratic Party at the time only pursued its own interests and did not sol

According to an article published on the East Asia Forum website, the recent results of the Democratic Party presidential election revealed that the party was facing far-right populism while failing to address Japan¡¯s core challenges¡ªfrom labor shortages to immigration issues to its increasingly shrinking strategic vision. Australian University of Curtin scholar Cao Tzu Conf said that during the Democratic Party presidential campaign, the debate among candidates showed how they looked at the serious policy challenges through a short-term political strategy perspective, ¡°High Market linked foreign residents directly to the threat to Japan¡¯s cultural identity and social order, which gave her an advantage. However, for a long time, the Democratic Party failed to seriously face the reality of the increasingly dependent Japanese immigrant labor shortages, which left Japan lacking the legal system and framework needed

According to Curtis, high markets have been able to beat other candidates to become Democrats¡¯ chairmen because the party¡¯s fear of rising extreme-right party support has led many people to think that they ¡°need to support strong conservatives like high markets¡± to fight far-right populism. This suggests that the Democratic Party has not looked at a wider crowd beyond its conservative supporters, which will not help the Democratic Party win more seats in the next House elections.¡±

A new era of uncertainty.

According to the Japan Economic News, at the internal congress held on 9 March this year, the party¡¯s then-director-in-chief, Mr. Shenyang, announced that he would formulate a ¡°national vision¡± for the next 30 years to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the party. Mr. Shenyang said at the time that he was trying to publish the above vision on the anniversary of the party¡¯s 70th anniversary on 15 November this year, mainly to outline how the party will contribute to the country¡¯s development in the future. Despite the confidence of the party, its future political prospects and how much it can contribute to Japan are full of questions because of the many real challenges facing today.

Yahoo News Network that on October 15th, Yoshin Tada, who was appointed as the chief agent of the self-government party chief executive, said in a network program that if Gao won the October 21st interim congressional prime minister nomination election, it would not dissolve the House of Representatives in advance for new elections, "Given the current severe economic situation, I think that the self-government party must find a way through the policy breakthrough and should dissolve the House of Representatives after achieving tangible results."Eastern Asia Forum website published an article said that no matter whether and when High City will lead the self-government party to the next congressional election, she will face a tough political situation, after the "unity" and "political black gold" scandal, the self-government

In an interview with the Global Times reporter, Chen Yang said that although the Liberal Democratic Party is still the best choice for Japan's ruling party, more and more Japanese people believe that the Liberal Democratic Party has fallen into a "stable recession": it is afraid to thoroughly reform and unwilling to give up vested interests. Today's Liberal Democratic Party is standing at a historical crossroads: on the one hand, it still controls a huge political network and policy resources; On the other hand, its political ideas, organizational mobilization methods, and attraction to young people and women are all weakening. In the past 70 years, the Liberal Democratic Party seems to have become the "institutionalized old order" of Japanese politics, rather than the "modernization engine".

There is a view that the international and domestic environment on which the Liberal Democratic Party has relied for survival for 70 years is changing, and intra-party unity and the Liberal Democratic Party's monopoly on the Japanese prime minister's position are being tested. As Japan's party politics and the context of elite competition for power change, new issues about the capitalist crisis, social divisions and international relations are emerging.

"The era of Japanese politics dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party has come to an end." According to the website of East Asia Forum, with changes in the political party system, Japan has entered a new era full of uncertainty. Restoring the dominant position of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japanese politics and reformulating Japan's grand strategy as an independent and active participant on the world stage may just be an illusion at present.