3.1 Reforms began: Miki's proposalFootnote ⁸

Movement towards ‘modernization’ of party organizations started in the 1960s. The anti-Security Treaty riots of 1960 and the narrowing electoral gap between the LDP and the opposition parties pushed the growth of a reformist movement inside the LDP (Fukui, Reference Fukui1970). It established the Party Organization Research Council, including five sub-committees in January 1961 to deal with the party's finance, organizations, and public relations.

The first round of discussions on how to promote intra-party democratization began in 1963. Secretary-General Takeo Miki made an official proposal to the party president Hayato Ikeda at the third Round Research Committee of Party Organization Reforms. This report proposed that the party should set up a special committee to select and endorse candidates for the party leadership, and also suggested a method of ‘one member, one vote’ (OMOV) to choose a party leader. Four years later, the chairman issued a statement on the necessities of reforming the electoral system and party leadership election procedures. However, instead of making substantial changes, the Research Committee decided to maintain party harmony and not to take any further actions.

In 1971, the Research Committee released a report reviewing how to include more rank-and-file members in the party leadership election. It even started to consider a full membership, making a motion that ‘above all, the party leadership election is the most significant event in our party. It is our great expectation that the election should include all the party members.’Footnote ⁹ This proposal also stated that it should have three representatives from each of the 47 prefectures. It built the initial blueprint for how to involve local voices.

Inside the party, not satisfied with Miki's attitudes towards the Lockheed scandal, faction leaders were plotting to bring down the Miki administration in February 1976 (Fukunaga, Reference Fukunaga2006: 196‒208). Meanwhile the party's poor performance in the general election of December 1976 woke the LDP central executives to the realization that a party reform was urgently needed. Miki, the reformist and the sitting party leader, managed to reach a compromise with his rival factions to adopt a new procedure for a selecting party leader (Fukunaga, Reference Fukunaga2006: 196‒208). Then he officially resigned and issued a public statement for party reform.

Miki’ proposal included the following suggestions:

1. 1. It should allow authentic LDP supporters who had paid the annual membership fee for the past two years to participate in the selection of the party leader.

2. 2. The party should be independent of the zaikai financially, and establish its political party funding.

3. 3. The party should break up the current factional groups and stay away from factionalism. The top two primary winners would go into a final selection among Diet members, of which one member owns one vote.

Later in January 1977, based on this proposal, the Research Committee issued a detailed agenda (LDP, 2006a: 408‒9).

A primary election of full members was to be conducted in each prefecture. Party members, who had fully paid the annual membership fee for the past two years, were eligible to vote. Fraternity members of the Liberal National Congress and National Political Association, who had fully paid the annual fee for the past two years, were also eligible to vote. The party member fee was 3,000 yen. The annual member fee of a fraternity member was 10,000 yen at least. For each prefecture, 1,000 mass membership votes equaled one point. In prefectural voting, ballots were to be delivered to the local branches via postal mail. A candidate for the president's post must be a Diet member and have obtained 20 written recommendations from Diet members. Previously, only ten Diet member supporters were needed. The top two primary winners were to go to final selection decided by Diet members, of which one member owned one vote.

Until that time, LDP presidents had always been chosen by the Diet members, numbering around 400 votes gathered at a national party convention in Tokyo (Tsurutani, Reference Tsurutani1980, p. 844). The party leader election in November 1978 marked the first nationwide primary contest. From 1961 to 1978, the reforming processes in the LDP could be interpreted as a movement towards positive inclusiveness, promoting more participation of the rank-and-file members when deciding party issues. This significant change was achieved by a tradeoff between Miki's resignation and Miki's proposal.

It was hardly the end of the reforms, but rather another starting point. In the next period, reforms of party leader election procedures moved in a different direction.

3.2 Reforms interrupted: Kanemaru mediation

In usual cases, ‘when change occurs, party members are given a great say and, at least thus far, there is no going back to more elite-controlled processes’ (Cross and Blais, Reference Cross and Blais2012b: 168). However, the situation was different in Japan. The reforms moved into a negative inclusiveness period. From 1980 to 1991, except for Yasuhiro Nakasone's first term in 1982, not a single LDP leader was elected via a primary election. Moreover, the central executives set rigid limits on the participation of mass membership and increased the requirements on the eligibility of candidates. It shortened the campaign period and changed the mass membership vote so that 10,000 votes equaled one point. A party primary could only be held on the condition of four candidates or above. Each candidate must be endorsed by at least 50 LDP Diet members.

Several factors led to this. The primary reason is the discontinuity of reformist actors in the LDP. Reformists were never the majority, neither were they a strong faction inside the LDP. However, the Lockheed scandal forced the whole party to seek a modern, clean, and reformist image to ensure its electoral survival. Thus, even though the weakest faction, Miki put the reform agenda into the party constitution. Under the new inclusive process, the party leadership election in 1978 went well. But the unsolved disputes between the traditionalists and reformists later ended in the party's biggest intraparty disputes, ‘40-day's crisis’ (1979‒80).Footnote ¹¹ In order to avoid further party divisions, the ‘Kanemaru mediation’ stalled the reform agenda and there was a return to the traditional coalition-making politics decided by faction leaders. For example, the rigid precondition that a national primary would only be held on the condition of four candidates or above was strictly set in accordance with the main five faction groups in the 1980s.

The first national primary to choose a leader was on 26 November 1978. Masayoshi Ohira surprisingly defeated the incumbent candidate, also the mainstream faction leader Takeo Fukuda. Among the 47 Prefectures, Ohira took 25. Before the primary campaign started, Fukuda addressed the party members that ‘if the results of the primary election were clear enough, we must respect the decisions of party members and fraternity members’ (LDP, 2006a: 442). Once the local primary published, Fukuda held a press conference announcing that he decided not to head into the final.

The next day, Asahi Shinbun published an article, reporting it was a victory for the Tanaka Gundan.Footnote ¹² According to the election results published by Asahi, Fukuda won his constituency home Gunma, and he also ranked first in those constituencies that belonged to his faction members. On the other side, Fukuda's biggest opponent Kakuei Tanaka supported Ohira. Tanaka faction members mobilized their constituencies to vote for Ohira in the primary. Backed by the largest faction in the LDP, Ohira received a victory in the primary election.

In this regard, Miki's proposal did not moderate traditional factional politics. At this stage, the politics of choosing a party leader was still oligarchic in reality. The faction leaders had powerful control over their followers. Diet members were remarkable in mobilizing their local support groups (Reed, Reference Reed1984). Fukuda's withdrawal from the run-off election avoided further divisions in the party. It hardly meant that it solved the disputes between the Ohira (Tanaka Gundan) and Fukuda groups. Even being a nationwide popular leader, Ohira was still competing against Fukuda inside the party. The LDP's poor performance in the general election of 1978, maintaining only 248 seats, gave a chance to those who were against Ohira. Thus the intra-faction disputes between Ohira and Fukuda evolved into a vote in the Diet, which was to decide who should become the prime minister. These negotiations and votes went on for almost 40 days, ended with 138 votes supporting Ohira, 121 votes for Fukuda. Ohira served as the 69th Prime Minister from 1979 to 1980. Just one year later, the Fukuda faction and other supporters, including Yasuhiro Nakasone, Takeo Miki, and Ichiro Nakagawa, cast a motion of no confidence against the Ohira administration and forced the cabinet to resign.

Furthermore, some LDP members who were in disagreement with the central executives left the party. Supported by some young Diet members, Yōhei Kōno was also aiming for the party leadership. Kōno and his followers expressed discontent at the backroom negotiations to decide the party president. In 1976, Kōno and other five Diet members left the LDP and then started the ‘New Liberal Club’ (LDP, 2006a: 365–6). This party splitting, which more or less was among the reformist groups who were opposed to the traditional coalition-making politics, hence eventually weakened the reformists in the LDP.

Masayoshi Ohira passed away after a massive heart attack on the 12 June 1980, one month after the no-confidence motion against his cabinet. Through backroom negotiations among the party seniors, the central executives picked up Zenkō Suzuki to serve as president from 1980 to 1982. When Suzuki expressed his intention to resign in October 1982, the party executives rushed into several talks to discuss how to choose the next leader. After ten days of negotiations, the party executives decided to have a two-round election on 24 November. Being popular among the rank and file members, Yasuhiro Nakasone gained 57.62% of the votes and ranked first in the prefectural primaries. He was followed by Toshio Komoto, Shintarō Abe, and Ichiro Nakagawa. The top three candidates were supposed to step into a run-off vote among the Diet members. However, Komoto and Abe decided to withdraw from the final. Nakasone became the second party leader chosen via a party primary since 1978.

Two years later, at the end of Nakasone's first term in October 1984, former party presidents, Fukuda and Suzuki, expressed in public that in order to avoid further divisions in the party they preferred to go back to the traditional ‘hanashi-ai seiji’ (coalition making between factions) to choose the next president. By the end of October, the party executives still failed to work out a specific plan of how to decide the next leader. The sitting Chairman of the General Council, Shin Kanemaru, had to conduct closed-door conferences with Fukuda and Suzuki individually on 24 October, and then with Toshio Komoto and Shintarō Abe, who were the candidates competing for the party presidency in 1982. The next day Kanemaru paid a personal visit to Nobusuke Kish, who served as the party president during the anti-security treaty riots. Meanwhile, the senior Acting Secretary-General, Michio Watanabe, went to talk with Takeo Miki. After days of negotiations with those former presidents, called the ‘Kanemaru mediation’, the party executives finally reached a compromise for a second term of Nakasone, without further election. The ‘Kanemaru mediation’ was showing how heavily the faction leaders were resisting to leadership ‘democratization’, an inclusive method of choosing a leader.

Despite a large turnout of 93% in 1982, which showed how much the rank-and-file members welcomed an open primary, the party executives still decided to pause this positive tendency towards inclusiveness, but took an exclusive way of making coalitions between factions. The ‘Kanemaru mediation’ in 1984, which interrupted the reform agenda to include more rank-and-file members to decide their leaders, stalled Miki's proposal. This shaped the reforms into a different direction. If comparing the reform agenda to a pendulum, this period was similar to a pendulum back at its starting point.

3.3 Reforms resumed: the fall of Kanemaru

The resign of Shin Kanemaru in 1992 was a turning point to resume the intra-party democracy reforms. If Miki's Proposal in 1976 was a reformists’ prescription to ensure the party's electoral survival from the Lockheed scandal, Kanemaru's political funds scandal gave the reformist another opportunity to pursue more positive inclusiveness in deciding a leader.

The scandal-ridden Sousuke Uno had to resign as Prime Minister just three months after being picked by the party seniors in 1989. Facing pressures from female supporters, the LDP executives were forced to hold a Diet member voting to decide the next leader. At the Joint Plenary Meeting of Party Members of both Houses of the Diet in August 1989, Toshiki Kaifu, who belonged to the Miki Faction, was elected as the party president. During Kaifu cabinet (1989–91), the LDP was under continuous pressure from the Japan Socialist Party, led by Takako Doi. Reform was a nationwide catch phrase in the early period of the 1990s. To appeal for more support from the local members, LDP politicians were full of enthusiasm about reshaping the party organizations. The Kaifu administration soon drafted a plan of action ‘for an open and modern party leadership election’ to maintain a peaceful power transition after Uno's resignation (LDP, 2006b: 137). Supported by the traditionalist Kanemaru, Kiichi Miyazawa became the party president via an exclusive Diet member voting in October 1991. Being the leader of the biggest faction, Kanemaru served as the vice party president in the Miyazawa administration. On 22 August 1992, Asashi News reported that Kanemaru had accepted an illegal political donation.Footnote ¹³ Although his office quickly denied this report,Footnote ¹⁴ five days later Kanemaru held a news conference and admitted that he had received 500 million yen political donation from the Tokyo Sagawa Express in 1990. Kanemaru resigned on the same day and was then fined 200,000 yen in a summary indictment by Tokyo District Court on 28 August.Footnote ¹⁵

On 18 June 1993, a no-confidence motion against the Miyazawa cabinet was passed in the Diet under the coalition between the opposition parties and the LDP rebels led by Tsutomu Hata and Ichiro Ozawa. One week later, Hata and Ozawa left the LDP and started the Japan Renewal Party. Following the party split, the LDP obtained only 223 seats in the general election on 18 June 1993. Unlike the party split of ‘New Liberal Club’ in 1976, which weakened the reformists, this party split pushed the central executives of the LDP to cooperate with the reformists, adopting more inclusiveness.

The fall of Shin Kanemaru in 1992 ended the ‘Kanemaru mediation’, thus ended the exclusive coalition-making way of selecting a party leader. The LDP elites decided to put the plan of action ‘for an open and modern party leadership election’ into effect. This motion stated that the local primary and central Diet members’ voting were to be held on the same day, and the open ballots were to be conducted simultaneously. Furthermore, it introduced a more demographically balanced method of allocating electoral-college votes in the prefectural primary. Based on the size of the listed party members and fraternity members, it also decided that each prefecture should have electoral-college votes ranging from 1 to 4. A candidate, who ranked first in the prefectural primary, was to get the full electoral-college votes. The top two winners of the prefectural primaries were to go into a run-off vote. It maintained the one-member-one-vote method in counting Diet members’ votes.

Later, in the party primary of 2001, each prefecture had three electoral-college votes. For the total 47 prefectures, the rank and file members owned 141 votes. Jun'ichiro Koizumi was the first party president elected under this procedure. Later, in 2003, the LDP issued a revised party constitution, setting the electoral-college vote as the regular way of involving the rank and file members to choose a leader. Since then, Abe (2006, 2012), Fukuda (2007), Aso (2008), and Tanigaki (2009) were all elected via relatively broader participation of the mass membership compared to their predecessors.

The ‘Kanemaru mediation’ was showing how heavily the faction leaders were resisting to an inclusive method of choosing a leader. Three factors pushed the LDP elites to share power with the rank and file members. First of all, as the ruling party, the party leadership election in the LDP is also choosing an organizer and leader for the next general election. The declined party membership and growing ‘floating’ votersFootnote ¹⁶ (Tanaka and Martin, Reference Tanaka and Martin2003), pressures from the opposition parties (Reed et al., Reference Reed, Scheiner and Michael2012), and rising mass media's influence in politic issues (Krass, Reference Krass, Pharr and Krass1996; Taniguchi, Reference Taniguchi2007), all force the party to choose a national popular face. Secondly, the introduction of a new electoral system in the House of Representatives weakens the faction's capability of mobilizing support and votes. This significant change forces the party to adopt more inclusive methods to attract more party members and also allows them to participate in deciding party issues (Uekami, Reference Uekami2013: 146, 169‒75). Last, the revised Political Funds Control Law (Seiji Shikin Kisei Hō) and public assistance for political parties (Seitō Jyosei Kin) since 1994 transferred the party financial system from the parliamentarians to the political parties in Japan. In the 1980s, faction leaders had superiority in obtaining political donations and provided financial resources to their followers (Iwai, Reference Iwai1990: 102‒8). After the restrictions on corporate contributions to individual politicians, and also it is the national government that allocates the subsidies to party organizations, it is up to party leaders to decide how much of these funds will be distributed to individual politicians (Carlson, Reference Carlson2012). The current party financial system in the LDP limits the faction leaders’ financial capacity. Thus, this further disqualifies the faction leaders from their previous privileges. Traditionally, a faction leader would be an eligible and competitive candidate to enter the contest for the party leadership (Watanabe, Reference Watanabe1958), however this is no longer the case. For example, Koizumi (2001, 2003) and Abe (2006, 2012) are both non-faction leaders winning the leadership elections. In these cases, instead of the owner of the faction, but a ‘hired leader’ who has no complicated connections to the old and notorious faction politics appears to be more competitive in gaining national support.