In a country where the ruling party has been in power for 64 of the last 68 years, leading the largest opposition party is not a job for the fainthearted.
Since the Liberal Democratic Party regained control of the levers of power 11 years ago, many opposition lawmakers have tried their hand at the daunting task of convincing the public that there is a credible alternative — yet, for various reasons, they all failed to deliver.
Now that the LDP finds itself in the middle of its deepest crisis in over a decade — a funding scandal that has plunged Cabinet approval ratings to their lowest in 10 years — a golden opportunity has unexpectedly presented itself.
But is the opposition ready to seize it, or will it let the chance slip through its fingers?
Kenta Izumi has been the face of Japan’s largest opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), for the last two years. His role demands a leadership that he hasn’t been able to fully manifest for several reasons, including the lack of unity within his political party, meaning the CDP has so far failed to give the impression that it could form a government anytime soon.
He took the reins of the party in November 2021, one month after a national election in which a CDP-led united opposition front failed to break through against the ruling coalition. It was an uphill battle, he said.
Amid an internal reckoning over the CDP’s relationship with the Japanese Communist Party, Izumi, who hails from the more centrist wing of the party, was seen as a better choice for leader by his fellow CDP members.
Asked about the current LDP scandal, Izumi said that he did not want to jump to any hasty conclusions when the investigation was still in its preliminary stages.
"I hope it can turn out to be beneficial for us, but it’s the people who decide that," Izumi said in an interview with The Japan Times. “We want the people to choose clean, instead of corrupt, politics.”
In 1993, the year that Japan witnessed its first change in government in 38 years, Izumi, now a veteran with over 20 years of experience in the political center of Nagatacho, had just started his law studies at Kyoto’s Ritsumeikan University.
Amid rampant corruption and soaring public scrutiny of collusion between political and business circles, the first non-LDP government in over three decades set out to reduce the influence of money in politics and establish a system that would enable a healthy alternation between parties in power.
Thirty years later, the situation has barely changed.
Fighting the LDP and its ties to the bureaucracy has been the cornerstone of Izumi’s political creed since the time when he, as a fresh graduate in 1998, took his first steps in politics, working as the personal secretary to Upper House lawmaker Tetsuro Fukuyama.
Fast-forward 25 years, and Fukuyama is still in the Upper House while Izumi has become his direct chief. It hasn't been an easy road so far.
The party’s lackluster performance in the Upper House election of July 2022, the first test under his leadership, forced him to make a swift change in direction. In an attempt to revamp the party, he replaced left-leaning Secretary-General Chinami Nishimura with Katsuya Okada, a more moderate former deputy prime minister and opposition leader.
This year’s regional elections offered a mixed picture of the state of the party. While the CDP pushed the LDP right to the edge in traditionally conservative constituencies, it still seemed to lack the momentum needed to challenge the ruling coalition.
In a bold move that prompted a skeptical reaction from many, Izumi earlier this year announced his intention to resign if the party doesn’t finish with 150 seats at the next general election, up from its current total of 97.
While his determination to put an end to the LDP dominance remains unwavering, the CDP faces a core problem, Izumi said. At the moment, it doesn’t have enough candidates to take power on its own.
“I, like other party members, can talk about ideals — those are the same for everyone — but there’s a difference between reality and ideals,” Izumi cautiously asserted.
“I would like to ask those who mix up feelings and reality, and only express their ideals, to please think rationally,” he added in a not-so-veiled reference to those — such as veteran Ichiro Ozawa — who chided him for his cautious tone when he hinted that the party’s goal in the next general election should be to lay the foundation for broadening its support.
Such long-standing obstacles naturally prompt a discussion on the nature of the CDP’s relationship with other opposition parties, from Nippon Ishin no Kai to the Democratic Party for the People (DPP).
Over the years, a consensus has emerged among academics and insiders that, even against a battered LDP, the chance of regime change under the current electoral system will remain slim as long as the opposition doesn’t move beyond political fragmentation.
The latest session of parliament, which drew to a close in mid-December, didn’t offer an encouraging picture on this front.
While all opposition forces endorsed two CDP-led no-confidence motions — against former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno and the Cabinet at large — when it came to political and electoral cooperation, significant differences remained.
Last month, both Nippon Ishin and the DPP eventually endorsed the government’s budget proposal, a move that the CDP sharply criticized. Overall, other opposition parties seem more interested in pursuing their own interests and electoral calculations than cooperating with the CDP in pursuit of a change in government.
Nippon Ishin, the country’s second-largest opposition force, has shown a tendency to scorn the CDP, while DPP leader Yuichiro Tamaki has repeatedly flirted with the administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida with an eye on a potential entry into the ruling coalition.
In a show of pragmatism born out of necessity, Izumi doesn’t close the door to cooperation with any party, regardless of their political standing.
“We have reached out to every party and asked to work together to maximize the seats of the opposition. Now it’s up to each party to decide what to do with that,” he said.
Faced with a quandary in which, as leader of the largest opposition party, he has an almost moral duty to call for unity against the LDP, but without coming across as weak and raising doubts about his leadership within the party, Izumi appears painfully aware of the dire straits he is in.
“We are the ones asking them to cooperate, but the reality is that, unfortunately, they’re not responding to our calls,” Izumi explained matter-of-factly, hinting that the composition of the opposition camp will likely stay the same, at least for now.
Still, reflecting on his two years at the helm of the CDP, he shows some signs of timid optimism.
Since the start of his mandate, he has strived to transform the image of the party. In the eyes of the public, the party had been solely dedicated to lambasting anything and everything that the government or the LDP said or did, meaning it couldn't possibly be trusted to run the country.
Making the CDP palatable to voters at home and allies abroad has involved fine-tuning the ways the party get its message across, Izumi said.
“I realized that if I don’t take a more aggressive approach, I won’t be able to reach the people with a message that would stick with them,” he said.
”But that’s not easy,” he added in a strong tone, but without specifying any concrete steps toward that direction.
It might be too early to tell whether the CDP will end up benefiting from the LDP’s recent misfortunes, but frustration toward the LDP might translate into durable support for the opposition.
When the Democratic Party of Japan toppled the LDP in a landslide victory in August 2009, Izumi, then a young lawmaker, occupied a minor role in the government led by former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. But the party lost power in a crushing defeat in December 2012, and the LDP has been in power ever since.
Reflecting on that experience — a tale of great expectations but failed electoral promises — Izumi admits that it has created some level of resistance toward any change in government.
However, that doesn’t discourage him from pursuing it once again, despite the odds.
“It’s not just a matter of making it happen once. We’re not aiming for a firework display,” he said at the conclusion of the interview.
“As a democratic nation, I still believe that we should compete with each other with our policies, and that the government should be changed by the people themselves as they make their own policy choices.”
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