Japan took a major step toward a two-party system when the opposition Democratic Party of Japan made big gains in the Nov. 9 Lower House election. The poll will be remembered as a milestone in Japanese political history for this reason and because it was the first Japanese election to be fought over manifestos of rival political parties. On the basis of parliamentary democracy, voters were able to evaluate the parties through policy debates and decide which should be in power.
Aside from the results, it was an election that set a new tone in 21st-century Japanese politics. The DPJ increased its strength by 40 seats, to 177, the largest number of seats won by an opposition party in a general election since the 1955 establishment of a two-party system. That year saw the merger of two conservative parties into the Liberal Democratic Party and the reunification of the Japan Socialist Party. The previous record was set in a 1958 election in which the JSP won 166 seats.
Under the 1955 two-party system, the JSP occupied only 35 percent of all seats, lagging 26 percentage points behind the dominant LDP.