ABSTRACT
The merger of the Liberal and the Democratic parties into the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1955 followed a decade of bewildering internecine strife among a variety of conservative parties, groups and personalities. Negotiations aimed at a conservative merger proved tortuous, with infighting centring on procedural rather than substantive political issues, at times threatening to abrogate the talks. Among leading conservatives, scepticism as to the viability of a merger was voiced, before as well as after its formalization a frame of mind fuelled by power struggles which in fact delayed the selection of party president until five months after the party's founding. Power and policy were also conjoined by competing policy groups, whose issue-based arguments touched on several fields. Intra-conservative conflict was predominantly institutionalized in the form of factionalism, centring on power motives. Factional money politics was deeply implicated in a number of corruption scandals rocking Japanese politics.
