ABSTRACT
First published in Australian Outlook, Vol. 25, No. 2, Aug. 1971 (Australian Institute of International Affairs)
JAPAN IN THE postwar period has not belonged to that small handful of nations throughout the world where the roles of Government and Opposition are exchanged fairly regularly as a result of free electoral processes. Indeed, if alternating government is to be regarded as a criterion of democracy, the Japanese record is just slightly worse than that of Australia. While the Australian Labor Party last participated in office at the federal level in 1949, none of the four opposition parties now represented in the Lower House (the House of Representatives) of the Japanese Diet have been in power since 1948. In that year a shaky coalition government of both Socialists and Conservatives, led first by a Socialist and later by a Conservative Prime Minister, fell from office. Since then the Japanese Government has been firmly in the hands of politicians who, however much their personalities, policies and even ideologies may differ, have all carried a Conservative label. From 1955 they have succeeded in coexisting within one somewhat amorphous and quite broadly based political party, the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP.
