Japan’s main opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), is set to elect a new leader on Monday, September 23 — just a few days before the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is scheduled to do the same. The CDP continues to be the main (broadly-speaking) liberal alternative to the LDP and is the largest opposition party in the Diet, so with the LDP at arguably its weakest point in over a decade, a lot will rest on the shoulders of the new leader.
A chaotic LDP leadership race with nine candidates — many of them heavy-weights — could have spelled doom for the CDP’s chances of getting any attention for its own election, but instead the CDP seems to have been able to piggyback on the election mood, aided in part by broadcasters following political fairness laws when covering the elections. The CDP has also benefitted from the interest shown by non-traditional media such as Abema Prime and ReHacQ. Ultimately, although only a small number of CDP and LDP party members can vote in these elections, it is arguably good for democracy that both elections are happening around the same time — it gives clarity on what political choices voters have before a general election is called (which, when it does finally happen, will likely leave the opposition with only a few weeks to campaign).
The CDP’s election rules differ slightly from the LDP, although both parties have a requirement that candidates gather 20 signatures from sitting lawmakers (including the candidates themselves) in order to be nominated. In total, 740 votes will be cast in the leadership election, with the winner needing to have a simple majority (i.e., 371 votes). The votes of each of the 136 lawmakers in the Diet are worth double making a total of 272. The party’s 98 prospective candidates for national elections each get one vote, while 185 votes are distributed among the 114,792 members and another 185 votes among the 1,236 local-level politicians. If no one has a majority in the first round, the candidates with the two highest tallies proceed to a run-off election. In this second stage, the voting rules change; sitting lawmakers and prospective candidates retain the same number of votes, but ordinary members and local politicians are excluded. Instead, representatives of the local parties in each of the 47 prefectures have one vote each, giving a total of 417 votes cast.
The Candidates
Izumi Kenta
Izumi Kenta is the CDP’s incumbent leader, having taken the reins from Edano Yukio after the 2021 general election. He is generally seen not to have improved the party’s position in the past three years but points out that he did at least keep the party unified — an admittedly humble achievement that is the core of his platform in this election. He argues that it would be unwise to change leaders now when the party is so close to a breakthrough. He has however had trouble projecting a memorable image throughout his tenure and those issues continue in this election as well.
It is unlikely Izumi will make it to the second round of voting. He may not have yet been tested with a full-blown general election, but his record these past years with Upper House, local, and by-elections has been uneven. Most damning of all, however, is that under his leadership the party seems not to have benefitted at all from the LDP’s struggles in the opinion polls.
Edano Yukio
Edano Yukio is a founder and former leader of the CDP, who led the party until stepping down following a disappointing 2021 general election result. He was the first candidate to announce he was running for the party leadership, and had been preparing this run quite overtly since at least 2023. It is arguably odd to see him attempt a comeback after the party lost seats under his leadership in the previous general election, but even at the time when he stepped down, there were those within the party who disagreed with his decision to not run for re-election as leader. Edano has perhaps the strongest message of the slate of candidates, centred around a plan he describes as “Human Economics”; that his messaging is well-developed is not surprising, given how long he has had to prepare this campaign.
Although his economic plan is currently low on details (more on that below), he has presented versions of this idea before. In those presentations Edano focused on the provision of public services such as health care, elder care, and education at no or low cost at the point of use. Wages of workers in these public service sectors would have to be raised through political means, presumably with the expectation that doing so would in turn exert upward pressure on wages elsewhere. Edano also supports maintaining the consumption tax but would institute ways to make it more progressive. In the current campaign, Edano has promoted giving consumers cash to offset the tax burden on day-to-day consumption. Like some of the other candidates, he has also floated raising income, inheritance, and capital gains taxes to finance spending.
Yoshida Harumi
Yoshida Harumi, elected for the first time in 2021, is the only genuine newcomer among the candidates. She won the Tokyo 8th district in one of the more chaotic elections at the time. In spite of attempts by opposition parties to coordinate their candidates to minimize vote splitting in winnable districts, Reiwa Shinsengumi’s Yamamoto Tarō had announced he would run in the same district. Under normal circumstances Yamamoto — a former actor and mildly skilful populist — would be favoured by opposition voters, but the circumstances of his bid instead led to an outpouring of support for Yoshida. Yamamoto stepped back, and the enthusiasm of her supporters overturned what would have normally been a difficult election against an incumbent LDP politician and an Ishin insurgent.
Yoshida has primarily been campaigning on a pledge to lower the consumption tax on food. She is not likely to move to the second round — at least one of her nominators has pledged their support to another candidate already. Her presence in the race does provide much-needed representation for CDP supporters who strongly believe in lowering the consumption tax, forcing the other candidates to make their case with conviction.
Noda Yoshihiko
It’s unlikely that many people expected Noda Yoshihiko, who was prime minister from 2011 to 2012 during the DPJ government, to enter the race. He has emerged as a strong contender, however, with many in the party feeling that Noda would be better positioned than the other candidates to negotiate cooperation or even mergers with the centre-right opposition parties. There is enthusiasm for that approach among CDP lawmakers, with Noda having the most support among them in polls. Perhaps the bigger surprise, however, is that Noda’s return to the front line comes with the overt backing of Ozawa Ichirō, the “Shadow Shogun” and veteran political operator who is widely credited with engineering the DPJ’s historic rise to power in 2009. Ozawa publicly split from the DPJ government in 2012 in protest at Noda’s consumption tax rise, taking many of its lawmakers with him. The shift to supporting Noda in this race reflects how much Ozawa has cooled on Edano, as well as his opposition to the prospect of further cooperation with the JCP.
Noda stresses government provision of “basic services” — public services such as health care and child care — in order to free consumers of the stress of decades of deflation and unlock the economic potential of Japanese citizens. Like Edano’s Human Economics, this sets up a safety net in order to prop up a strong middle class society. Also like Edano, he supports making the consumption tax more progressive through various means. The two likely disagree on important aspects of implementation and financing spending but those differences have not come to the fore too much.
The major issues: electoral cooperation and welfare spending
Political reform is naturally a major priority for all of the candidates, and they accordingly lay out a swathe of options such as further regulating political funds, banning donations from corporations and groups, banning fund-raising parties, and even tackling dynastic politicians. These are so far largely limited to the closing up of loopholes that led to the current slush fund scandal rather than a coherent vision for a new political system a la the 1994 reforms. This is, in part, because none of the candidates currently know what kind of LDP leader they are facing in the upcoming general election. A party critic such as Ishiba Shigeru being elected as LDP leader would, for instance, quickly take the wind out of the sails of an aggressively reformist CDP. Instead, what is being tested in this race are future paths towards electoral cooperation and a credible economic plan that can go up against the shared priorities of the leading LDP candidates.
The situation regarding electoral cooperation is unclear. In general, the CDP is considered to benefit from cooperating with other opposition parties so as not to split the anti-LDP vote. Without this, opposition candidates have trouble winning against LDP candidates. Noda would likely move the party closer to the Democratic Party for the People (with whom it could even potentially merge) and Ishin no Kai. Edano has expressed reluctance to cooperate with either Ishin no Kai or the JCP except on a district-to-district, ad hoc basis. If the JCP has truly been removed from consideration then Noda offers the more likely path towards winning single member districts in a general election. On the other hand, the JCP has responded to their erstwhile partner’s cold shoulder by increasing the pressure, with Secretary-General Koike Akira announcing that the communists will proceed with candidate selection in a number of key districts. This escalation will remind the CDP of their precarious position, but without a target to galvanize opposition around (a role played by Abe Shinzō before his passing) this is not likely to make party-wide cooperation any more politically feasible.
The differences between Noda and Edano in terms of economic policy are negligible in their substance and will likely remain so until a general election platform is drafted up. For this leadership election at least, the collective focus on “basic services” contrasts with the LDP candidates’ various flavors of trickle-down economics. The starting point for CDP candidates is instead the day-to-day economic insecurity felt by citizen that leads to less spending and more saving, and hence to less capital investment by corporations. But the CDP candidates’ platforms simply don’t have very much in them that is actually novel. In fact, there is not much about this election that is actually new, and that is part of the problem facing the party.
Trouble on the horizon, but not any time soon
The elephant in the room in any discussion about the CDP’s leadership race is that this election is essentially between two former leaders of the party and the incumbent. The only fresh face, Yoshida, almost didn’t manage to get the required number of nominations in time for the deadline, and some reports have claimed that she is only there to make sure the race does not look like decades-old archival footage. It undoubtedly reflects badly on the CDP that it seemingly has no new generation of leadership prospects to offer. In spite of that, the candidates most likely to go to the second round, Noda and Edano, are hoping their experience and name recognition will be a benefit — not least since Izumi is widely seen as having sorely lacked precisely those things.
Whether voters will ultimately be swayed in a positive direction by such name recognition, however, remains to be seen – and there are very recent counter-examples which should be troubling for the CDP. Only a few months ago, former party leader Renhō came in third in the 2024 Tokyo Gubernatorial election, with her poor performance in a city where she once dominated the unaffiliated vote in national elections coming as a shock to many. She and her team seemingly didn’t appreciate how much her appeal to voters had depreciated in the intervening years – which is a stark warning to both Noda and Edano. Both men can point to their experience in government, the good and the bad, but the DPJ administration in which they both served was more than a decade ago. The likelihood that they will suddenly underperform against some young upstart – as Renhō did against independent candidate Ishimaru Shinji in the gubernatorial election – increases by the day. Of course, this problem is allayed somewhat by the similar issues with the LDP’s slate of candidates in its race, with even the youngest candidate (among the frontrunners), Koizumi Shinjirō, being vulnerable to claims of being “more of the same” on the grounds of being the fourth generation of a powerful political family. Nevertheless, CDP’s lack of dynamism underlies this entire election; no matter who wins, the question of where the party is to find fresh faces and fresh ideas will still demand an answer at some point down the line.
Romeo Marcantuoni is a PhD student at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies at Waseda University. He earned his MA and BA in Japanese Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium. His research centers on Japan's progressive parties.
