Talk:1955 System

This article needs to be expanded

The 1955 System is socially, politically, and economically perhaps the most significant period in Japanese history. This article doesn't cover anything but a brief outline of the concept. It doesn't even mention any people, like Ikeda Hayato, who were instrumental to the system. The last part of the article consists of poorly constructed sentences that singularly attempt to cover vast amounts of information and time. I've been hearing for years about how Wikipedians have no more articles to do so they just become ultra territorial and work forever on perfecting the ones already well laid out. I find more often many articles dealing with lesser known subjects (particularly outside of natural science and mathematics) that despite having great cultural significance are minimal and untended. Promontoriumispromontorium (talk) 02:56, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposal

55-year system and 1955 System describe the very same subject, the 55-nen taisei of LDP and JSP. I don't know which term is most widely used in literature. (I'd suggest 1955 system. 55-year system seems to me like what it claims to be: a (too) literal translation.) --Asakura Akira (talk) 22:17, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I've been studying this recently and the translation in English tends towards 'The 1955 System'. Lovelinessgirl (talk) 21:31, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

External links modified

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Confusion about one paragraph

I'm finding the middle (or second) paragraph of the 'Bureaucratization of policymaking' section a bit confusing. Would someone mind taking a look at it?

HotBeverageBuddy (talk) 12:12, 31 December 2021 (UTC).

Bloomberg one party state claim

As already explained in the edit that keeps getting revoked for some reason this Bloomberg claim is not backed by any serious research (the 1999 paper doesn't say that) and doesn't reflect the reality of Japan's current political system at all. On very short terms as one of the recent research papers on the topic is linked below, the LDP gets an average of 28-35% of the vote share in every parliamentary election (which means they are on a thin edge and have to take every election seriously) and depend on pacifist "minor" (still gets 12-15% of the vote) party Komeito for gaining an outright majority with just a third of the total vote which means their political capital and actual legislative power is especially constrained despite appearances, particularly on controversial issues. There is a reason for example for why former right-wing PM Shinzo Abe in his 8 year tenure (longest serving Japanese PM in the postwar) failed to amend the constitution (one of his key life and electoral goals) despite his party with Komeito having at times even supermajorities in both houses, or for why the LDP had a party leadership election back in September 2021 to replace unpopular former PM Yoshihide Suga (which was forced to resign) with someone with less baggage and slightly more moderate ahead of the 2021 general election (serious fear of losing their parliamentary majority after multiple election losses in the months prior in various prefectures by-elections). They even co-opted (although Kishida may be sincere considering his faction background, Kōchikai) some of the opposition parties key left economic talking points with Kishida's promises for a "new form" of capitalism, move away from neoliberalism and redistributive policy to reduce inequality, with the goal of increasing their popularity among the public.

Adam P. Liff paper on Japan's electoral system and the LDP-Komeito relationship:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/japanese-journal-of-political-science/article/electoral-incentives-policy-compromise-and-coalition-durability-japans-ldpkomeito-government-in-a-mixed-electoral-system/D153792B61853FAC9AF38A20E5076D32

http://www.adamphailliff.com/documents/Liff2018_Mansfield_AbeLDPKomeitoSecurityPolicy.pdf

Commentary by academics Tobias Harris and Levi McLaughlin on LDP-Komeito after the 2021 general election:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/04/komeito-ldp-japan-elections-defense-policy-china/

And additional analysis by scholars Ryan Ashley and Moez Hayat after the election on current cross-party dynamics and what would be need for things like a constitutional change to happen:

https://www.tokyoreview.net/2021/12/japans-cross-party-reformist-alliance/

In addition to all that, Japan is labeled as a "full democracy" on the Democracy Index and has a score of 96/100 on the Freedom House democracy and civil rights index if that means anything. Peaceful transfers of power have happened in the past in a lawful way and an average of 6 to 8 parties contest elections since the 2000s covering the full spectrum of political views (minus far right ones which don't get endorsed by any major party openly but some LDP members) from right-wing traditional conservatism to far-left progressivism and pacifism. I have yet to find where are all those "many political analysts and researchers" and their in depth studies on why Japan is a one party state. And saying that "de facto one party" doesn't mean "one party state" is disingenuous as that's exactly what the term "de facto" is used for, to describe the true state of affairs rather than what it is supposed to be "de jure" true. I can't count how many uninformed people on online forums discussing Japanese politics (plenty of times in bad faith) that lazily used the one party state label to describe the country politics and link back to Wikipedia articles like these when inquired for their sources (if they even bother).

If anyone doesn't have anything else to add I will be removing at the very minimum that Bloomberg source and its one party state claim in a week. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WetGlass (talk • contribs) 19:37, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

As I mentioned in my edit explanation, the vote share percentage is meaningless, because the LDP consistently wins seats in the Diet far out of proportion to its vote share. Also, you keep saying that the LDP depends on the Komento for its rule, completely ignoring the fact that the LDP currently holds an absolute majority in the lower house of the Diet, and therefore does not currently depend on Komeito (although it has in the past). That said, I agree with you that "one-party state" is not the most accurate term, according to scholarship. It seems that the term by scholars is "one-party dominant state." The reason I and others reverted your change is that you were just deleting rather than revising. I will revise the text and citations to reflect the preferred "one-party dominant" nomenclature. -Ash-Gaar (talk) 21:34, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that part already for me. I keep pointing the third of the vote share thing to make it clear that they are not getting 57.5-65% of the Diet seats because that's the amount of people voting for them which would make them an overwhelmingly dominant party. They only get a third and if they fuck up really badly like in 2009 they actually risk losing their majority to another party, which, because of Japanese electoral quirks, will also go get minimum 45-50% of the Diet seats regardless of whether they get less votes than that as shown by defunct Democratic Party of Japan back in 2009 where it not just got a third but 42% and that netted them nearly 66% of the lower house seats. Additionally the reason for pointing Komeito so much is that it is thanks to their collaboration during elections as showed by some these papers that the LDP is able to push from around 45-50% they would get with a third of the vote to 57.5-65% of the Diet seats. Komeito routinely retires multiple of their candidates from where they would be competing directly against the LDP ones and tell their vote base to go with the LDP candidate instead giving them a boost vis-à-vis other opposition parties candidates in what would be otherwise very close or lost races. In exchange the LDP gives Komeito a seat in the governing coalition and out-sized influence over some of its legislation, especially constitutional and war related stuff where Komeito's religious background and pacifist views diverge from that of the LDP. But that is still better for the LDP than the alternative which is risking barely getting a majority or not getting it all by a few seats. I hope you understand but you can go read the papers directly for more detail. It is definitely a very important part of Japanese electoral politics. How the dynamics will also change with the recent raise of Ishin no Kai which looks to stay for the long run will be interesting to see. Calling the whole country as some do a de facto one party state is reductionist and does the topic a disservice. All of this is also not even counting the intra-faction infighting inside the LDP where you have people like Taro Kono and Takaichi, both popular but with widely different views on social issues and what the country should be vying for the position of PM. WetGlass (talk) 22:32, 21 March 2022 (UTC)