Late last week Japan’s main opposition, the Democratic Party (DP), looked to remedy its situation and elected Renho Murata (commonly known simply as Renho) as its new leader. The 48 year old half-Taiwanese former model and TV presenter turned politician, and the first female to lead any major political party in Japan after Takako Doi, brings a fresh face to a homogeneous Japanese political world dominated by older men. Her confident personality and experience as state minister in charge of government revitalisation and deputy opposition leader positions her well for the challenge in reversing the Democratic Party’s flagging fortunes. But the enormity and significance of the task she now faces — to build party unity, escape the image of a party that only criticises the government, formulate concrete alternative policies (especially on the economy which is consistently the primary concern of voters) and effectively communicate policies to the public — cannot be underestimated.

Ever since Japan’s asset price bubble burst in 1991, putting its economy in strife, and since the Cold War ended, pushing Japan to reconsider the basis of its alliance relationship with the United States and its role in global affairs, revitalisation has been a key theme of national politics. Two lost decades of economic growth, China’s overtaking Japan as the second largest economy in the world, and a demographic crunch as Japan has become the most rapidly ageing country in the world give urgency to the voices demanding a national revitalisation.

One way in which Japan might kick-start its national revitalisation, and find the political leadership necessary to push through reform and regain economic vigour, it was hoped, would be to move toward a two-party political system with more genuine electoral competition and policy choice for voters.

While Japan has strong democratic institutions underpinned by its postwar constitution, the alternation of power between rival political parties has been rare. Between 1955 and the present the LDP has won national elections with amazing consistency, suffering only two short stints — 11 months in 1993-94 and three years in 2009-12 — out of office. This stunning record was achieved by its promotion of rapid economic growth through the 1960-80s, but LDP leadership after the departure of prime minister Junichiro Koizumi in 2006 fell into disarray.

The landslide election victory for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ, as the DP was then called) in 2009 raised public expectation that a two-party system with genuine electoral competition and more regular alternation of power through national elections had arrived. The DPJ’s three years in power, however, were dogged by disaster from the start and the party has never fully regained the public’s trust. Among the many reasons were the ineptitude of prime minister Yukio Hatoyama (especially in his handling of the Futenma Airbase relocation issue), Ichiro Ozawa’s efforts to control the party from behind the scenes, the party’s bureaucrat-bashing as part of its quest to implement politician-led policymaking, and the bad fortune to be in office when the disastrous 3/11 triple disaster struck. While the DPJ response was indecisive, it was the LDP which built the nuclear village and lacklustre safety regulations which created the policy environment in which the disaster unfolded.

As Gerald Curtis explains in our lead essay this week, ‘never in Japan’s postwar history has the political opposition been as enfeebled as it is now’. In decades gone by, despite LDP dominance, ‘the opposition was strong enough to prevent the adoption of many policies for which the LDP fought hard — constitutional revision, government financial support for the controversial Yasukuni shrine and the reintroduction of prewar morals education’. Since losing power to the LDP in 2012 the DP has ‘been at a loss as to how to recover public support. Under chairman Katsuya Okada the [DP] has opted to define its goals not in terms of what the party stands for but what it stands against’. The DP has criticised not only Abenomics but also collective self-defence, the classified secrets act and constitutional revision. Yet although ‘public opinion is critical of LDP policies on these matters’, Curtis argues that ‘Okada’s effort to make opposition to constitutional revision the key issue in the 2016 upper house election campaign gained little traction’.

Another approach to national revitalisation, which the Abe administration is set to begin to push this year, is constitutional revision. In this context, a rejuvenated opposition, which can help promote debate that reflects a broad national consensus, or at the very least is capable of moderating LDP excesses, is needed now more than ever.

Shinzo Abe and his supporters’ convictions surrounding constitutional revision are premised on the belief that the current ‘American imposed’ Constitution has held the country back and that it needs to escape from the postwar regime. This is despite broad public support for many key features of the constitution underpinning human rights as well as the Article 9 ‘peace clause’. The LDP’s draft 2012 Constitution — which includes proposals to enhance the status of the Emperor, make individual rights subservient to the state, end the strict separation of religion and the state, and completely overhaul Article 9 — reflects a narrow worldview shared only by revisionist factions within the LDP rather than Japanese public opinion.

Renho’s ascent to the opposition leadership thus has come at a critical juncture which could determine the future of the country’s long-term political evolution. As Curtis warns, ‘the burden is on the leaders of the Democratic Party to reinvent their party. The future of Japan’s political party system and its political democracy depends on how successful they will be’.

It is not just Japan’s opposition party and politics that needs reinventing. To remain a wealthy, peaceful and advanced society, business as usual in Japan will not do. The latest issue of the East Asia Forum Quarterly on Reinventing Japan explores these questions about Japan’s future.

The EAF Editorial Group is comprised of Peter Drysdale, Shiro Armstrong, Ben Ascione, Ryan Manuel, Amy King and Jillian Mowbray-Tsutsumi and is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.