Speaker: Uno Shigeki

 

As the 2025 House of Councillors election clearly demonstrates, conservatism in Japan is in the process of decisively dismantling itself. The LDP and its ruling coalition have lost their majority following last year’s House of Representative election, and the emerging right-wing parties are rapidly gaining seats. The “mainstream conservatism” and “constitutional nationalism” that were at the core of postwar Japanese politics have both lost power, and the ties between them are becoming weaker. At the same time, the “progressives” and “liberals”  in postwar Japan are showing even greater decline than the conservative forces due to the aging of their supporters. Will Japanese politics also be led by right-wing parties with an anti-globalist agenda in the future? We would like to examine the validity of the presenter’s longstanding assertion that “there is no conservatism (in the true sense of the word) in postwar Japan,” and consider the future of Japanese politics and democracy.