The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), also known as Jiminto, is a conservative and Japanese nationalist political party in Japan that was founded in 1955 as the merger of the Liberal Party and the Japan Democratic Party. Since then, the LDP has been the dominant political party in Japan, entrenching itself in Japan's bureaucracy, business community, political system, and rural communities and becoming the ruler of a "dominant-party democracy." The party draws its support from business and corporate interests (who favored deregulation and tax cuts), rural communities and agricultural interests (due to its agricultural subsidies and protectionism), older voters (who supported the LDP's pension reforms and stability), conservative and nationalist voters (due to the LDP's support for historical revisionism), and the construction and infrastructure industries (due to its support for public works).
The post-World War II Liberal Party built on the old parliamentarist Seiyukai Party, while the Japan Progressive Party (the future Democratic Party) drew on factions of both the prewar Seiyukai and Minseito parties. In 1955, the Liberals and Democrats merged to form the LDP as the conservative alternative to the growing power of the socialist and communist parties, but the LDP - as a combination of prewar politicians and postwar bureaucrats - was cursed with factional infighting throughout its long stay in power. The party's factionalism was marked by disputes between nationalist supporters of militarism and constitutional reform and a more economically-focused, pro-US faction; after the Anpo Protests of 1960 and the downfall of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, the LDP moved away from foreign policy and focused on economic growth. The 1970s saw the LDP adopt pollution control and an improved social welfare system, while also establishing diplomatic relations with Communist China and implementing massive public works projects to benefit both the LDP's rural supporters and industries who paid bribes to the LDP leadership, leading to former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka's arrest in 1976. The LDP was regularly plagued with scandals during its one-party rule, and the burst of the Japanese bubble economy in 1993 led to splintergroups such as the Japan Renewal Party, Japan New Party, and New Party Sakigake leaving the LDP in 1993 and depriving the LDP of control of the government for the first time in its history. The lack of coordination of the ideologically diverse opposition - ranging from liberal-conservatives and centrist liberals to social democrats - led to the collapse of Tomiichi Murayama's government, and the LDP returned to power in 1996. Under Junichiro Koizumi, the LDP oversaw the privatization of the postal system in 2005, resulting in continued splits from the party, such as the New Conservative Party, the People's New Party, New Party Nippon, and New Party Daichi, as oppositional factions joined a growing number of opposition parties in challenging LDP rule. The LDP continued to rule over Japan due to the persistent inability of the opposition to unify behind a common platform. In 2007, the LDP's loss of 50 million pension records resulted in a landslide defeat for the LDP and the rise of the Democratic Party of Japan in 2009, only for the DPJ to be plagued by similar corruption scandals and destroyed by the government's poor response to the Tohoku earthquake and a proposed consumption tax raise in 2012. The LDP won in a landslide in 2012 and allied itself with the Buddhist Komeito party, forging a lasting coalition. Under Shinzo Abe, the LDP won over young people with its social democratic program of Abenomics, and the DPJ collapsed in 2016 and was replaced by smaller opposition parties. The revelations of the LDP's connections to the cultic Unification Church after Shinzo Abe's assassination in 2021 le to a decline in support for the party, but its promises of wealth redistribution to empower the middle class, increased funds for university research, tax breaks for corporations willing to raise wages, and other progressive policies ensured that it trounced the Constitutional Democratic Party at the 2021 general election and remained in power under Fumio Kishida.
The LDP had a moderate-to-conservative political ideology, embracing a wide spectrum from right-wing nationalists to liberal and progressive politicians. Younger politicians tended to support constitutional reform, while older politicians were more cautious. The party consistently supported pro-business policies such as low taxes, government subsidies, and protectionism, and the LDP was staunchly pro-American. The LDP brought together several factions based on patronage and faction bosses rather than ideology, and many leaders of the party were affiliated with the ultranationalist Nippon Kaigi organization, which denied Japan's World War II-era war crimes and supported historical revisionism and the restoration of authoritarian rule. The party won support through the development of political support groups (koenkai) such as farmers' organizations, with LDP politicians earmarking public works projects for their constituencies in exchange for reliable political support and donations. The party was popular among agricultural households, small shopkeepers, military, veterans', business, and construction groups, and urban voters who supported Koizumi's deregulation and privatization measures (which caused the LDP's support to rise in cities and decline in rural areas).
As the dominant party of postwar Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party took the form of a national political machine with reliable koenkai support networks, political factions that cultivated new leadership of the party, and - especially until the 1990s - support from the Yakuza criminal underworld. During the 1940s and 1950s, the government employed the yakuza to suppress strikes and break up efforts at unionization, and the yakuza played a major role in nearly all of the LDP's corruption scandals, from the Lockheed bribery scandals to the collapse of the bubble economy. The yakuza utilized uyoku dantai right-wing extremist political groups as fronts for their political involvement, backing factions of the LDP which were staunchly anti-Chinese, anti-Korean, anti-Russian, and ultranationalist. Yakuza support for the LDP temporarily ended in 2009, when the Yakuza helped the DPJ win power in a landslide in exchange for the DPJ halting any anti-organized crime legislation that LDP politicians such as Shintaro Ishihara had attempted to pass against them. On the LDP's return to power in 2012, relations between the yakuza and LDP cooled as the yakuza lost their influence in society due to anti-racketeering laws, declined in numbers due to arrests or retirements, and became less accepted by the public.
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