SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF JAPAN

(SDPJ) formerly Japan Socialist Party, Japanese Nihon (or Nippon) Shakaito leftist party in Japan that supports an evolving socialized economy and a neutralist foreign policy. It is the second largest political party in Japan after the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP). Japan's first socialist parties appeared in the mid-1920s; moderate factions of the country's labour movement combined to form the Social Mass Party (Shakai Taishuto) in 1932. The left failed to elect many candidates before World War II, and all of Japan's traditional parties were dissolved in 1940. In November 1945, shortly after the war ended, Japanese political parties began to re-form under the U.S. occupation. The Japan Socialist Party (JSP) was formed by adherents of three or four prewar proletarian parties. In 1947 the party won 26 percent of the vote and formed a coalition government with the centrist Democratic Party (Minshuto). This period in power broke the coalition and weakened the JSP; in 1951 they split into left and right socialist parties, and each won roughly 13 percent of the vote until the two wings rejoined in 1955. The union lasted until 1959, when the party again split into the left-wing JSP and the right-wing Democratic Socialist Party (Minshu Shakaito). From the 1960s on, the JSPsince 1991 called the Social Democratic Party of Japanthough clearly a minority party, dominated Japanese reform politics, generally winning about 20 to 30 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives. From 1986 to 1991 Doi Takako served as chairman of the party, the first woman to head a major political party in Japan. Although the party had less consistent electoral success after the mid-1980s, from 1993 it was a member of coalition governments that supplanted the LDP's monopoly on power. In 199496 party chairman Murayama Tomiichi was the first socialist prime minister of Japan since 1948.