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The Liberal Democratic Party and the making of Japanese conservatism, 1955

The creation of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in November 1955 remains one of the most significant moments in modern Japanese political history. Five years past the midpoint of the twentieth century, Japanese leaders joined hands to unite a divided conservative movement into one of the most efficient machines of political power in modern times. The striking persistence and durability of conservative ideas, political institutions, and personnel has insured us to the contingencies, uncertainties, and alternatives that existed prior to 1955.

This talk tells the story of Japanese conservatism through the prism of the Liberal Democratic Party, focusing on the political compromises, maneuvers, and debates preceding the merger of the conservative parties. It explores the implications of this juncture through the lens of prominent Japanese conservative intellectuals and politicians - Hayakawa Takashi, Yabe Teiji, and Shigemitsu Mamoru. Read closely in their historical context, these burgeoning debates were grounded in the recent past, the suspension of party government in 1932 and drive for an all-powerful mass party in 1940. Through their contrasting political agendas, this talk demonstrates how the reconstruction of political order in 1955 can be situated within a longer trajectory of constitutional experimentation across the first half of Japan’s twentieth century. The implications of such a perspective allow us to engage historically with the political and intellectual energies, not to mention personal experiences, that were central to modern Japanese conservatism.

Speaker

Dr Andrew Levidis is a historian of Modern Japan with broad interests in political and intellectual history, international history, and twentieth century East Asia. He completed his doctorate in History at Kyoto University and after a career that has included postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard and Cambridge, he is presently a Lecturer and research fellow at the Australian National University.

His forthcoming monograph, A Memory of Empire: Kishi Nobusuke and the Making of Japanese Conservatism, 1918-1960 is an international history of modern Japanese conservatism told through the life and career of Kishi Nobusuke (1896-1987), principal champion of total war mobilisation in the 1930s and 1940s, a suspected class-A war criminal, and one of the founder of the conservative hegemony which – in the form of the Liberal Democratic Party – has ruled Japan virtually unchallenged until the present. He is the co-editor with Barak Kushner of In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire: Imperial Violence, State Destruction, and the Reordering of Modern East Asia (2020); and recently published a major research article The War is Not Over: Kishi Nobusuke and the National Defense Brotherhood, 1944-45 in the Journal of Japanese Studies (Vol 49 no. 1, winter 2023).

Image - Establishment of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), November 1955 (supplied by Andrew Levidis)

Light refreshments provided at 12.50pm AEST.

Contact the ANU Japan Institute Seminar Series Convener: Dr Andrew Levidis at andrew.levidis@anu.edu.au

The ANU Japan Institute Seminar Series is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia-Japan Foundation of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

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The Liberal Democratic Party and the making of Japanese conservatism, 1955

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