October 13, 2025
TOKYO – With a new prime minister to be elected soon in an extraordinary Diet session, opposition parties have a shot at forming their own coalition.
Yuichiro Tamaki, leader of the Democratic Party for the People, has said he is prepared to lead the government and is assessing the situation. The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan is seeking to unify the opposition around Tamaki. If the Japan Innovation Party joins in, it could lead to a change of government.
However, the motives of the three parties are complicated, and it is unclear how negotiations will pan out.
DPFP demands policy unity
“I am always prepared to serve as prime minister,” Tamaki said during a stump speech in Osaka on Saturday. However, the DPFP has not made explicit which parties he would work with in the prime ministerial election. When asked by reporters after the speech about potential partners, Tamaki did not offer a clear answer.
Tamaki has cited shared views on key issues of national policy — such as the Constitution, energy, foreign affairs and security — as a condition for forming a coalition government or cooperation in elections.
This comes from the DPFP’s concerns that if Tamaki becomes prime minister by simply racking up votes from opposition parties, it would lead to criticism against Tamaki and the party and he would not be able to run the government smoothly.
The DPFP was also surprised by the CDPJ’s move to potentially vote for Tamaki as a united-front candidate in the prime ministerial election.
Both parties trace their origins to the now defunct Democratic Party of Japan, but fundamental policy differences remain. Tamaki has urged the CDPJ to align with the views of the DPFP, indicating a reluctance to cooperate with the CDPJ under the current circumstances. Kazuya Shimba, secretary general of the DPFP, has said explicitly, “We are not considering working together based on calculations and numbers.”
Tamaki planned to discuss policy with the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito had the LDP-Komeito coalition continued.
He secretly met with LDP President Sanae Takaichi on the evening of Oct. 5. There was a view in the DPFP that the party could join the ruling bloc after achieving its key policies — abolishing the provisional gasoline tax and raising the income tax exemption threshold to ¥1.78 million.
However, Komeito’s decision to leave the coalition scrambled these calculations. In his Saturday stump speech, Tamaki said: “With Komeito not part of the coalition, even adding our votes [to the votes of the LDP in the prime ministerial election] wouldn’t secure a majority. Discussions about whether to join the coalition have become largely meaningless.”
Depending on how the opposition parties unite, Tamaki could be the next prime minister. “In the prime ministerial election, no party holds the deciding vote. It feels like solving a tough puzzle,” said a senior DPFP member. The DPFP is carefully gauging the other parties’ moves.
CDPJ focuses on change of power
As the largest opposition party, members of the CDPJ are supposed to vote for their leader, Yoshihiko Noda, in the election to choose the next prime minister during the upcoming extraordinary Diet session. However, the CDPJ is aiming for a change of government by uniting the opposition forces. It has therefore proposed an unconventional strategy: voting for Tamaki.
“This is a rare opportunity,” Noda said during a TV program on Saturday. “We can change the government now if [the opposition parties] can cooperate by overcoming our differences and finding common ground.”
Voting for a prime minister in both houses of the Diet was also held last year, and Shigeru Ishiba, who had just been elected as the president of the LDP, was chosen. At that time, the CDPJ asked other opposition parties to cast their ballots for Noda, a request that was accepted only by the Japanese Communist Party and some other lawmakers.
After Takaichi was elected as the new LDP president this month, the LDP held talks with Komeito regarding whether the latter would remain in the coalition if she is chosen as the prime minister. While the talks were still in difficult stages, CDPJ Secretary General Jun Azumi told other opposition parties that his party would not stick to the idea of voting for Noda in the election for the prime minister.
Azumi even proposed to the DPFP that his party would consider Tamaki as a strong candidate if the opposition could be united behind Tamaki. Both parties get support from the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo).
Many CDPJ members believe that Azumi made such proposals because of the party’s priority on realizing a change of government, as the opposition would not be united behind the idea of making Noda the next prime minister.
Noda has also hinted that his party and Komeito could cooperate, as they are both calling for political reform.
However, Tamaki is urging the CDPJ to share the same political stances with his party if the CDPJ decides to vote for him as a unified opposition candidate for the prime minister. The Japan Innovation Party and the DPFP consider sharing the same stances on fundamental policies as an absolute condition for being united behind Tamaki, while the CDPJ is hinting that it would be able to cooperate on certain specific issues, such as measures against rising prices.
The JIP and the DPFP’s political stances are largely different from those of the CDPJ, as the latter advocates zero nuclear power generation and calls for scrapping “unconstitutional parts of provisions” in security-related laws.
Some CDPJ members criticize their leadership’s idea of voting for the head of a rival party for the prime minister. “They don’t want to come to power on their own,” said a mid-ranking member.
CDPJ members hold various political stances, ranging from leftists to conservatives. If the leadership pushes hard for making Tamaki the next prime minister, the party’s left-leaning members may react sharply, which could lead to the party splitting up.
JIP watching talks
The JIP seems to be taking a “multilayered approach,” with its basic stance one of voting for party Co-Representative Fumitake Fujita to be the next prime minister, while it also takes an interest in a unified opposition candidate and looks to cooperate with the LDP.
JIP Representative Hirofumi Yoshimura, who is also governor of Osaka, said on a TV program on Friday, “If the CDPJ and the DPFP can unite, we will listen to their proposal,” referring to the CDPJ’s backing of Tamaki as a unified candidate.
Yoshimura asserts that his party shares policy views with the DPFP on issues such as social security reform and heavily investing in areas that would benefit working generations. However, he is also not optimistic that the CDPJ and DPFP will unite behind Tamaki due to differences in their basic policies.
Within the JIP, some are calling for cooperation with the LDP as their views on the Constitution, security and diplomacy are similar. The JIP may have a greater chance of teaming up with the LDP now that Komeito, which is skeptical of the JIP’s flagship “second capital” initiative and competes with the JIP in House of Representatives constituencies in Osaka Prefecture, has decided to leave the coalition. “One barrier is gone,” a midcareer JIP member said.
On a TV program on Friday, when Fujita was asked how the JIP would respond if Takaichi approached him about coalition talks, he said, “The hurdle is quite high, but it is common courtesy to sit down together at the table.”
However, as the JIP had considered joining the ruling bloc if Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Shinjiro Koizumi was elected LDP president, a senior JIP member said, “We should remain quiet for now to avoid giving the impression we just want to become a ruling party.”