Japan Innovation Party: Can JIP Stop Domino Effect of Party Members Leaving?

Editorial

17:21 JST, September 22, 2025

Should the Japan Innovation Party cooperate with the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, with a view to joining a coalition government? Or should the JIP remain an opposition party, continuing to advocate self-sacrificing reforms with the aim of regaining its momentum?

A policy disagreement within the JIP over how to distance itself from the LDP-Komeito coalition government appears to have caused three House of Representatives members to exit the JIP.

The party now faces a critical moment as to whether it can resolve the turmoil at an early stage and avoid an internal split.

The three JIP members — including Tadashi Morishima, a lower house member elected in Osaka Constituency No. 2 — submitted their letters of resignation from the JIP, citing such reasons as “the party has lost its commitment to reforms, which it has held since its founding.” Party executives responded by refusing to accept the resignations and expelled all three members.

Fumitake Fujita became the JIP’s co-representative in August after Seiji Maehara resigned from the post to take responsibility for the party’s poor performance in the House of Councillors election.

In contrast to Maehara, who advocated bringing together “non-LDP and non-communist” forces, Fujita has expressed a positive stance on joining the coalition, saying it “could be an option” based on their agreeing on security measures and other policies.

Morishima and the two others left the JIP mainly due to dissatisfaction with this sudden policy shift.

It is said to be difficult for a third force to gain a foothold in Japanese politics. Parties like the Japan New Party and Your Party lost within a few years the initial momentum they had immediately after their formation and eventually dissolved.

Since the first iteration of the JIP was formed in 2012, the party has been faced with the danger of breaking up several times, but it has narrowly weathered those crises, maintaining a certain level of strength.

However, a decline in the JIP’s strength has become increasingly conspicuous recently. In July’s upper house election, the party failed to win a seat in constituencies outside Osaka and Kyoto prefectures, and its number of proportional representation votes nearly halved from the previous election in 2022, dropping to 4.37 million.

There are concerns within the party that the defection of the three lawmakers could trigger a domino effect of further members leaving the party one after another.

The JIP has touted a “second capital” initiative in case of a major disaster or other situations, and has indicated the possibility of Osaka Prefecture being chosen. The party probably aims to regain support from local residents by revitalizing Osaka Prefecture.

The JIP is not the only party in a bind; the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan also remains in a quagmire. In the proportional representation segment of the upper house election, the CDPJ garnered fewer votes than the Democratic Party for the People and Sanseito.

Pressured by calls within the party to take responsibility, CDPJ President Yoshihiko Noda appointed experienced politician Jun Azumi as the party’s secretary general. However, some within the party have responded coolly to this, saying, “No sense of renewal is felt with the leadership of Noda and Azumi, who were at the core of the [now-defunct] Democratic Party of Japan administration.”

During the upper house election campaign, the CDPJ and the JIP promoted consumption tax cuts but failed to specify clear funding sources. For both parties to regain public support, the only way forward is to demonstrate their ability to govern by mapping out grounded policies backed by solid funding sources, rather than resorting to simplistic tax cuts.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Sept. 22, 2025)