The Rise and Fall of The Japan Right Socialist Party, 1949-1953.

Much research has been focused on the inability of the Socialist Party of Japan to become a viable opposition party to compete against the LDP from 1955-1993 (Scheiner 2003, Christensen 2000). However, many scholars have neglected the electoral cycles before the Liberal-Democratic Party merger (1949-1955). As Kohno (1997) points out, in the first election after World War 2 the Socialist Party had control of the government before they split into Right and Left factions in 1952. Thus, the questions posed in this paper are twofold; (1) Why did the Socialist Party split? and (2) Why did the Right Socialist Party win elections at its inception, but fail at the polls in subsequent elections? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]