Originally published on July 9, 2019.
This passage, based on a dialogue between Takashi Tsutsumi and Kōshi Kubo published in Hanada, examines why a two-party system has never truly taken root in Japan, drawing on prewar failures, the postwar Liberal Democratic Party system, and the confusion of contemporary British politics.
Interwoven with recollections of Tsutsumi’s exchange with former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, it speaks candidly about how changes of government should occur, the flexibility of conservative politics, and the decline of governing capacity brought about by party fragmentation.
It is a thought-provoking piece for considering Japan’s political climate and the realities of parliamentary government.

2019-07-09
I said, “The two-party system has already been tested, and it does not suit the character of the Japanese people.
It was one-party rule by the Liberal Democratic Party that carried out Japan’s postwar recovery.
It is enough for changes of government to take place within the Liberal Democratic Party.”
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The Two-Party System Does Not Fit
Tsutsumi
Britain is finally in visible decline.
Japanese politicians and scholars have all treated British parliamentary politics as their model, and Churchill as the ideal statesman, and whenever the subject came up they would say that Japan should aim for a two-party system.
But now Britain has long since ceased to be merely a two-party system and has effectively become a multi-party one.
Kubo
The idea of taking Britain as a model did not begin only with politicians like Ozaki Gakudo, but goes back even further, beginning with figures such as Fukuzawa Yukichi and Natsume Soseki, and has broadly permeated the consciousness of the Japanese people.
Even I think a two-party system is preferable.
For a long time it has been said that a single-member district system is effective for a two-party system, while proportional representation is effective for a multi-party system.
For example, regarding British single-member constituencies, Harold J. Laski said, “The purpose of an election is not to secure accurately representative members of parliament, but to give power to the cabinet most favored by the electorate.”
In other words, if one values governing capacity and stability, then the pattern of “single-member districts and a two-party system” is, broadly speaking, more suitable.
But as Mr. Tsutsumi points out, even in Britain itself, the original home of the model, parliamentary politics based on a two-party system has now become harder to operate smoothly and is moving toward multi-party fragmentation.
One of the reasons, it is said, is the progress of mass democracy, which has diversified public consciousness.
But if one asks whether a multi-party system based on proportional representation is better, in reality it leads to the乱立 of small parties, a further decline in governing capacity, and increasing political instability.
That can easily be imagined if one looks at the sorry state of Japan’s current opposition parties, beginning with Edano’s Constitutional Democratic Party.
Indeed, Britain held a referendum two years ago on whether to maintain the two-party system, and the British people chose its continuation.
And yet, for some reason, the two-party system just does not succeed in Japan.
It does not fit the political climate, one might say.
Tsutsumi
Japan, too, had a two-party system before the war.
There was the Minseito and the Seiyukai.
But they began exposing one another’s scandals without restraint.
As a result, the military was able to take advantage of the situation, and it ended in the defeat of August 15.
It simply does not suit the nature of the Japanese people.
I seem to remember having spoken about this before, but I once debated Nobusuke Kishi about whether a two-party system was desirable.
I said, “The two-party system has already been tested, and it does not suit the character of the Japanese people.
It was one-party rule by the Liberal Democratic Party that carried out Japan’s postwar recovery.
It is enough for changes of government to take place within the Liberal Democratic Party.”
Kishi said, “It would be fine if the left wing of the LDP and the right wing of the Socialist Party came together and formed a new party, creating a two-party system.
When there is one-party domination, grime inevitably accumulates.”
So I replied, “No one dies because a little grime has built up,” and the two of us laughed loudly together（笑）。
Within the broad tent called the Liberal Democratic Party, which holds up both democracy and the free-market economy, it is enough for faction A and faction B to alternate in power.
In fact, the 1955 system, which did exactly that, worked rather well, did it not.
There is no reason not to continue it.
Even so, Theresa May, who resigned as leader of the Conservative Party, was really something awful.
Watching how she went about things reminded me of an animal experiment I read about as a child.
If food is placed on the other side of a sheet of glass, a mouse will keep crashing its nose into the glass.
A cat, by contrast, hits it once, thinks for a moment, goes around the glass, and reaches the food.
May is a mouse.
After all, she submitted essentially the same Brexit bill three times and had it rejected, and then as she tried to put forward a fourth, she lost support within the cabinet and the ruling party and was driven to resign.
Kubo
With troublesome bills, there is usually someone like a floor manager willing to play the dirty role behind the scenes, pulling strings and sometimes even using dirty methods to get it passed, but May probably had no such person around her.
Tsutsumi
Still more pathetic is the Conservative Party leadership race to choose her successor.
They compete in piling up promises that they are unlikely to be able to fulfill.
To top it off, there are even candidates whose past habitual drug use has come to light, and the whole thing is in uproar.
For now, according to the bookmakers, Boris Johnson, who insists that Britain will leave on October 31 whether there is a deal or not, is running in the lead.
To be continued.