Is the Power of the DPFP for Real?

It was not so long ago that the Democratic Party for the People (DPFP) in Japan was understood to be on the precipice of political extinction. The party had launched in May 2018 as a merger between the Party of Hope and the Democratic Party – both spin-offs from the Democratic Party of Japan that attempted a rebranding in 2017 – but failed to gain traction with the voters. Their approval rating remained in single digits for more than six years. And so in 2020 and 2023 the party experienced a drove of defections, which made their already minor presence in the Diet even more meager.

However, everything changed with the election last October. Amid the anti-establishment sentiment that followed the Liberal Democratic Party’s “slush-fund” scandal and the creeping increase of the price of living, the DPFP finally made a breakthrough. Riding on a savvy online media campaign that augmented their messaging strategy – a doubling down on the promise to “increase take home pay” – the party saw the number of proportional ballots that they received – more than 6 million votes – increase by 137.97 percent compared to the previous general election. With the new electoral success came another boost in their popularity following the media coverage that sought to explain their rise. The DPFP suddenly become the most popular opposition party for the first time in December 2024, and kept that title in January and February 2025, according to polls from major news organizations.

Besides the earned media coverage, what seems to amplify the DPFP’s appeal is their combative posture. The party is determined to impose their agenda on the LDP, which now heads a minority government. DPFP leaders have repeatedly warned the ruling coalition that if they do not realize their campaign promise – to raise the threshold for income tax payment, the so-called “1.03 million yen wall” problem – they will not support the passage of the fiscal year 2025 budget. If the DPFP lends the LDP’s ruling coalition their votes, the budget proposal will pass. If they don’t, it will fail – a result that would raise serious doubts about the Ishiba administration’s competence.

To demonstrate that they are not bluffing about withholding their votes, DPFP representatives stormed out of a room where talks concerning their signature campaign promise with the LDP and its coalition partner, Komeito, were about to take place. Explaining their reasons for torpedoing the meeting, DPFP Tax Policy Chief Furukawa Motohisa – who is also acting leader of the party – protested the ruling coalition’s hesitation to raise the income tax bracket out of concern that it would result in a 7 to 8 trillion yen decrease in tax revenue.

The DPFP has adopted a posture of challenging the status quo and the authorities on behalf of the “working generation” and the “youth,” which they purport to speak for. This has given them a sense of invincibility. It is noteworthy that the DPFP’s surge in popularity has coincided with the revelation of a sex scandal – behavior that the Japanese public generally frowns upon – involving Tamaki Yuichiro, the leader of the DPFP, and the suspension of his duties as a result.

In order to steal the thunder of the DPFP, and avoid a de facto tax break that would worsen the ballooning deficit, the LDP is working on a possible deal with Nippon Ishin no Kai, another opposition party. Nippon Ishin has signaled its intention to cast the deciding votes for the passage of the budget in exchange of allocating funds to enact “free tuition for high schools,” which is believed to come with a smaller price tag than the DPFP’s plan. If the LDP opts to side with Nippon Ishin instead of DPFP – granting free tuition while leaving the income tax bracket with a minimal increase – they will scuttle the DPFP's objective.

Even if the LDP rejects their proposal, the DPFP still seems to believe that the political messaging that proved successful in last October’s general election will bring a similar result in the future. At the DPFP’s party convention held on February 11, the assembled members decided that they will continue pushing to “increase take home pay” – leaving the priority unchanged from last year – and will promote as many candidates as possible.

Whether the same tactics will work again is uncertain, however, and DPFP leaders believe that they need to convince the public that they have more to offer. Since the start of 2025, Tamaki has been insisting that politicians should pay more attention to the “ice age generation” – some 17 million Japanese who were affected by the hiring freeze due to the recession caused by the burst of the bubble economy. A vast number of them remain in temporary employment against their will.

Even while broadening their base of support, DPFP leaders are also aiming for a niche market, namely the disaffected conservative voters, by wading into hot-button societal issues – including questioning the push to allow spouses to have different surnames and accusing temporary foreign residents of reaping medical insurance benefits at the expense of native-born citizens.

Although the DPFP has strong backing from the labor unions that speak for private sector workers, the burst of support that they received came from voters who are loyal to their policies rather than the party. The Nagoya city mayor election results attested to these dynamics. Although Otsuka Kohei, who was one of the founding members of the DPFP, ran in the race, and DPFP leaders stumped for him, exit polls showed close to 60 percent of people who had supported the DPFP in the general election voted against the party’s endorsed candidate. Instead, they supported Hirosawa Ichiro, who promised further tax reductions. The victorious Hirosawa was the chosen successor of popular incumbent Mayor Kawamura Takashi, who launched a local party called “Tax Cuts Japan.”

The DPFP voters’ defiance of the party was evident in the exit polls: 44.8 percent of Constitutional Democratic Party voters, 42.8 percent of LDP voters, and 60.3 percent of Komeito voters cast their ballots for Otsuka, while only 37.3 percent of DPFP voters did the same.

The upper house elections scheduled for this July will test the authenticity of the DPFP’s appeal. Many parties in Japan’s past election cycles have burst onto the center stage and failed to sustain their appeal. When the Constitutional Democratic Party was born in 2017, they were seen as the insurgents, but now they are seen as one of the the established parties, with all the baggage that entails. Nippon Ishin saw their own breakthrough in 2021 in large part due to Osaka Governor Yoshimura Hirofumi’s successful pandemic response, but their approval rating has plummeted to the single digits, and internal strife is fracturing the party. Although the DPFP seems to believe that the current mood of the country is on their side, a failure to constantly reevaluate the party’s standing in the political arena could easily render them insignificant again.