Democratic Liberal Party (Japan)

The Democratic Liberal Party (Japanese: 民主自由党, Minshujiyutō) was a political party in Japan.

Democratic Liberal Party 民主自由党
Founded	March 15, 1948[1]
Dissolved	March 1, 1950[2]
Merger of	Liberal Party[3] Minshu Club[3]
Merged into	Liberal Party[3]
Headquarters	Tokyo, Japan
Ideology	Conservatism[3]
Politics of Japan Political parties Elections

History

The party was established in March 1948 as a merger of the Liberal Party, Dōshi Club and a faction of the Democratic Party led by Saitō Takao.[4] United by their opposition to the coal nationalisation law, the new party had 152 MPs and 46 members of the House of Councillors.[4]

As a result of the DLP's attempts to block Yamazaki Takeshi from forming a new government after Hitoshi Ashida resigned as Prime Minister, the party's Shigeru Yoshida became Prime Minister in October 1948 and early elections were called in January 1949.[4] The DLP won a landslide victory, taking 269 of the 466 seats, the first time a party had held a majority of seats since World War II.[4] Shigeru Yoshida continued as Prime Minister.

In March 1950 the party merged with the Alliance faction of the Democratic Party to form the new Liberal Party.[5]

Leader

No.	Name	Portrait	Term of office
			Took Office	Left Office
1	Shigeru Yoshida		1948	1950

Election result

General election results

Election year	Candidates	# of seats won	Change	Status
1949	420	264 / 446		Government

Notes

1. Uno 1991, p. 1094.
2. Uno 1991, p. 1098.
3. Yoshida, Kenji. "Minshu-jiyūtō towa" 民主自由党(ミンシュジユウトウ)とは. kotobank.jp (in Japanese). The Asahi Shimbun Company. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
4. Haruhiro Fukui (1985) Political parties of Asia and the Pacific, Greenwood Press, pp481–482
5. Fukui, p568

References

• Uno, Shun'ichi (1991). Nihon zenshi = Japan chronik (in Japanese). Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd. ISBN 4-06-203994-X.