International affiliation None Councillors 0 / 242 | Colours Red Representatives 0 / 480 | |
Founded August 21, 2005 (2005-08-21) Ideology Liberalism
Republicanism
Social populism
Liberal socialism
Liberal conservatism | ||
The New Party Nippon (新党日本 Shintō Nippon) is a Japanese political party formed on August 21, 2005. The party is headed by the former Nagano governor Yasuo Tanaka, and includes Diet members Kōki Kobayashi (deputy leader), Takashi Aoyama, Makoto Taki, and Hiroyuki Arai, who left the Liberal Democratic Party in opposition to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s postal privatization drive.
The new party is seen as aiming to appeal toward urban voters, while the People's New Party, formed around the same time by other LDP rebels, has a more rural support base.
In the Japan general election, 2005, only one member, Makoto Taki, was elected (to a proportional seat in Kinki), with Kobayashi and Aoyama, among others, failing to be elected in either single-seat or proportional districts.
On July 2007, Hiroyuki Arai and Minoru Taki left the party.
In the Japanese House of Councillors election, 2007, Yasuo Tanaka, the President, was elected. He is the only party member to currently have a seat in the Diet of Japan.
In Japanese general election, 2012 the party lost its final representative in the Diet.
Motions against Yoshihiko Noda
On August 3, 2012 the party (which has no member in the lower house) in concert with six other minor opposition parties (People's Life First, Kizuna Party, Social Democratic Party, Your Party, Japanese Communist Party and the New Renaissance Party) agreed to submit a no confidence motion against Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda in an effort to block the passage of the bill raising Japan's consumption tax from 5% to 10%. In the Japanese diet the support of 51 lawmakers is required to submit a co-confidence motion to the lower house. The motion was submitted to the lower house on August 7, along with a censure motion against Noda. The main opposition Liberal Democratic Party was also considering its own no-confidence motion and censure motions if Noda did not agree to call a general election. The no-confidence motion was voted down 246 to 86, with the DPJ voting against and the LDP and its partner New Komeito deciding to be absent from the vote after Noda agreed to hold elections "soon".
On August 29, 2012 the House of Councillors passed a censure motion against Noda based on the one previously submitted by the seven opposition parties. The LDP and New Komeito had also been preparing their own censure motion but in the end the LDP, which had supported Noda's consumption tax increase, supported the censure motion of the other seven parties, while New Komeito abstained. While the censure motion was non-binding, the opposition parties planned to boycott the remaining sitting days before the diet session finished on September 8, preventing further legislation from being passed.