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New Party Sakigake 新党さきがけ Shintō Sakigake
Founder	Masayoshi Takemura
Founded	1993
Dissolved	31 October 2004
Split from	Liberal Democratic Party (Liberal conservative faction) Japan New Party Socialist Democratic Federation
Ideology	Liberalism Reformism Shitsujitsu kokka [ja]
Political position	Centre to centre-left
Colours	Light blue (official)   Dark blue (customary)
Politics of Japan Political parties Elections

The New Party Sakigake (新党さきがけ, Shintō Sakigake), also known as the New Harbinger Party, was a political party in Japan that broke away from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on 22 June 1993. The party was created by Masayoshi Takemura. The party was centrist, and had many reformist and even moderate ecological elements. The theoretical leader was Shusei Tanaka. Yukio Hatoyama and Naoto Kan also took part but later moved to the Democratic Party of Japan.

History

After the 1993 general election, Sakigake joined a Cabinet led by Morihiro Hosokawa. It was the first government without the LDP since 1955. Sakigake's Masayoshi Takemura became Minister. Sakigake supported the following Tsutomu Hata Cabinet, but didn't join the Cabinet.

In 1994, New Party Sakigake took part in the government of Murayama Tomiichi, a government coalition of the LDP and the Japan Socialist Party, which replaced the coalition government headed the previous year by the Japan Renewal Party.

In September 1996, Sakigake and Japan Socialist Party politicians who did not support their respective parties alliances with the LDP broke away to found the Democratic Party of Japan.

The exodus of these liberal members moved the party further to the right. In 1997, the New Party Sakigake had two members in the House of Representatives and three members in the House of Councillors, which was good for them, especially after the LDP became the ruling party again. However, it decided to moderate its stance, and, because of the power of the ecologist and reformist factions, the conservatives decided to reform the party. As part of the ruling coalition in 1998, it had 2 seats in the House of Representatives and 3 in the House of Councillors. In October 1998, the party reformed itself with a more conservative image, dropping the 'New' from its title to become simply the Sakigake Party.

Its popularity heavily declined after that, and by 2001, the party had no seats in either the Lower or Upper House. In 2002, the ecologists took control, and turned the party into an ecologist party. It changed its name to Midori no kaigi [es; ja], the Environmental Green Political Assembly, which, because it won no seats in the 2004 Parliamentary elections, dissolved itself on 31 October 2004.

The party gained its followers mainly from white collar bureaucrats and ecologists. It was a conservative reformist party with ecological elements.

List of leaders of NPS

Election results

House of Representatives

House of Representatives

Election year	Candidates	# of seats won	Change	Status
1993	16	13 / 511		Government
1996	15	2 / 500	11	Non-cabinet affiliated
2000	12	0 / 480	2	Opposition

House of Councillors

See also

• Midori no kaigi [ja]
• Politics of Japan
• List of political parties in Japan
• Timeline of liberal parties in Japan

Notes

1. Shitsujitsu kokka (a nation of quality and substance) is a political ideal of the New Party Sakigake. According to Shusei Tanaka's remark, it means aiming for high-quality and substantive nation-building.

References

1. Hoover, William D., ed. (2011). Historical Dictionary of Postwar Japan. Scarecrow Press. p. 211. ISBN 978-0-8108-7539-5.
2. Scheiner, Ethan (2006). Democracy Without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State. Cambridge University Press. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-521-60969-2. Retrieved 20 September 2021. In 1993, partly inspired by the JNP's initial success, sitting LDP incumbents split form the party to form two new ones, the 35-member Shinsei party, and the smaller and more liberal Sakigake.
3. Park, Gene (2011). Gaunder, Alisa (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Politics. Taylor & Francis. p. 274. ISBN 978-0-203-82987-5. Retrieved 20 September 2021. This problem was difficult for Hashimoto, since his government formed through coalition with two junior partners—the reformist New Party Harbinger (Shintō Sakigake) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP, formerly the Japan Socialist Party/JSP).
4. Mendl, Wolf (1997). Japan's Asia Policy: Regional Security and Global Interests. Routledge. p. 272. ISBN 0-415-16466-4. Retrieved 20 September 2021. It is more significant that the three new reformist parties which contested the election—Shinseito (Japan Renewal Party), Nihon Shinto (Japan New Party) and Sakigake (Harbinger Party)—were all led by former politicians of the LDP.
5. Schreurs, Miranda A. (2014). Kopstein, Jeffrey; Lichbach, Mark; Hanson, Stephen E. (eds.). Comparative Politics: Interests, Identities, and Institutions in a Changing Global Order (fourth ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-521-13574-0. Retrieved 20 September 2021. New Party Sakigake, a conservative, reformist party with ecologist sympathies that formed in 1993, for example, changed its name to the Sakigake Party in 1998.
6. Metzger-Court, Sarah; Pascha, Werner (2016). Japan's Socio-Economic Evolution: Continuity and Change. Routledge. p. 178. ISBN 978-1138973732. Retrieved 23 July 2020.
7. Tanaka, Shusei (12 July 2019). 今も生きる新党さきがけの五つの理念 [The five ideas of the New Party Sakigake that still alive]. webronza.asahi.com (in Japanese). Asahi Shimbun Publications Inc. p. 3. Retrieved 23 July 2020. 質の高い、実（じつ）のある国づくりを目指すという言うことだ。
8. Ido, Masanobu (2014). Magara, Hideko (ed.). Economic Crises and Policy Regimes: The Dynamics of Policy Innovation and Paradigmatic Change. Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 247. ISBN 978-1-78254-992-5. OCLC 1036733892. Retrieved 20 September 2021. The original DPJ was established in 1996 after Yukio Hatoyama, of the small centre party Sakigake, called for a new party, which led to the participation of politicians form both Sakigake and the JSP.
9. The New Party Sakigake has been widely described as centre-left:
   • Jean-Marie Bouissou, ed. (2002). Japan: The Burden of Success. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. p. 284. ISBN 9781850655695. The founders of the Sakigake were made of centre-left, liberal and pacifist material.
   • Kamikubo, Masato (2019). Kuhnle, Stein; Selle, Per; Hort, Sven E.O. (eds.). Globalizing welfare: an evolving Asian-European dialogue. Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 91. ISBN 978-1-78897-584-1. OCLC 1119625016. Retrieved 20 September 2021. It consisted of the former Socialist Party of Japan (SPJ) group (left wing), former Japan New Party and the New Party Sakigake (centre left) and the former New Frontier Party (conservative, consisting of a former Democratic Socialist Party group and a former LDP group) (Takenaka 2005).
   • Ian Neary, ed. (2015). The State and Politics In Japan. John Wiley & Sons. p. 98. ISBN 9781509535859. On 21 June a small centre-left party was formed calling itself Shintō Sakigake (New Harbinger Party).
   • Allen Hicken; Erik Martinez Kuhonta, eds. (2015). Japan: The Burden of Success. Cambridge University Press. p. 98. ISBN 9781107041578. Some center-left opposition parties, including JSP and Sakigake dissidents, formed the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
10. Holler, Manfred Joseph (2002). Power and Fairness. Mohr Siebeck. p. 304. ISBN 3-16-147729-4.
11. Gerald L. Curtis (2013). The Logic of Japanese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limits of Change. Columbia University Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-231-50254-2.

External links

• Archive.org copy of former website

• Liberal parties in Japan
• Centrist parties in Japan
• Centre-left parties in Asia
• Defunct political parties in Japan
• Political parties established in 1993
• Political parties disestablished in 2004
• 1993 establishments in Japan
• 2004 disestablishments in Japan