Liberal Party (Japan, 2016)
social-liberal political party in Japan
The Liberal Party (自由党, Jiyū-tō) was a political party in Japan that merged with the Democratic Party For the People on 26 April 2019. It had 2 out of the 475 seats in the House of Representatives, and 3 in the 242-member House of Councillors prior to merging. Formed as the People's Life Party (生活の党) in December 2012, it changed its name to People's Life Party & Taro Yamamoto and Friends (生活の党と山本太郎となかまたち) in December 2014. The party adopted the name Liberal Party in October 2016 in preparation for an expected general election in early 2017.
History
Foundation
The party's foundation lay in the wake of the December 2012 general election, in which the Tomorrow Party of Japan's membership in the 480-seat House of Representatives was reduced from 61 members to just 9. Tension between President Yukiko Kada and former People's Life First party leader Ichirō Ozawa increased to the point that on 26 December 2012 the party's remaining Diet members that were aligned with Ozawa held a meeting in spite of Kada's instruction not to do so. Members aligned with Kada announced their intention to leave the party and the following day Kada and Ozawa agreed to split the party, just one month after it had formed. The majority of the remaining members sided with Ozawa and the party's name was changed to the People's Life Party (生活の党, Seikatsu-no-tō), with the Tomorrow Party's Deputy President Yuko Mori named as the new party's President.
Merger with Taro Yamamoto
The party changed its name to People's Life Party & Taro Yamamoto and Friends in December 2014. The name change was apparently imposed by MP Tarō Yamamoto as a condition for keeping the party from disbanding.
The public source identifies “Liberal Party (Japan, 2016)” as social-liberal political party in Japan. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Liberal, Party and Japan.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2164308. VIAF identifies the subject as 315196201. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019, 2012, 2014 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Liberal Party (Japan, 2016)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.