Political parties of the Empire of Japan public assembly, the press and on political discussion. The Meiji government had come to power by an elite of "samurai" from certain clans ("hanbatsu") and the "genrō" felt threatened by anything looking ever remotely like republicanism or democracy. During this period, Itagaki Taisuke and Ōkuma Shigenobu were leading figures in the legitimization of political parties. Itagaki created Japan's first political party, the Aikoku Kōtō, in 1873 in Tokyo to petition for an elected assembly, and a similar regional party based in Osaka, the Aikokusha. These groups were the basis of the Jiyutō (Liberal Party), founded in 1881 as Japan’s first
Democratic Party of Japan to possibly endanger safety. The DPJ had some political factions or groups, although they were not as factionalized as the LDP, which has traditionally placed high priority on intra-party factional alignment. The groups were, the most influential to the least influential: The Independent’s Club was a minor political party which formed a political entity with the DPJ in both chambers of the house. , the formal name is . All-time highest values are bolded Democratic Party of Japan The was a centrist political party in Japan from 1998 to 2016. The party's origins lie in the previous Democratic Party of