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 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 Japan, which was founded in September 1996 by politicians of the centre-right and centre-left with roots in the Liberal Democratic Party and Japan Socialist Party. In April 1998 the previous DPJ merged with splinters of the New Frontier Party to create a new party which retained the DPJ name. In 2003 the party was joined by the Liberal Party of Ichirō Ozawa. Following the 2009 election, the DPJ became the ruling party in the