He was initially a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), serving as its secretary general from 1989 to 1991. He left the LDP in 1993 and subsequently served as head of a number of other political parties, first by co-founding the Japan Renewal Party with Tsutomu Hata, which formed a short-lived coalition government with several other parties opposed to the LDP. Ozawa later served as president of the opposition New Frontier Party from 1995 to 1997, president of the Liberal Party from 1998 to 2003 (which was part of a coalition government with the LDP of Keizō Obuchi from 1999 to 2000), president of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) from 2006 to 2009 and secretary-general of the DPJ in government from 2009 to 2010.