Japan's communists have always had two things going for them: persistence and constancy. Few political parties anywhere have put in so much effort into winning so few votes. In this month's election large, expensive sound trucks harangued commuters at rail way stations to vote for them.
The JCP is the only political party in Japan that fields candidates in national elections in every one of the 300 electoral districts (the other parties, including LDP make deals with likeminded parties). It must cost the party a fortune in lost deposits.
Moreover, the JCP has traditionally championed just a few key issues such as opposition to the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and protection for the country's pacifist constitution. It was anti-nuclear power even before Fukushima, an issue in which it is basically in tune with a majority of Japanese.
Of course, it can be expected to criticize the government's economic policies as they unfold over the next few months as benefitting the rich but not trickling down to the average worker. That may strike a chord if, in fact, Abenomics does not work as well as the government hopes it will.
But can something called the Communist Party (the common production party in literal translation) really become the viable opposition? Can it fill the role that the now defunct Japan Socialist Party provided for years? The socialists won many more seats (though never enough to form a government on its own) than the JCP ever did.
The over-arching theme of Japanese politics for the past twenty years has been a search for a viable, non-Marxist opposition party that the public could trust with the reins of government. These elements eventually coalesced into the Democratic Party of Japan, which abandoned such electoral baggage as opposition to the self-defense forces and the security treaty.
Eventually it achieved its historic mission removing the LDP from 50 years of nearly uninterrupted power, only to find itself beaten and virtually persona non-grata in its own country.
The coming months there will provide plenty of issues to challenge the Abe government from a center-left perspective. They include Abe's desire to boost the status of the self-defense forces, revive nuclear power and rewrite the American-written constitution.
It is hard to see the democrats becoming such an effective opposition anytime soon. It seems equally unlikely that even those in the Japanese public that oppose such conservative initiatives will turn whole-heartedly to the communists. But if not them, then who?
