Tokyo [Japan], February 10 : The Centrist Reform Alliance secured just 49 seats in Sunday's House of Representatives election, marking the lowest total for a main opposition party in Japan in the postwar era, according to Kyodo News.
Formed in January through the merger of lower house members from the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Komeito party, the alliance's poor performance has left it without the numbers required to introduce budget-related bills or move a no-confidence resolution against the Cabinet.
Placing the setback in perspective, Kyodo News reported that the alliance's seat tally fell sharply from 167 previously.
While it secured nearly half as many votes as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's Liberal Democratic Party in both single-seat districts and proportional representation blocs, it translated into only about a sixth of the LDP's 316 seats, which rose from 198 before the polls.
As a result of the outcome, opposition parties together now control 109 seats in the 465-member lower house.
The Japan Innovation Party, which serves as the LDP's coalition partner, holds 36 seats, while independents account for four.
Such an imbalance has precedent in Japan's electoral history.
In the 2009 lower house election, which produced a dominant single-party victory, the Democratic Party of Japan, predecessor to the CDPJ, won 308 seats, leaving the LDP as the main opposition with 119 seats.
Even before the current electoral system was introduced in 1996, replacing multi-member districts of varying sizes, similar outcomes were recorded.
In 1986, the LDP won 300 seats, reducing the main opposition Japan Socialist Party to just 85 seats.
More recently, Kyodo News noted that in 2012, when the LDP returned to power with 294 seats, the main opposition DPJ was reduced to 57 seats.
A comparable pattern emerged in 2017, when the LDP secured 281 seats while the main opposition CDPJ finished with 54.