Japan’s Communists Are Hardly Radical, but Make a Handy Election Target - The New York Times

But by teaming up with other opposition parties for the first time, they have been made a boogeyman by the unpopular party in power.

TOKYO — The Japan Communist Party is the oldest political party in the country.

Though clocking in at only 3 percent support in the polls, the Communists have become a handy boogeyman after teaming up with Japan’s leading opposition parties for the first time in an effort to dethrone the L.D.P.

The Japan Communist Party, founded in 1922, has long provoked government animosity.

The agency is not clear about what actual threat the group poses.

It does note that the Communists were planning to join other opposition parties to challenge the L.D.P., and that they had “added ‘gender equality’ and ‘a nuclear-power-free Japan’” to their platform.

The threat that the Japan Communist Party poses to the L.D.P.

The J.C.P., which has a highly organized base, could play a big role in drawing votes to the opposition, said Tomoaki Iwai, a professor of political science at Nihon University.

and its governing partner, Komeito, are betting that voters’ distaste for big “C” communism and fear of a rising China will drive them away from the opposition coalition, said Taku Sugawara, an independent political scientist.

was concerned, the Communists were just a group that got in the way of the other opposition parties,” he said.

Although there is widespread consensus in Japan that Beijing’s growing power poses a threat to regional stability, the L.D.P.

The Japan Communists, however, prefer a diplomatic approach and are strongly opposed to the substantial American military presence in Japan, a position that makes it an outlier among Japanese political parties.

The Japan Communists have said that their differences with other opposition parties would have no bearing on a new government.