Thank you to Paul Midford for bringing up my discussion of factions at the end of last week. To be truthful I have only just read it! The work I did on them is also quite old now as I did these interviews up to early 2008.

I have to say, I do feel the party is in a constant state of change and cannot be compared with the stability of the 5 LDP factions of the 1980s.
Nonetheless, what we would see now with the LDP is change. What I think is important regarding the factions is some are more to the left and some more to the right, some are based on old contacts, a la LDP linkage system.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone wrote a book on the current state of factions in Japan?

Sarah Hyde