June 6, 2025

Japanese Communist Party Executive Committee Chair Tamura Tomoko at a press conference held on June 5 in the Diet building announced its platform for next month’s House of Councilors election.

Tamura said that each political party’s policy in regard to how to cope with the ongoing cost of living crisis will become a major focal point in the Upper House election, and stressed that the JCP platform highlights the importance of protecting people’s livelihoods and seeks to achieve this by such means as lowering the consumption tax rate.

The JCP election platform states that the JCP will:

- cut the consumption tax rate to 5% with the abolition of this tax system in mind;
- change government policies to ones prioritizing people’s livelihoods which will be funded by imposing a fair share of the tax burden on large corporations and the rich and by ending the current and proposed huge military buildup;
- put an end to Japan’s subservience to the United States;
- realize a government which squarely tackles the climate crisis;
- establish a gender-equal society which respects individual people’s dignity and human rights; and
- fundamentally address the issue of political corruption as shown in the Liberal Democratic Party’s slush-fund scandal.

Tamura pointed out that in order to fulfill people’s urgent demands, it is necessary to carry out a reform that takes a scalpel to the LDP politics’ fundamental elements: big business-centered policies and subservience to the U.S. She said that as an opposition party working to respond to people’s demands since its foundation, only the JCP can accomplish the radical reforms needed. She added that a major JCP advance in the Upper House election will be a driving force for changing Japan’s political direction for the better.

Asked by the press about how it plans to inform voters about the JCP’s unique selling points, Tamura said, “We’ll appeal to voters for their support by emphasizing that only the JCP calls for placing a larger tax burden on large corporations to finance the sales tax cut and opposes the government’s policy of military expansion tied to U.S. military objectives”