Opposition Parties Uniting in Japan : Politics: Plan for coalition appears to ensure the end of Liberal Democrats’ 38-year rule.

Two centrist opposition leaders who hold the votes to determine who will run Japan’s next government informed the country’s perennial leaders, the Liberal Democrats, today that they will side with five opposition parties to form an opposition-led coalition.

Barring any unpredictable 11th-hour snags, the development appeared to ensure the end of the Liberal Democrats’ 38-year rule of Japan.

Not since 1948 has Japan had a coalition government, and not since 1955, when it was formed, has any party except the Liberal Democrats ruled the country.

The development came as three more lower house Liberal Democrat members bolted the party. Also, two candidates filed to run in a election to replace Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa as party president--former Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe, who turned 70 today, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, 56.

Morihiro Hosokawa, leader of the grass-roots Japan New Party, and Masayoshi Takemura, who bolted the Liberal Democrats in June to form his New Party Harbinger, informed Hiroshi Mitsuzuka, chairman of the ruling party’s Policy Board, that they viewed a last-minute Liberal Democrat pledge to carry out political reform as insufficient and untrustworthy.

The Liberal Democrat reform plan, which was approved Tuesday, failed to spell out how seats in the lower house would be allocated between single-seat districts and proportional representation voting and carried no pledge of a deadline for implementation.

Hosokawa said his party and Takemura’s Harbinger group will have no more independent contacts with the Liberal Democrats. “From now on, all contacts will be carried out between the seven parties (of the opposition) and the Liberal Democrats,” he said.

Leaders of the seven parties are to meet within a day or two to finalize a joint policy for a coalition and choose a leader to run for prime minister.

The two centrist leaders control 49 seats, enough to bolster the five-party forces to about 20 more than the Liberal Democrats.

Mutsuki Kato, leader of a “mini-faction,” announced that he and two of his lower house followers had submitted resignations from the party because it refused to support its strongest advocate of reform, former Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, to lead the party again.

With the party awash in scandals, most Liberal Democrats appeared to back Masaharu Gotoda, 78, the deputy prime minister and justice minister, who enjoys an impeccably clean record and is known as a strong supporter of political reform. Gotoda, however, insisted that a younger leader must be chosen to carry out reform. Only when his refusal became final did Kono enter the Liberal Democrats’ race.

Balloting will be carried out Friday to pick the new leader, who will become the party’s candidate for prime minister in a lower house election around Aug. 11.

Should the Liberal Democrats stage a comeback in the next general election--expected within a year--the new party president could become prime minister at that time.

Watanabe, who resigned as foreign minister last spring because of an unspecified illness, recently came out in favor of political reform. But until June, he and his follower, convicted Lockheed bribe-taker Takayuki Sato, the party’s general affairs chairman, were considered strong opponents of reform.

By contrast, Kono bolted the Liberal Democratic Party in 1976 to protest corruption in the wake of the Lockheed Corp. bribery scandal. His attempt to form a new conservative party as an alternate to the Liberal Democrats failed, however, and he rejoined the ruling group in 1986.