7 Japanese Parties Prepare to Complete Their Coalition : Politics: Leaders will meet today on platform. They may name candidate for prime minister.

In the wake of their commitment Wednesday to form a Japanese coalition government, leaders of seven opposition parties prepared to meet today to complete a platform and perhaps name their candidate for prime minister.

The coalition, mustering about 20 more votes in Parliament than the long-ruling Liberal Democrats, would be Japan’s first since 1948.

Speaking as if the coalition were an established fact, Gaishi Hiraiwa, chairman of Keidanren (Federation of Economic Organizations) and the doyen of Japan’s business world, said the prospect of a seven-party government carries with it “a certain amount of uneasiness.”

“But if they are parties committed to parliamentary democracy and a free-market economy, the people will look forward to them as a new spirit in a new government,” he said. “We (in Keidanren), too, hope they will have the power to carry out policies.”

Top leaders of the seven parties are to gather for the first time late this afternoon to iron out a political agenda focusing on sweeping electoral and political reforms. The proposed changes would alter the way voters choose their representatives and would forbid corporate contributions to politicians.

The coalition came together Wednesday when leaders of two key opposition parties said they would join hands with five other parties. Morihiro Hosokawa, a former prefectural (state) governor who established the grass-roots Japan New Party only 14 months ago, and his ally, Masayoshi Takemura, leader of the New Party Harbinger, together hold the swing votes in selection of a new government.

The five other parties are the Socialists, former Marxists struggling to moderate their left-leaning policies; the middle-of-the-road Democratic Socialists; the Buddhist-backed Komei (Clean Government) Party; the Japan Renewal Party of conservative rebels, and the tiny Socialist Democratic Federation.

The prospect of a coalition that includes the Socialists, who for decades have opposed Japan’s military alliance with the United States and insist that Japan’s armed forces are unconstitutional, has stirred worries that the country’s fundamental policies could change. But second-echelon officials of the seven parties have agreed to shelve their own parties’ policies and work within the framework of a coalition agreement.

Japan’s current policies upholding the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, maintaining the nation’s Self-Defense Forces, supporting nuclear power development and retaining a ban on rice imports will be continued, the party representatives said. The policies were put in place by the Liberal Democrats, who ruled Japan for 38 years until they lost their majority in the lower house of Parliament in a July 18 election.

The seven also agreed to carry out a new set of measures to stimulate the economy, including a tax cut--which Clinton Administration officials have been urging. But they remained divided over how to finance the tax cut.

Both Hosokawa and former Finance Minister Tsutomu Hata, who bolted the Liberal Democrats last month to form the Renewal Party, have been mentioned as the coalition’s possible candidate for prime minister.

Hata was being touted because of his experience as a Cabinet minister. Left-wing Socialists, however, oppose him because of his group’s longtime membership in the most corrupt faction of the Liberal Democratic Party. That wing was led successively by former Prime Ministers Kakuei Tanaka and Noboru Takeshita and then by former kingpin Shin Kanemaru, now on trial for tax evasion.

Hosokawa was favored as an alternative to forestall any 11th-hour defections by hard-line Socialists. A ballot in Parliament to choose the prime minister is expected around Aug. 11.

Satsuki Eda, head of the Socialist Democratic Federation, warned against complacency. “We have no idea what kind of trickery the Liberal Democrats may try,” he said. “We cannot relax until Parliament elects the prime minister.”

NHK, the semi-governmental national radio and TV network, calculated that the seven parties would have at least 245 votes in the balloting for prime minister. The Liberal Democrats would have 224. Another 27 legislators have no party affiliation, but most of them are expected to vote with the opposition, NHK said. A majority in the 511-seat lower house is 256.

The 15 Communist legislators have said they will cast blank ballots.

Meanwhile, Yohei Kono, 56, chief Cabinet secretary who registered Wednesday as a candidate to succeed Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa as the Liberal Democrats’ president, said the new party leader should prepare for another general election “at any time.” He called a seven-party coalition “difficult and dangerous” and predicted, “It won’t last long.”

Ironically, Kono himself bolted the ruling party in 1976 in an attempt to establish a second conservative party but returned to the Liberal Democrat fold in 1986.