By Peter Hadfield

TOKYO–Taro Kono thinks his father's generation is old-fashioned, stuffy, and out of touch–not an unusual cry for many rebellious youth. But the Kono family is different. Taro is an up-and-coming young politician and his father, Yohei, is Japan's foreign minister. Like many young legislators in Japan, Taro is worried that his birthright as a future government leader is slipping away.

For most of the last 55 years, his father's party–the Liberal Democratic Party–has held a monopoly on power. Many fathers passed their constituencies on to their sons and daughters, who were virtually assured of election. But today's younger generation says the LDP is losing its status as Japan's standard-bearing party and could lose its leading political role, as has happened to Mexico's once unrivaled Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

They blame their parents. "The LDP will not be able to survive the years to come . . . unless it undergoes drastic reforms," Taro Kono told one Japanese newspaper. "We (younger legislators) must speak up and say: 'Don't you realize that we are in a critical situation?' " Kono and 39 other junior LDP politicians have formed The Group to Create the LDP's Tomorrow in order to press for reform. Among their ranks are the sons and daughters of a former prime minister, a former foreign minister, and other LDP luminaries.

The main complaint of the group is that the party is run by elderly members who are out of touch with the needs of voters. The LDP continues to borrow money for pork-barrel construction projects designed to lift Japan out of its economic malaise, while urban voters are more concerned about the mounting debt this is causing. "The more our leaders call for public-works projects in rural areas, the more votes we seem to lose," says Nobuteru Ishihara, the son of a former transport minister and a founding member of the group.

The LDP lost its overall majority in the last election and now rules as the senior partner in a coalition government. Many political analysts believe it will be difficult for the LDP to regain its place as the natural party of government. "The results of the last election were a reflection of a loathing of voters living in cities towards anything connected with the LDP," says Ishihara."It's not only urban votes we lost in the last election, it was a lot of rural votes as well. Unless this is acknowledged by the leadership of the LDP, there won't be any future for the LDP."