The first Next Cabinet was formed on 1 October 1999 by
Yukio Hatoyama, an admirer of the
Westminster system, on the model of the
shadow cabinets of Anglo-Saxon countries. When forming the Next Cabinet, earlier experiments conducted by previous main opposition parties since the early 1990s were taken into account, such as the of the
Japan Socialist Party, which existed from 1991 to 1993, and the of the
New Frontier Party and the
Liberal Party, which existed from 1994 to 1999. The transcription of Next Cabinet in Japanese was originally only in
Katakana as the , until it was transcribed into its current form during the party presidency of
Naoto Kan. No Next Cabinet was formed after
Kohei Otsuka succeeded
Seiji Maehara as president of the Democratic Party, leaving it unused from 2017 to 2022. The Next Cabinet would be brought back by the
Constitutional Democratic Party in 2022 under then-party president
Kenta Izumi, in anticipation of the next general election. ==Lists of Next Cabinets==