This article takes up the Shakai Taishu Party’s（STP）社会大衆党 conceptualization of a “National Party”（Kokumin-no-To 国民の党）as the starting point of the plan for a “new political party” announced by Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro 近衛文麿 in 1938. By clarifying the substance, formation and development process of this “National Party” in regional terms, the author attempts to reexamine the origins of the Imperial Advisory Council（Taisei Yokusan Kai 大政翼賛会）formed in October 1940 during Konoe’s second premiership.
　 In the research done to date, the consensus opinion is that the STP’s “National Party” concept, which went hand-in-hand with planning for the “new party” movement during 1938―39, was closely connected to the necessity for mobilizing the Japanese nation in response to the outbreak of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War. In contrast to that opinion, the author investigates the dynamism of the “new party” movement apart from any foreign context, by adding to the equation the activities of regional branches of the STP（in particular the Nagano and Niigata Prefectural contingents）. His findings are as follows.
It was in 1937 at its 6th annual party convention that the STP revised its political platform and embarked on a wide-sweeping transformation. In that spirit, party leader Kamei Kan’ichiro 亀井貫一郎 traveled to Germany to study the political organization of National Socialist（Nazi） Party, and upon his return formed Nazi organization into the concept of a Japanese “National Party” to be realized in conjunction with Konoe’s “new party” operations. Although Konoe’s attempts were not successful, the “National Party” concept was officially adopted at the 7th STP convention in 1938.
While various “new party” movements were getting underway on the regional level, at the beginning of 1939, when plans by the STP national leadership to ally with the populist, totalitarian Toho Kai （est. 1936）東方会 failed, the “new party” movement impetus moved to the STP regional branches. It was in this manner that a “National Party” concept that until then existed only in the minds of the STP leadership, formed the underpinning of an in earnest progressive movement on the regional level. This development was not merely a result of a concept conceived at the top filtering down to the local level, but rather a concept rife with differences of opinion between the top and the rank and file that were considered crucial by the latter.
The author concludes that it was such a substantive transformation of the “National Party” concept that enabled the STP to transition smoothly into Konoe’s national mobilization wartime regime during 1938.

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