Their foreign policy pretty much sucks, except for their support to Palestine, Cuba and I believe they even let foreigners join the party. They do have cool pro-workers and pro-lgbtq+ policies and are pretty much against the US and Historical Revisionism on Japanese war crimes. I believe they even dislikes the Japanese flag, Monarchy and Anthem, they also advocates for better relations with DPRK and China (even though they are now critical of the CPC, which was pretty dumb because the CPC was their biggest supporter).
This is pretty much accurate. They have moved rapidly more towards revisionism to try to garner more popular support in recent years, which hasn't really been worth it, but do have probably the best policies of any of our majors parties. And they ARE a pretty major party here, technically speaking one of the biggest communist parties in a non-Communist state. Their position about the CPC is a huge miss, admittedly.
Local chapters can be a lot better depending where you are. Marx remains extremely popular throughout academia and is very often taught by economists at universities here quite positively. I am not sure how much of it sticks with the college aged though, I did my undergraduate in another country, only did graduate school here.
The LDP (our governing body since WW2) has sucked since inception, but I still hold out hope for the more revolutionary elements in the country. If it wasn't for the US-led red purge in the aftermath of WW2, we likely would be socialist already.
The JCP are a product of their conditions, I think booting America out and ending the lib dem puppet state is a prerequisite for any improvement in Japanese politics.
I don't like it, they look white and wear the most iconic USA outfit possible (white tee and denim trucker jacket), this combined with "Change" in English and scyscraper skyline just doesn't scream sovereinty to me.