Elections in Japan

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The Japanese political system has three types of elections: general elections to the House of Representatives held every four years (unless the lower house is dissolved earlier), elections to the House of Councillors held every three years to choose one-half of its members, and local elections held every four years for offices in prefectures, cities, and villages. Elections are supervised by election committees at each administrative level under the general direction of the Central Election Administration Committee, an attached organization to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC). The minimum voting age in Japan's non-compulsory electoral system was reduced from twenty to eighteen years in June 2016.^[1] Voters must satisfy a three-month residency requirement before being allowed to cast a ballot.

For those seeking office, there are two sets of age requirements: twenty-five years of age for admission to the House of Representatives and most local offices, and thirty years of age for admission to the House of Councillors and the prefectural governorship. Each deposit for candidacy is 3 million yen (30 thousand dollars) for single-seat constituency and 6 million yen (60 thousand dollars) for proportional representation.

National elections

The National Diet (Kokkai) has two chambers. The House of Representatives (Shūgi-in) has 475 members, elected for a four-year term, 295 members in single-seat constituencies and 180 members by proportional representation in 11 block districts. In this system, each voter votes twice, once for a candidate in the local constituency, and once for a party, each of which has a list of candidates for each block district. The local constituencies are decided by plurality, and the block seats are then handed out to party lists proportionally (by the D'Hondt method) to their share of the vote. Often the parties assign the block list spots to single-seat candidates, so that unsuccessful single-seat candidates have a chance to be elected in the proportional block. Parties may also place dual district and block candidates on the same list rank; in that case, the Sekihairitsu system determines the order of candidates. General elections of members of the House of Representatives (Shūgiin giin sō-senkyo) are usually held before the end of a four-year term as the chamber may be dissolved by the cabinet (via the Emperor). Most prime ministers use that option. The only exception in post-war history was the "Lockheed election" of 1976 in which the Liberal Democratic Party lost its seat majority for the first time.

The House of Councillors (Sangi-in) has 242 members, elected for a six-year term, 146 members in 47 single- and multi-seat constituencies (prefectures) by single non-transferable vote and 96 by proportional representation (by D'Hondt method) on the national level. The proportional election to the House of Councillors allows the voters to cast a preference vote for a single candidate on a party list. The preference votes exclusively determine the ranking of candidates on party lists. Half of the House of Councillors comes up for election every three years in regular/ordinary elections of members of the House of Councillors (Sangiin giin tsūjō-senkyo).

Voting in Higashiōsaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, 2014.

The electoral cycles of the two chambers of the Diet are usually not synchronized. Even when the current constitution took effect in 1947, the first House of Councillors election was held several days apart from the 23rd House of Representatives election. Only in 1980 and 1986, general and regular election coincided on the same day because the House of Representatives was dissolved in time for the election to be scheduled together with the House of Councillors election in early summer.

Vacant district seats in both Houses are generally filled in by-elections (hoketsu senkyo). Nowadays, these are usually scheduled in April and October as necessary. Vacant proportional seats in both Houses and district seats in the House of Councillors that fall vacant within three months of a regular election are filled by kuriage-tōsen (roughly "being elected as runner-up"): the highest ranking candidate on a proportional list or in the electoral district who was not elected and is not disqualified takes the seat. Disqualifications may, for example, happen if a candidate for the House of Councillors runs for the House of Representatives or vice versa, or after a violation of campaign laws.

For many years, Japan was a one party dominant state until 1993 with the Liberal Democratic Party as the ruling party. It won a majority of the popular vote in House of Representatives general elections until the 1960s. It lost the majority of seats in 1976 and 1979, but continued to rule without coalition partners with the support of independent Representatives. After the 1983 election when it again lost the majority, it entered a coalition for the first time – with the New Liberal Club. In 1986, the coalition ended as the LDP won a large majority of seats and even came close to a majority of votes. The party suffered its first clear electoral defeat in the 1989 House of Councillors regular election when it lost the upper house majority and had to face for the first time a divided Diet (Nejire Kokkai, lit. "twisted Diet") where passing legislation depends on cooperation with the opposition. The LDP was out of government for the first time in 1993 after Ichirō Ozawa and his faction had left the party and the opposition parties united in an anti-LDP coalition, but then soon returned to the majority in 1994 by entering a coalition with its traditional main opponent, the Socialist Party. The 2009 House of Representatives elections handed the first non-LDP victory to the Democratic Party of Japan.

According to a survey by Yomiuri Shimbun in April 2010, almost half of Japanese voters do not support any political parties due to political inefficiency.^[2]

Latest results

2017 General House of Representatives election

Main article: Japanese general election, 2017

← Summary of the 22 October 2017 House of Representatives election results →

Parties			Constituency				PR Block				Total seats
			Votes	%	±pp	Seats	Votes	%	±pp	Seats	Seats	±	%	±pp
		Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)	26,719,032	48.21	0.11	218	18,555,717	33.28	0.17	66	284	6	61.08	0.02
		Komeitō (NKP)	832,453	1.50	0.05	8	6,977,712	12.51	1.20	21	29	5	6.24	0.92
Governing coalition			27,551,485	49.71	0.17	226	25,533,429	45.79	1.03	87	313	11	67.31	0.90
		Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP)	4,852,097	8.75	New	18	11,084,890	19.88	New	37	55	40	11.83	6.66
		Japanese Communist Party (JCP)	4,998,932	9.02	4.28	1	4,404,081	7.90	3.47	11	12	9	2.58	1.84
		Social Democratic Party (SDP)	634,719	1.15	0.36	1	941,324	1.69	0.77	1	2	0	0.43	0.01
Pacifist coalition			10,485,748	18.92	–	20	16,430,295	29.47	–	49	69	31	14.84	6.84
		Kibō no Tō (Party of Hope)	11,437,601	20.64	New	18	9,677,524	17.36	New	32	50	7	10.75	1.25
		Nippon Ishin no Kai (JIP)	1,765,053	3.18	4.98	3	3,387,097	6.07	9.65	8	11	3	2.37	0.58
Koike coalition			13,202,654	23.82	–	21	13,064,621	23.43	–	40	61	10	13.12	1.83
	Happiness Realization Party (HRP)		159,171	0.29	–	0	292,084	0.52	0.03	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	New Party Daichi		–	–	–	–	226,552	0.41	–	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	No Party to Support		–	–	–	–	125,019	0.22	0.02	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Party for Japanese Kokoro (PJK)		–	–	–	–	85,552	0.15	2.50	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Others		52,080	0.03	–	0	–	–	–	–	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Independents		3,970,946	7.16	4.31	22	–	–	–	–	22	17	4.73	3.48
Total			55,422,087	100.00	–	289	55,757,552	100.00	–	176	465	10	100.00	–

2016 Regular House of Councillors election

Main article: Japanese House of Councillors election, 2016

 Summary of the 10 July 2016 Japanese House of Councillors election results^[5][6][7]

Party				Pre-election			SNTV/FPTP majoritarian			D'Hondt proportional			Seats won	New total	Change from
				Total	Not up	Up	Votes[8]	%	Seats	Votes[8]	%	Seats			Before	2013	2010
	Ruling parties			135	76	59							69	145	+10	+10	+42
		Liberal Democratic Party	LDP	115	65	50	22,590,793	39.94 %	36	20,114,788	35.91 %	19	55	120	+5	+5	+36
		Komeito	K	20	11	9	4,263,422	7.54 %	7	7,572,960	13.52 %	7	14	25	+5	+5	+6
	Revisionist opposition parties			10	8	2							7	15	+5	(new +15) +6 from JRP	(new +15)
		Initiatives from Osaka		7	5	2	3,303,419	5.84 %	3	5,153,584	9.20 %	4	7	12	+5	(new +12)	(new +12)
		Party for Japanese Kokoro		3	3	0	535,517	0.95 %	0	734,024	1.31 %	0	0	3	0	(new +3)	(new +3) 0 from SPJ
	Anti-revisionist opposition parties (joint nominations in single-member districts)			79	27	52							40	67	-12	n/a	n/a
		Democratic Party	DP	62	17	45	14,215,956	25.14 %	21	11,751,015	20.98 %	11	32	49	-13	(new +49) -10 from DPJ	(new +49) -57 from DPJ
		Japanese Communist Party	JCP	11	8	3	4,103,514	7.26 %	1	6,016,195	10.74 %	5	6	14	+3	+3	+8
		People's Life Party	PLP	3	1	2	not contested independently			1,067,301	1.91 %	1	1	2	-1	-1	(new +2)
		Social Democratic Party	SDP	3	1	2	289,899	0.51 %	0	1,536,239	2.74 %	1	1	2	-1	-1	-2
	New Renaissance Party		NRP	2	0	2	60,431	0.11 %	0	580,653	1.04 %	0	0	0	-2	-1	-1
	Happiness Realization Party		HRP	0	0	0	963,585	1.70 %	0	366,815	0.65 %	0	0	0	0	0	-1
	Seitō shiji nashi ("no party supported")			0	0	0	127,367	0.23 %	0	647,071	1.16 %	0	0	0	0	(new 0)	(new 0)
	Angry voice of the people			0	0	0	82,357	0.15 %	0	466,706	0.83 %	0	0	0	0	(new 0)	(new 0)
	Others			0	0	0	279,681	0.49 %	0	not contested			0	0	n/a	n/a	n/a
	Assembly to Energize Japan		AEJ	3	2	1	not contested						0	2	-1	(new +2) -16 from YP	(new +2) -9 from YP
	Okinawa Social Mass Party		OSMP	1	1	0	not contested						0	1	0	0	0
	Independents (incl. some joint opposition-endorsed "independents" & 1 successful LDP-endorsed "independent")			11	7	4	5,739,452	10.15 %	5	n/a			5	12	+1	+9	+10
Total (valid votes)				241	121	120	56,555,393	100.00 %	73	56,007,353	100.00 %	48	121	242	+1 (vacant)	0	0
Turnout out of 106,202,873 eligible voters							58,094,005	54.70 %		58,085,678	54.69 %

Under several regulations regarding political parties, elections and campaign finance, the 2013 regular House of Councillors election that elected 121 of the current 717 Diet members also counts as a recent national election in legal terms until 2019.

Posters for the elections in Japan

Malapportionment

In the 1980s, apportionment of electoral districts still reflected the distribution of the population in the years following World War II, when only one-third of the people lived in urban areas and two thirds lived in rural areas. In the next forty-five years, the population became more than three-quarters urban, as people deserted rural communities to seek economic opportunities in Tokyo and other large cities. The lack of reapportionment led to a serious underrepresentation of urban voters. Urban districts in the House of Representatives were increased by five in 1964, bringing nineteen new representatives to the lower house; in 1975 six more urban districts were established, with a total of twenty new representatives allocated to them and to other urban districts. Yet great inequities remained between urban and rural voters.

In the early 1980s, as many as five times the votes were needed to elect a representative from an urban district compared with those needed for a rural district. Similar disparities existed in the prefectural constituencies of the House of Councillors. The Supreme Court had ruled on several occasions that the imbalance violated the constitutional principle of one person-one vote. The Supreme Court mandated the addition of eight representatives to urban districts and the removal of seven from rural districts in 1986. Several lower house districts' boundaries were redrawn. Yet the disparity was still as much as three urban votes to one rural vote.

After the 1986 change, the average number of persons per lower house representative was 236,424. However, the figure varied from 427,761 persons per representative in the fourth district of Kanagawa Prefecture, which contains the large city of Yokohama, to 142,932 persons in the third district of largely rural and mountainous Nagano Prefecture.

The 1993 reform government under Hosokawa Morihiro introduce a new electoral system whereby 200 members (reduced to 180 beginning with the 2000 election) are elected by proportional representation in multi-member districts or "blocs" while 300 are elected from single-candidate districts.^[9]

Still, according to the October 6, 2006 issue of the Japanese newspaper Daily Yomiuri, "the Supreme Court followed legal precedent in ruling Wednesday that the House of Councillors election in 2004 was held in a constitutionally sound way despite a 5.13-fold disparity in the weight of votes between the nation's most densely and most sparsely populated electoral districts".

The 2009 general House of Representatives election was the first unconstitutional lower house election under the current electoral system introduced in 1994 (parallel voting and "small" FPTP single-member electoral districts/"Kakumander"). In March 2011, the Grand Bench (daihōtei) of the Supreme Court ruled that the maximum discrepancy of 2.30 in voting weight between the Kōchi 3 and Chiba 4 constituencies in the 2009 election was in violation of the constitutionally guaranteed equality of all voters. As in previous such rulings on unconstitutional elections (1972, 1980, 1983 and 1990 Representatives elections, 1992 Councillors election), the election is not invalidated, but the imbalance has to be corrected by the Diet through redistricting and/or reapportionment of seats between prefectures.^[10]

In 2016, a panel of experts proposed to introduce the [John Quincy] Adams apportionment method (method of smallest divisors) for apportioning House of Representatives seats to prefectures. The reform is planned to be implemented after the 2020 census figures are available and not expected to take effect before 2022.^[11] In the meantime, another redistricting and apportionment passed in 2017 is designed to keep the maximum malapportionment ratio in the House of Representatives below 2. In the FPTP tier, it changes 97 districts and cuts six without adding any; in the proportional tier, four "blocks" lose a seat each; the total number of seats in the lower house is cut to 465, 289 majoritarian seats and 176 proportional seats.^[12]

The malapportionment in the 2010^[13] and 2013^[14] regular House of Councillors elections was ruled unconstitutional (or "in an unconstitutional state") by the Supreme Court, and has been reduced by a 2015 reapportionment below 3 (at least in government statistics from census data which is regular and standardized but lags behind resident registration statistics and the actual number of eligible voters; using the latter, the maximum malapportionment in the 2016 election remained slightly above 3^[15][16]).

The following table lists the 10 electoral districts with the highest and lowest number of registered voters per member elected for each chamber of the National Diet according to the voter statistics as of September 2016 released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications – it takes into account the lowering of the voting age and the district reforms to both houses of the Diet in effect since the 2014 and 2016 elections, but not the 2017 redistricting/reapportionment effective from the next House of Representatives election.

Prefectural and local elections

Prefectural assemblies and governors, as well as mayors and assemblies in municipalities, are elected for four-year terms. In April 1947, all local elections in the 46 prefectures (excluding Okinawa, then under US military rule) and all their municipalities were held at the same time in "unified local elections" (tōitsu chihō senkyo). Since then, some gubernatorial and mayoral elections, and most assembly elections, have stayed on this original four-year cycle. Most governors and mayors are now elected on different schedules as the four-year cycle "resets" upon the resignation, death or removal of a sitting governor or mayor. Some assembly election cycles have also shifted due to assembly dissolutions or mergers of municipalities. In the last unified local elections in April 2015, 10 of 47 governors, 41 of 47 prefectural assemblies, 222 mayors and 689 municipal assemblies were scheduled to be elected.

Ballots, voting machines and early voting

A used Japanese ballot paper from the 1952 House of Representatives election, in this case spoilt by writing 該当者なし (gaitōsha nashi, ~"There is no suitable person"). The only thing that is literally "on the ballot" in Japan before a voter votes is an empty box titled "candidate name" (候補者氏名) and usually a text next to it with general notes such as "Please don't write anything other than the name of an actual candidate." or "Please don't write outside the box."

A sample ballot paper for a House of Representatives election according to a 1945 Home Ministry ordinance

Votes in national and most local elections are cast by writing the candidate's or party's name on a blank ballot paper. In elections for the House of Representatives voters fill in two ballots, one with the name of their preferred district candidate and one with their preferred party in the proportional representation block. For the House of Councillors, the district vote is similar (in SNTV multi-member districts, several candidates can be elected, but every voter has only one vote). But in the proportional vote for the House of Councillors votes are cast for a party list (to determine how many proportional seats a party receives) or a candidate (which additionally influences which candidates are elected from a party's list).^[18]

Ballots that cannot unambiguously be assigned to a candidate are not considered invalid, but are assigned to all potentially intended candidates proportionally to the unambiguous votes each candidate has received. These so-called "proportional fractional votes" (按分票, ambunhyō) are rounded to the third decimal.^[19] For example, if "Yamada A" and "Yamada B" both stood in an election and there were 1500 unambiguous votes: 1000 for "Yamada A" and 500 for "Yamada B"; five ambiguous votes for "Yamada" would then count for Yamada A as 5×1000/1500=3.333 votes, and for Yamada B as 5×500/1500=1.667 votes.

In 2002, passage of an electronic voting law^[20] allowed for the introduction of electronic voting machines in local elections.^[21] The first machine vote took place in Niimi, Okayama in June 2002.^[22] In 2003, a system for early voting (期日前投票制度, kijitsu-mae tōhyō seido) was introduced.^[23] In the Japanese general election, 2009, a record number of more than 10 million Japanese voted early.^[24]

See also

• Electoral calendar
• Election
• Political funding in Japan
• Japanese Diet

References

External links

• Adam Carr's Election Archive
• Daily Yomiuri Online: Inequality at the polls must be corrected
• (in Japanese) MIC: Elections, political funds
• Free Choice Foundation: Election system in Japan