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 is twenty years; 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 (Shugi-in) has 480 members, elected for a four-year term, 300 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 elections of members of the House of Councillors (Sangiin giin tsūjō-senkyo).

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. Due to the majoritarian parallel voting system it is unlikely that Japan will develop a multi-party system, but there is speculation that after 2009, Japan will develop a two-party system.^{[citation needed]}

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.

Latest results

2012 General election

Main article: Japanese general election, 2012

 Summary of the 16 December 2012 Japanese House of Representatives election results

Alliances and parties		Local constituency vote			PR block vote			Total seats		+/−
		Votes	%	Seats	Votes	%	Seats	Total	%	(pre- election)	(last election)
	Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Jimintō	25,643,309	43.01	237	16,624,457	27.79	57	294	61.25	176	175
	New Komeito Party (NKP) Kōmeitō ("Justice Party")	885,881	1.49	9	7,116,474	11.90	22	31	6.46	10	10
	Prospective LDP–NKP Coalition	26,529,190	44.49	246	23,740,931	39.69	79	325	67.71	186	185
	Democratic Party (DPJ) Minshutō	13,598,773	22.81	27	9,268,653	15.49	30	57	11.88	173	251
	Restoration Party (JRP) Ishin no Kai	6,942,353	11.64	14	12,262,228	20.50	40	54	11.25	43	—
	Your Party (YP) Minna no Tō	2,807,244	4.71	4	5,245,586	8.77	14	18	3.75	10	10
	Tomorrow Party (TPJ) Mirai no Tō	2,992,365	5.02	2	3,423,915	5.72	7	9	1.88	52	—
	Communist Party (JCP) Kyōsantō	4,700,289	7.88	0	3,689,159	6.17	8	8	1.67	1	1
	Social Democratic Party (SDP) Shakai Minshutō	451,762	0.76	1	1,420,790	2.38	1	2	0.42	3	5
	People's New Party (PNP) Kokumin Shintō	117,185	0.20	1	70,847	0.12	0	1	0.21	2	2
	New Party Daichi (NPD) Shintō Daichi	315,604	0.53	0	346,848	0.58	1	1	0.21	2	0
	Happiness Realization Party (HRP) Kōfuku Jitsugentō	102,634	0.10	0	216,150	0.30	0	0	0.00	0	0
	Others	62,697	0.28	0	134,781	0.59	0	0	0.00	0	0
	Total opposition parties	32,090,906	53.82	49	36,078,957	60.31	101	150	31.25	180	249
	Independents	1,006,468	1.69	5	–			5	1.04	4	1
Totals		59,626,564	100.00%	300	59,819,888	100.00%	180	480	100.00	1*	0
Turnout		59.32%			59.31%			*(vacant seats)

2010 House of Councillors election

Main article: Japanese House of Councillors election, 2010

 Summary of the 11 July 2010 Japanese House of Councillors election results

Alliances and parties		Prefectural constituency vote				National PR vote				Elected in 2010	Seats not up	Total seats	+/−
		Votes	%	Seats	+/−	Votes	%	Seats	+/−
	Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) Minshutō – 民主党	22,756,000.342	38.97%	28	8	18,450,139.059	31.56%	16	2	44	62	106	10
	People's New Party (PNP) Kokuminshintō – 国民新党	167,555.000	0.29%	0	2	1,000,036.492	1.71%	0	1	0	3	3	3
	New Party Nippon (NPN) Shintō Nippon – 新党日本	no candidate								0	1	1	0
	DPJ–PNP Coalition	22,923,555.342	39.25%	28	10	19,450,175.551	33.27%	16	3	44	66	110	13
	Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Jimintō – 自民党	19,496,083.000	33.38%	39	14	14,071,671.422	24.07%	12	1	51	33	84	13
	New Komeito Party (NKP) Kōmeitō – 公明党	2,265,818.000	3.88%	3	0	7,639,432.739	13.07%	6	2	9	10	19	2
	New Renaissance Party (NRP) Shintō Kaikaku – 新党改革	625,431.000	1.07%	0	3	1,172,395.190	2.01%	1	1	1	1	2	4
	former LDP–NKP—NRP Coalition	22,387,332.000	38.33%	42	11	22,883,529.351	39.15%	19	4	61	44	105	7
	Your Party (YP) Minna no Tō – みんなの党	5,977,391.485	10.24%	3	3	7,943,649.369	13.59%	7	7	10	1	11	10
	Japanese Communist Party (JCP) Kyōsantō – 共産党	4,256,400.000	7.29%	0	0	3,563,556.590	6.10%	3	1	3	3	6	1
	Social Democratic Party (SDP) Shamintō – 社民党	602,684.000	1.03%	0	0	2,242,735.155	3.84%	2	0	2	2	4	0
	Sunrise Party of Japan (SPJ) Tachini – たち日	328,475.000	0.56%	0	1	1,232,207.336	2.11%	1	1	1	2	3	0
	Happiness Realization Party (HRP) Kōfuku – 幸福	291,810.000	0.50%	0	0	229,026.162	0.39%	0	0	0	1	1	0
	Independents	1,314,313.027	2.25%	0	2	—				0	2	2	2
	Other parties	318,847.000	0.55%	0	0	908,582.924	1.55%	0	0	0	0	0	0
Total (turnout 57.92%)		58,400,807.899	100.0%	73	1	58,453,432.438	100.0%	48	0	121	121	242	1

2009 General election

Main article: Japanese general election, 2009

 Summary of the 30 August 2009 Japanese House of Representatives election results

Alliances and parties		Local constituency vote			PR block vote			Total seats	+/−
		Votes	%	Seats	Votes	%	Seats		(pre- election)	(last gen. election)
	Democratic Party (DPJ)	33,475,335	47.43%	221	29,844,799	42.41%	87	308	193	195
	Social Democratic Party (SDP)	1,376,739	1.95%	3	3,006,160	4.27%	4	7	0	0
	People's New Party (PNP)	730,570	1.04%	3	1,219,767	1.73%	0	3	1	1
	New Party Nippon	220,223	0.31%	1	528,171	0.75%	0	1	1	0
	New Party Daichi	no district candidates			433,122	0.62%	1	1	0	0
	Ruling DPJ–SDP–PNP coalition & parliamentary allies	35,802,866	50.73%	228	35,032,019	49.78%	92	320	193	194
	Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)	27,301,982	38.68%	64	18,810,217	26.73%	55	119	181	177
	New Komeito Party (NKP)	782,984	1.11%	0	8,054,007	11.45%	21	21	10	10
	Japan Renaissance Party	36,650	0.05%	0	58,141	0.08%	0	0	1	0
	Opposition LDP–NKP coalition & parliamentary allies	28,121,613	39.84%	64	26,922,365	38.26%	76	140	192	187
	Japanese Communist Party (JCP)	2,978,354	4.22%	0	4,943,886	7.03%	9	9	0	0
	Your Party (YP)	615,244	0.87%	2	3,005,199	4.27%	3	5	1	5
	Others	1,077,543	1.53%	0	466,786	0.66%	0	0	0	0
	Independents	1,986,056	2.81%	6	–			6	0	12
Totals		70,581,680	100.00%	300	70,370,255	100.00%	180	480	2*	0
Turnout		69.28%			69.27%			*(vacant seats)

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.

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".^{[citation needed]}

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.

The malapportionment in the 2010 regular House of Councillors election was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in October 2012.

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 2012 released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

Electoral districts with the highest and lowest voting weight for the National Diet

House of Representatives					House of Councillors
	Lowest vote weight		Highest vote weight		Lowest vote weight		Highest vote weight
#	District	Registered voters	District	Registered voters	District	Registered voters per member elected	District	Registered voters per member elected	#
1	Chiba 4	497,350	Kōchi 3	205,461	Kanagawa	1,227,896	Tottori	241,481	1
2	Kanagawa 10	494,755	Nagasaki 3	210,149	Osaka	1,188,371	Shimane	294,037	2
3	Tokyo 6	486,353	Miyagi 5	212,262	Hokkaidō	1,147,071	Kōchi	316,870	3
4	Hokkaidō 1	485,001	Fukui 3	212,408	Hyōgo	1,138,829	Fukui	325,996	4
5	Tokyo 3	482,494	Kōchi 2	213,606	Tokyo	1,076,763	Tokushima	326,800	5
6	Tokyo 1	479,891	Tokushima 3	213,937	Fukuoka	1,031,611	Saga	343,737	6
7	Hyōgo 6	477,012	Tokushima 1	214,535	Aichi	979,962	Yamanashi	350,271	7
8	Tokyo 19	469,133	Kōchi 1	214,672	Saitama	979,885	Fukushima	406,880	8
9	Tokyo 23	464,989	Fukui 2	217,902	Chiba	845,925	Kagawa	413,684	9
10	Tokyo 22	464,807	Yamanashi 1	218,115	Tochigi	815,655	Wakayama	420,821	10

Prefectural and local elections

Prefectural assemblies and governors, as well as mayors and assemblies in municipalities are elected for four-year terms. Every chief executive or assembly has an independent four-year election cycle that may change after resignations, deaths, recalls etc. Many prefectural and municipal elections are held at the same time in the "unified local elections" (tōitsu chihō senkyo); in the last unified local elections in April 2011, 13 of 47 governors, 44 of 47 prefectural assemblies, 489 of 1,750 mayors and 747 of 1,750 municipal assemblies were scheduled to be elected; but one gubernatorial, three prefectural assembly and several municipal elections in Eastern Japan were postponed as a result of the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011.

In the first unified election in April 1947, all local elections in the then 46 prefectures (Okinawa was under military rule) and all their municipalities were unified. As of January 2013, non-unified local elections include:

• on the prefectural level
  • gubernatorial elections
    • last held in 2009: Miyagi, Ibaraki, Shizuoka, Hyōgo, Hiroshima
    • last held in 2010: Fukushima, Ishikawa, Nagano, Shiga, Kyoto, Wakayama, Kagawa, Ehime, Nagasaki, Okinawa
    • last held in 2011 (but not in the unified elections in April): Aomori, Iwate, Gunma, Saitama, Yamanashi, Aichi, Osaka, Kōchi, Miyazaki
    • last held in 2012: Tochigi, Tokyo, Niigata, Toyama, Okayama, Yamaguchi, Kumamoto, Kagoshima
    • last held in 2012: Akita, Yamagata, Chiba, Gifu
  • assembly elections
    • last held in 2009: Tokyo
    • last held in 2010: Ibaraki
    • last held in 2011 (but not in the unified elections in April): Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima
    • last held in 2012: Okinawa
• on the municipal level
  • in designated major cities
    • mayoral elections in Sendai, Saitama, Chiba, Yokohama, Kawasaki, Niigata, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Sakai, Kōbe, Okayama, Kitakyūshū, Fukuoka
    • assembly elections in Sendai, Shizuoka, Nagoya, Kitakyūshū

Ballots, voting machines and early voting

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).

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. For example, if "Yamada A" and "Yamada B" both stood in an election, had received an equal number of unambiguous votes and a voter just wrote "Yamada" on the ballot paper, both Yamadas would get half a vote each; if there were already ten votes for "Yamada A" and five votes for "Yamada B", any vote for "Yamada" would count for Yamada A as two thirds of a vote, and for Yamada B as one third of a vote.

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

See also

• Electoral calendar
• Election (general article)
• Political funding in Japan
• Japanese Diet

External links

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