Elections in Japan

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/ordinary elections of members of the House of Councillors (Sangiin giin tsūjō-senkyo).

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 â€" 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.

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.

Election of the Prime Minister

Between 1885 and 1947 in the Empire of Japan, the prime minister was not elected, but responsible to, chosen and appointed by the Emperor. In practice, the Genrō usually nominated a candidate for appointment. The Imperial Diet and its elected lower house, the House of Representatives, which were set up in 1890 according to the Imperial Constitution had no constitutionally guaranteed role in the formation of cabinets.

Since 1947, the Prime Minister of Japan has been chosen in the "designation election of the prime minister" (naikaku sōridaijin shimei senkyo, 内閣総理大臣指名選挙) in the National Diet. It is held when the cabinet resigns or the post of prime minister has fallen vacant; a cabinet must resign en masse under the constitution in the first Diet session after a general election of the House of Representatives, if a no-confidence vote in the House of Representatives is not answered by the dissolution of the chamber or if the prime minister is incapacitated, e.g. by death, illness, kidnapping or defection. Though both Houses of the Diet vote in two-round elections to select a prime minister, the House of Representatives has the decisive vote: If the two Houses vote for different candidates (as they did in 1948, 1989, 1998, 2007 and 2008), a procedure in the joint committee of both houses (ryōin kyōkaigi) may reach a consensus; but eventually the candidate of the House of Representatives becomes that of the whole Diet and thereby prime minister-designate. The designated prime minister must still be ceremonially appointed by the Emperor in the Imperial Investiture (shinninshiki) to enter office; but unlike some heads of state, the Emperor has no reserve power to appoint anyone other than the person elected by the Diet.

In 2001, LDP president and prime minister Jun'ichirō Koizumi instituted an advisory council to investigate the possibility of introducing direct popular election of the prime minister in a constitutional revision.

Latest results

2014 designation election of the prime minister

December 24, 2014, after the resignation of the Second Abe Cabinet in the first Diet session (188th [special] National Diet) after the 47th general election of the House of Representatives

• House of Representatives
  • Shinzō Abe (Rep., LDP): 328, elected in the first round
  • Katsuya Okada (Rep., DPJ): 73
  • Kenji Eda (Rep., JIP): 41
  • Kazuo Shii (Rep., JCP): 18
  • Takeo Hiranuma (Rep., PFG): 3
  • Tadatomo Yoshida (Coun., SDP): 2
  • Keiichirō Asao (Rep., I/ex-YP): 1
  • Toshinobu Nagasato (Rep., I): 1
  • invalid/blank ballots: 3
• House of Councillors
  • Shinzō Abe (Rep., LDP): 135, elected in the first round
  • Katsuya Okada (Rep., DPJ): 61
  • Kenji Eda (Rep., JIP): 11
  • Kazuo Shii (Rep., JCP): 11
  • Takeo Hiranuma (Rep., PFG): 6
  • Tadatomo Yoshida (Coun., SDP): 4
  • Hiroyuki Arai (Coun., NRP): 2
  • Kōta Matsuda (Coun., I/ex-YP): 2
  • Tarō Yamada (Coun., I/ex-YP): 1
  • Tarō Yamamoto (Coun., I/PLP): 1
  • invalid/blank ballots: 6

Prime minister designated by both houses of the National Diet: Shinzō Abe.

2014 General House of Representatives election

2013 Regular House of Councillors election

2010 Regular House of Councillors election

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".

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.

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 April 2014, non-unified local elections include:

• on the prefectural level
  • gubernatorial elections
    • last held in 2010: Fukushima, Nagano, Shiga, Wakayama, Kagawa, Ehime, 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, Niigata, Toyama, Okayama, Kumamoto, Kagoshima
    • last held in 2013: Akita, Yamagata, Ibaraki, Chiba, Shizuoka, Gifu, Hyōgo, Miyagi, Hiroshima
    • last held in 2014: Nagasaki, Tokyo, Yamaguchi, Ishikawa, Kyoto
  • assembly elections
    • 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
    • last held in 2013: Tokyo
• on the municipal level
  • in designated major cities
    • mayoral elections in Sendai (2013), Saitama (2013), Chiba (2013), Yokohama (2013), Kawasaki (2013), Niigata (2010), Nagoya (2013), Kyoto (2012), Osaka (2011 non-unified (special election (denaoshi senkyo) in 2014, next regular election still due in 2015)), Sakai (2013), Kōbe (2013), Okayama (2013), KitakyÅ«shÅ« (2011 non-unified), Fukuoka (2010), Kumamoto (2010)
    • assembly elections in Sendai (2011 non-unified), Shizuoka (2013), Nagoya (2011 non-unified), KitakyÅ«shÅ« (2013)
  • in special wards
    • mayoral elections in Chiyoda (2013), Minato (2012), Shinjuku (2010), Shinagawa (2010), Meguro (2012), Nakano (2010), Suginami (2010), Arakawa (2012), Adachi (2011 non-unified), Katsushika (2013)
    • assembly elections in Adachi (2011 non-unified), Katsushika (2013)
  • in other prefectural capitals
    • mayoral elections in Aomori (2013), Morioka (2011 non-unified), Akita (2013), Yamagata (2011 non-unified), Fukushima (2013), Mito (2011 non-unified), Utsunomiya (2012), Maebashi (2012), Toyama (2013), Kanazawa (2010), Fukui (2011 non-unified), Kōfu (2011 non-unified), Nagano (2013), Gifu (2010), ÅŒtsu (2012), Nara (2013), Wakayama (2010), Tottori (2010), Matsue (2013), Yamaguchi (2013), Tokushima (2012), Matsuyama (2010), Kōchi (2011 non-unified), Saga (2013), Miyazaki (2010), Kagoshima (2012), Naha (2012)
    • assembly elections in Aomori (2010), Morioka (2011 non-unified), Fukushima (2011 non-unified), Mito (2011 non-unified), Maebashi (2013), Toyama (2013), Nagano (2011 non-unified), Nara (2013), Tottori (2010), Matsue (2013), Yamaguchi (2010), Matsuyama (2010), Saga (2013), ÅŒita (2013), Kagoshima (2012), Naha (2013)

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 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 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.