Japan Decides 2017: The Japanese General Election

By Robert J. Pekkanen, Steven R. Reed, Ethan Scheiner and Daniel M. Smith

This third volume in the Japan Decides series remains the premier venue for scholarly research on Japanese elections. Putting a spotlight on the 2017 general election, the contributors discuss the election results, party politics, coalition politics with Komeito, the cabinet, constitutional revision, new opposition parties, and Abenomics. Additionally, the volume looks at campaigning, public opinion, media, gender issues and representation, North Korea and security issues, inequality, immigration and cabinet scandals. With a topical focus and timely coverage of the latest dramatic changes in Japanese politics, the volume will appeal to researchers and policy experts alike, and will also make a welcome addition to courses on Japanese politics, comparative politics and electoral politics. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: May 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9783319764757

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Part IIntroduction

© The Author(s) 2018

Robert J. Pekkanen, Steven R. Reed, Ethan Scheiner and Daniel M. Smith (eds.)Japan Decides 2017https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76475-7_1

1. Introduction: Abe on a Roll at the Polls

Robert J. Pekkanen¹  , Steven R. Reed²  , Ethan Scheiner³   and Daniel M. Smith⁴  

(1)

Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

(2)

Faculty of Policy Studies, Chuo University, Hachioji, Japan

(3)

Department of Political Science, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA

(4)

Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Robert J. Pekkanen (Corresponding author)

Steven R. Reed

Ethan Scheiner

Email: [e-mail]

Daniel M. Smith

Email: [e-mail]

This is the third volume of Japan Decides, and the third volume to analyze an overwhelming election victory by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) under Prime Minister Shinzō Abe.¹ On October 22, 2017, the LDP won 284 of 465 seats contested in the general election for the House of Representatives (HR), the larger and more important chamber of Japan’s bicameral National Diet. The opposition to Abe’s LDP-led coalition government remains in disarray, with the two leading party alternatives, the Party of Hope and the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), formed just a few weeks before the election in conjunction with a disorganized and hasty disbandment in the HR of the erstwhile main opposition party, the Democratic Party (DP). In calling the election when he did, a year earlier than constitutionally mandated, Abe once again demonstrated his mastery of political timing.

Add the 2013 and 2016 LDP victories in elections for the upper chamber, the House of Councillors (HC), and Abe’s record now counts five election wins in just under five years. This half-decade record of stable victories for the LDP under Abe represents a remarkable run, and looks likely to continue in the short term, even as it remains highly unlikely to match the nearly four decades of LDP dominance from 1955 (when the LDP was founded) until 1993 (when it temporarily lost control of government for the first time). Abroad, the rise of China and the threat of a nuclear North Korea—the latter being a key reason given by Abe for calling the early election—are a major concern for most Japanese. Many voters are also worried about the future of the core security and trade relationships with the United States following the election of President Donald J. Trump in 2016, although Abe has navigated this relationship more skillfully than many other world leaders. At home, fears of weak domestic political leadership—Abe’s first attempt at leading the nation as prime minister in 2006 fell short of expectations and ushered in a period of divided government and yearly replacement of prime ministers—seem to have receded with Abe’s five years of stability.

The ostensible return to LDP dominance under Abe represents a break from the pattern that characterized Japanese party politics throughout the 2000s. In 1994, Japan adopted an electoral system for the HR that was designed to produce a two-party system with alternation in power. The system features single-seat districts (SSDs), which, according to what political scientists call Duverger’s Law, should create incentives for voters and elites to gravitate toward two large parties.² From the first election under the new system in 1996 through 2009, the fifth election, Japanese politics largely appeared to obey Duverger’s Law, as the LDP gradually lost its grip on SSDs and ultimately lost control of government to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the precursor to the DP which formed in 1996 just before the first election under the new system.³ However, the inexperienced and internally divided DPJ failed miserably at governing the country during its three years in power, and the story of elections and party competition since 2012 seems to contradict theoretical expectations. There have been efforts to form a single opposition party capable of unseating the LDP, but very little evidence of movement in that direction—neither by voters, who are not sure which alternative party will be a credible challenger, nor by elites, who cannot seem to coordinate on a single vessel for challenging the LDP.

The DPJ was formed by collecting as candidates anyone who opposed the LDP, without serious reference to their policy preferences.⁴ The DPJ was only able to defeat the LDP in 2009 because the LDP was failing to govern effectively. In other words, voters chose not the LDP; they did not choose the DPJ. Since the LDP regained power in 2012, the LDP under Abe (in coalition with Kōmeitō) has governed effectively for the most part, but also with a fair amount of controversy and without enjoying a majority of support from the electorate. A simple amalgam of people who oppose the LDP, however, will no longer serve as an attractive alternative.

The Party of Hope and the CDP offer different paths toward creating an attractive challenger to the LDP. The CDP offers an alternative, whereas the Party of Hope offers an echo. The majority of voters have long been opposed to revising Article 9 (the so-called peace clause) of Japan’s constitution and also opposed to continuing Japan’s reliance on nuclear energy. Conservatives see these policies as unrealistic and the CDP as capable only of opposing rather than proposing feasible alternatives. The Party of Hope offers realistic alternatives that are predominantly variations on existing LDP themes. Party of Hope policies may often be improvements on LDP policy but they seldom look much different to voters; they appear as echoes rather than alternatives. On the other hand, both parties are more internally coherent in terms of ideology and policy positions than the DPJ and DP were.

In the 2017 election, voters who wanted to vote not the LDP were split on which new opposition represented the ideal alternative, and many voters simply chose to stay at home. It is as yet still unclear whether further maneuvering by opposition politicians after the election will clarify the choice for voters in the future. Will the CDP be able to offer convincing policy alternatives to LDP policies? Will the Party of Hope be able to convince voters that its policies are not simply echoes of LDP policies? Will the LDP continue to govern effectively after Abe is replaced by a new leader? Will events outside the control of Abe—such as actions by North Korea’s unpredictable Kim Jong-un or the USA’s also unpredictable Donald Trump—trip up the Abe government’s agenda? And will political scientists be forced to revise Duverger’s Law for the Japanese case to include a final stage—the birth of a coherent opposition?

The 2017 Japanese general election did more to raise these kinds of questions than settle them. The major outcome of the election was a renewed mandate for the LDP-led coalition government and a strengthening of Abe’s position as leader of the LDP.

Summary of the Chapters

The chapters of this volume are organized into three parts, which are of topical relevance to the 2017 election.

Part I: Introduction

Part I provides the key background context for understanding the election. In Chap. 2, Pekkanen and Reed provide a detailed narrative of the events and developments after the 2014 general election, leading up to Abe’s decision to call the 2017 snap election. The chapter covers all of the major political events that occurred between the 2014 and 2017 elections, including the redrawing of electoral districts in both the upper and lower houses in order to move closer to the one person one vote standard, as well as three important elections held between the 2014 and 2017 lower house races: the Tokyo gubernatorial election, the Tokyo Prefectural Assembly election, and the 2016 HC election.

In Chap. 3, Scheiner, Smith, and Michael F. Thies analyze the results of the election, putting them in perspective against recent general elections. Despite the reorganization of the opposition just prior to the election, the results for the ruling coalition appear to be nearly a carbon copy of the previous lower house election. The LDP managed to dominate across rural and urban districts, and would not likely have surrendered many seats had the opposition done a better job coordinating its candidate nominations. The party continues to appear most vulnerable in urban districts, where intra-opposition competition between the CDP and Party of Hope was most likely to occur, helping the LDP win seats with less than a majority of the vote. Voter turnout continued to be low and was further hampered by the arrival of Typhoon Lan on the day of the election. The authors conclude that any future challenger that hopes to unseat the LDP will have its best chance in the growing urban tranche of Diet seats, but must also find a way to exploit contradictions between the interests of the LDP’s rural voters and those in the cities, or among the supporters of the LDP’s coalition partner Kōmeitō. The opposition must also consider how to activate the near half of the electorate that stayed home for Abe’s three landslide HR wins.

Part II: Political Parties

Part II includes three chapters that cover aspects of the political parties in detail. Previous volumes—Japan Decides 2012 and Japan Decides 2014—devoted a chapter to examining the LDP’s maneuvers between elections. Not much changed within the LDP this time around, with Abe still securely at the helm of the party and his policy agenda relatively unchanged, so the chapters in this part of the volume focus instead on recent developments in the LDP’s relationship with its coalition partner, Kōmeitō, and the rapidly changing kaleidoscope of opposition parties.

In Chap. 4, Axel Klein and Levi McLaughlin unpack the relationship between the LDP and Kōmeitō with a detailed look at how Kōmeitō supporters view the coalition and policy concessions that their party has made to stay in power. In particular, the chapter evaluates Kōmeitō’s navigation between the interests of its coalition partner and its voter base, the religious lay organization Sōka Gakkai. The 2017 election results reflect a growing disaggregation of Kōmeitō voters. The analysis confirms that the primary interest of Kōmeitō voters is not constitutional reform. Rather, it continues to be social welfare and support for low- and medium-income households. The level of support for Kōmeitō may weaken with the rise of a new generation of Sōka Gakkai adherents who appear increasingly unwilling to treat electioneering as a necessary component of their religious practice.

In Chap. 5, Pekkanen and Reed focus more broadly on the state of the opposition. Examining the complex evolution of the opposition parties, they highlight the events that led to the split of the DP and the founding of the Party of Hope and the CDP. The resulting choice presented to voters consisted of the two government parties, the conservative opposition, and the liberal opposition. The authors conclude that the 2017 election presents three key lessons for the opposition to take to heart. First, in SSD competitions a divided opposition loses. Second, conservative opposition parties tend to lose votes, in part because voters do not see them as real alternatives to the LDP. Third, a liberal opposition party might win votes.

In Chap. 6, Ko Maeda takes a closer look at the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), the oldest political party in Japan. Historically uncooperative and a perpetual spoiler of district-level election outcomes because of its pattern of running candidates even where it has no chance of winning (thus splitting the opposition vote on the left), recent elections have witnessed a greater JCP willingness to cooperate strategically with other leftist opposition parties to combat the LDP. Maeda investigates the JCP’s electoral performance in the proportional representation (PR) tier of Japan’s mixed-member electoral system, as well as the SSD tier, and discusses the possible risks and benefits to coordination on the left. In the 2017 election, the JCP lost votes relative to the previous election in 2014, and the CDP appears to be the main recipient of those votes. Although the JCP reduced the number of its candidates running in SSD contests, the presence or absence of a JCP candidate did not appear to influence the overall results.

Part III Campaign and Issues

Part III dives into the details of the campaign and the main policy issues that were at stake. In the first of five chapters providing a closer look at public opinion, policy positions, and party nomination strategies in the campaign, Matthew M. Carlson and Reed in Chap. 7 provide a detailed overview of the scandals that plagued the Abe administration between the 2014 and 2017 elections. After briefly profiling the cabinet members who embarrassed the government, the authors describe two scandals of a new type: sontaku scandals. These involve special treatment linked to projects associated with Prime Minister Abe or his wife, but do not charge either with having done anything improper.

Chapter 8 by Yukio Maeda chronicles the public opinion polls of the Abe cabinet over time. Abe is on track to replace Eisaku Satō as Japan’s longest serving prime minister. Satō’s long tenure in office has sometimes been credited to his mastery of personnel strategy within the LDP. In contrast, Maeda argues, Abe is a master of public opinion, deftly calling new elections when it will benefit him most and keep the opposition parties in disarray. A close examination of the timing and reasons for changes in public opinion reveals a deliberate strategy on Abe’s part. When in trouble from scandals and other setbacks, he tends to emphasize valence issues, which are difficult for anyone to oppose, in order to bring up his approval rating. Once his support is improved, Abe switches to pushing his favorite position issues, such as constitutional revision, which triggers intense criticism from the opposition parties.

In Chap. 9, Kiichiro Arai and Miwa Nakajo provide an invaluable overview of where candidates in the election stood on policy. They report the results of a survey of the candidates’ policy positions conducted by Yomiuri Shinbun and Waseda University. The chapter focuses in particular on the candidates’ preferences with regard to free education and national security, which were key rationales given by Abe for dissolving the Diet. The analysis finds that most candidates basically followed their party’s manifesto policies on both issues; however, party unity varied across some other issues. The least united party is the Party of Hope, despite efforts of the party’s leaders to enforce policy coherence in candidate nominations. Additionally, and notably, the surveys also reveal that the coalition parties, the LDP and Kōmeitō, share views on most issues save for revision of Article 9 of the constitution.

Kuniaki Nemoto in Chap. 10 takes a deeper look at contamination effects, whereby the simultaneous existence of both SSD and PR tiers in Japan’s mixed-member electoral system produces behavior and results that are different from those that would exist under a pure system that does not combine the two types of rules. The chapter examines the extent of contamination throughout Japan’s use of the system since 1996, but pays particularly close attention to the 2017 election, asking what might explain the surge in the effective number of candidates and the decline in the level of two-party competition at district level. Parties might oversupply candidates as long as they believe the benefits from the contamination effects overweigh the costs. Such contamination effects include: the list contamination effect, or the effect of a local candidate in a district to raise voter awareness and mobilize more list votes; and the incumbency contamination effect, or the effect of stationing dually nominated list winners (DNLWs) in districts.

In Chap. 11, Mari Miura tackles the important issue of gender, and the persistently low representation of women in parliament (10.1% of Diet members following the 2017 election). The chapter first analyzes the structural factors that account for this persistent and severe underrepresentation, then turns to a deeper look at the 2017 election by examining the characteristics and policy positions of the women who ran as candidates, as well as those who won. Finally, Miura examines the future prospects for a gender parity or quota law in Japan.

The two chapters that follow cover two other major social policy issues facing Japan today. Few issues have burned hotter around the world than immigration, in votes ranging from Brexit to the US presidential election. Michael Strausz analyzes the current issues and debate surrounding immigration reform in Chap. 12. The chapter first looks at what candidates thought about immigration in the 2017 election, drawing on responses to a pre-election candidate survey conducted by Asahi Shinbun and the University of Tokyo, and how these views compare to those of candidates contesting the 2009, 2012, and 2014 HR elections. The chapter then examines the role of public opinion in shaping the immigration stances of parties in the Diet, in particular the LDP, and whether a movement to expand immigration is likely to develop from within that party. This prospect is unlikely, but some support for increased (temporary) foreign labor to address Japan’s demographic challenges may be on the horizon.

David Chiavacci examines the issue of inequality in Chap. 13, focusing on regional and economic inequality in the story of Japan’s political economy. In comparison with elections in the late 2000s, social and regional inequality was of secondary importance in the 2017 election, especially compared to the issues of national security and constitutional reform. Still, the chapter argues that the LDP-led coalition’s election victory was also due to its ability to shape the debate concerning Japan’s political-economic model of growth and inequality. The opposition parties criticized Abenomics and LDP plans for regional revitalization without having a credible alternative set of policies on offer. A more detailed analysis shows, however, that Abenomics has not yet fulfilled its promise of shared growth, and that the governing coalition’s discursive control over the political-economic agenda has significantly weakened. This creates opportunities for opposition parties in the future.

The next two chapters focus on the three arrows of Prime Minister Abe’s signature economic policies: Abenomics . In Chap. 14, Saori N. Katada and Gabrielle Cheung examine the first two arrows of monetary and fiscal policy. The chapter addresses the puzzle of why opposition parties uniformly attacked Abenomics and the proposed consumption tax hike in the 2017 election, despite the seeming success of Abe’s reflationary policy. The authors argue that the opposition was emboldened by two interconnected phenomena: first, the social turn of Abenomics toward prioritizing welfare outcomes, which signaled the LDP’s implicit understanding that its economic policy had not necessarily benefited the more vulnerable strata of society; and second, growing public anxiety toward the longer-term consequences of Abenomics . The chapter’s analysis examines the LDP’s dilemmas in maintaining a reflationary economy with the first two arrows of Abenomics , and discusses the key challenges facing the Abe administration as it navigates its renewed term in office.

In Chap. 15, Kenji E. Kushida zooms in on a critical aspect of structural reform, Abenomics’ third arrow: economic policies towards fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. The chapter provides an overview of the economic context of the 2017 election and the status of the third arrow structural reforms, providing a comprehensive list of proposals and their progress. Finally, the chapter explores a critical facet of the relationship between economic reform policies and electoral politics. When the economic performance of the government is poor, it can become an issue for opposition parties to exploit; when it is strong, opposition parties may need to look for other issues, such as relative equity in the distribution of economic gains. The jury is still out on whether the third arrow of Abenomics will result in the kind of positive economic growth for which the LDP can claim credit. If the economy falters, then Japan’s economic challenges can be highlighted by the opposition, bringing them again to the forefront of electoral issues.

The final three chapters in the volume address important issues in national security. First, Kenneth Mori McElwain gives an overview of the politics of constitutional revision in Chap. 16, including a discussion of the controversies over revising Article 9, the so-called Peace Clause. The electoral salience of constitutional revision has grown in the last decade, but this belies the widening gulf between the public and political elites regarding if and how to amend the constitution. Public opinion polls show that voters are split evenly on the necessity of revisions, but that opponents are more mobilized on this issue, as seen by the surprising success of the CDP in the 2017 election. By contrast, surveys of election candidates show mounting support for amendment, with prorevision parties collectively accounting for two-thirds of the seats in the Diet. However, there remain significant differences regarding the exact target of revision, particularly between the LDP and its coalition partner, Kōmeitō. These divisions between the public and elites leave the fate of constitutional amendment uncertain, despite the LDP’s convincing victory in 2017.

Yasuhiro Izumikawa in Chap. 17 describes the current threat from North Korea and how Japan has responded. He argues that Abe has succeeded in employing crises spurred by North Korean threats to position himself and the LDP for victory at the ballot box. While Abe’s decision to call for an election was not as overtly cynical as many in the opposition contended, Abe and the LDP nonetheless took full advantage of the North Korean issue. In putting the situation in the 2017 election into a longer-term context of security challenges from North Korea facing Japan, this chapter highlights the dilemmas that Japan still needs to manage.

In the volume’s final chapter, Sheila A. Smith in Chap. 18 summarizes the role that foreign policy played in the 2017 election. The crisis over North Korea gave Prime Minister Abe the opportunity to highlight his foreign policy experience in the campaign. In contrast, the newly formed opposition parties were relatively quiet on foreign policy issues and appeared to be ineffective in the face of the looming threat, arguing instead for increased restraints on Japan’s military capacity. For their part, voters appeared to be more confident in the LDP’s policy experience and ability to handle the myriad foreign policy issues that are likely to arise in the future. This chapter puts these considerations in the 2017 election into a larger context of the geostrategic challenges facing Japan.

References

Cox, Gary W. 1997. Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World’s Electoral Systems. New York: Cambridge University Press.Crossref

Duverger, Maurice. 1954. Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. New York: John Wiley.

Kushida, Kenji E., and Phillip Y. Lipscy, eds. 2013. Japan Under the DPJ: The Politics of Transition and Governance. Stanford, CA: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Pekkanen, Robert J., Steven R. Reed, and Ethan Scheiner, eds. 2013. Japan Decides 2012: The Japanese General Election. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

———, eds. 2016. Japan Decides 2014: The Japanese General Election. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Reed, Steven R., Ethan Scheiner, and Michael F. Thies. 2012. The End of LDP Dominance and the Rise of Party-Oriented Politics in Japan. Journal of Japanese Studies 38 (2): 353–376.Crossref

Smith, Daniel M., Robert J. Pekkanen, and Ellis S. Krauss. 2013. Building a Party: Candidate Recruitment in the Democratic Party of Japan, 1996–2012. In Japan Under the DPJ: The Politics of Transition and Governance, ed. Kenji E. Kushida and Phillip Y. Lipscy, 157–190. Stanford, CA: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Footnotes

1

See Pekkanen et al. (2013) and Pekkanen et al. (2016).

2

See Duverger (1954) and Cox (1997).

3

See Reed et al. (2012). On the DPJ’s three years in power see Kushida and Lipscy (2013).

4

See Smith et al. (2013).

© The Author(s) 2018

Robert J. Pekkanen, Steven R. Reed, Ethan Scheiner and Daniel M. Smith (eds.)Japan Decides 2017https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76475-7_2

2. Japanese Politics Between 2014 and 2017: The Search for an Opposition Party in the Age of Abe

Robert J. Pekkanen¹   and Steven R. Reed²  

(1)

Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

(2)

Faculty of Policy Studies, Chuo University, Hachioji, Japan

Robert J. Pekkanen (Corresponding author)

Steven R. Reed

Overview

Under Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won overwhelming victories in the 2012 and 2014 general elections and won a third in 2017. The LDP also won both the 2013 and 2016 House of Councillors (HC) elections by landslides. The record of five electoral victories in five years is remarkable, even by the high standards of the most successful political party in the democratic world. Abe showed once again why he is a master of political timing. Despite a nervous moment or two, he now has a fresh mandate and five electoral victories to go with his reelection to head the LDP. It might seem hard to remember the rapid turnover in prime ministers—six in six years, three from the LDP followed by three from the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)—that immediately preceded the triumphant longevity of the Abe administration of 2012.

Part and parcel of this dominance is the weakness of the opposition. Abe replaced the Democratic Party of Japan’s Yoshihiko Noda as prime minister in 2012. While Abe has continued as prime minister, the DPJ was nearly eclipsed as the leading opposition by the (eventual) Japan Innovation Party (Ishin) (Pekkanen et al. 2016b; Pekkanen and Reed 2016). The primary challengers to the LDP in 2017 were two parties that did not exist in 2014: Yuriko Koike’s Party of Hope representing a conservative challenge, and the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) led by Yukio Edano, representing a liberal challenge. Instead of six prime ministers in six years, one prime minister has faced down four official opposition parties in four years.

The longest serving postwar prime minister was Eisaku Satō (November 1964–July 1972). Like Abe, Satō faced a divided and ineffectual opposition, but there the similarities end. Satō was a reactive and inactive policymaker. He could leave most of Japanese foreign policy to the USA and deal with most domestic problems using the fruits of rapid economic growth. All he need do was manage the admittedly unwieldy LDP to prevent any challenges to his leadership. For his skill in doing so, he has become known as the master of personnel management (jinji no Satō). Abe must not only manage the LDP but also the coalition with Kōmeitō. The coalition has been a key to, even a necessary condition of, LDP electoral success. In addition, however, Abe needs to manage public opinion. Satō was never popular but Abe has maintained a historically high level of public support. We agree with Yukio Maeda (this volume, p. 127) that Abe deserves to be called the master of public opinion (see also Pekkanen et al. 2016a: 266ff).

Abe has also been a proactive policymaker. Although he has twice postponed a hike in the consumption tax, the Japanese economy lurched forward (Katada and Cheung, this volume, p. 243, Kushida, this volume, p. 261) enough to allow Abe to claim Abenomics was working. Persistent media coverage of scandals such as Moritomo and Kake dented Abe’s support levels (Carlson and Reed, this volume, p. 109; Yukio Maeda, this volume, p. 127). However, in the international arena, provocations from North Korea (Izumikawa, this volume, p. 313) and the election of Donald Trump (Sheila Smith, this volume, p. 329) alike were argued to prove that Japan needs a safe pair of hands to guide foreign policy. In May 2017, Abe expressed his goal of amending the constitution by 2020, a goal that looks feasible for the first time in postwar Japanese history (McElwain, this volume, p. 297).

Changes in the Electoral System

Japan changed its electoral system in 1994 to a mixed-member system consisting of single-seat districts (SSDs) and proportional representation (PR). One problem with SSDs is that they require periodic redistricting. Some districts gain while others lose population so district boundaries need to be adjusted to maintain the principle of one person one vote. The LDP is strongest in rural areas and is therefore reluctant to redistrict, but the Supreme Court has ruled that a ratio of greater than 2.0 puts election results in a state of unconstitutionality, and the LDP has been forced to respond.

The biggest problem is in the HC because districts are prefectures and redistricting would require the merger of small prefectures into a single district. In the 2016 HC election, the LDP finally conceded and created two double-prefecture electoral districts, one combining Tottori and Shimane prefectures and the other combining Kochi and Tokushima prefectures. This was only a small first step toward the one person one vote goal, but it was also a bold step in that it was guaranteed to reduce the LDP’s seats by two. Both mergers also forced traditional rivals to elect a single representative, angering voters in all four prefectures. Conservatives from these prefectures were joined by those in other small prefectures to lobby for amending the constitution to guarantee every prefecture at least two seats.¹ The movement is unlikely to succeed because it favors the LDP and hurts all other parties. On the other hand, future efforts to merge prefectures will face stiff opposition from inside the LDP.

Reduction in the Size of the Legislature to 465 Seats

In the lower house, redistricting has been accompanied by a reduction in the size of the Diet, as shown in Table 2.1. The argument was that the government was asking people to make sacrifices so the government should also cut back, and the reductions seem to have been popular.

Table 2.1

Changes in size of the House of Representatives under the Mixed-Member Majoritarian electoral system

In 2017, the government first reduced the number of seats in rural areas. Six prefectures lost seats: Aomori, Iwate, Mie, Nara, Kumamoto, and Kagoshima. Thus, single-seat districts were reduced from 295 to 289. In addition, four of Japan’s 11 PR blocs lost PR seats: Tohoku, Kita Kanto, Kinki, and Kyushu. Klein and McLaughlin (this volume, p. 53) note that Kōmeitō lost seats in those PR blocs that lost seats, so redistricting may have hurt both members of the coalition. Put together, this meant a total reduction of ten seats, from 475 to 465. A total of 97 districts in 19 prefectures were redistricted to one degree or another, reducing the ratio of largest to smallest SSD. Many of the changes were extremely minor, changing the number of eligible voters by less than 10%. Districts were similarly adjusted in 2014 (Pekkanen et al. 2016b), and another redistricting is likely before the next election.

Redistricting always produces interesting stories, but perhaps the most interesting example was of the JR Tamachi train station in Tokyo that used to be in the first district. After redistricting you found yourself in the first district if you left by the west exit but in the second district if you left by the east exit. In Tokyo seventh district, the LDP candidate, Fumiaki Matsumoto, found his residence to be in another district.

Voting Age Lowered from 20 to 18

The final change was the lowering of the voting age. Since 1945, the Japanese had been able to vote upon reaching the age of 20. A revision to the Public Offices Election Law in 2016 gave the franchise to 18- and 19-year-olds in time to vote in the July 2016 House of Councillors election. Voter turnout among these newly enfranchised citizens was below the national average (32% for 19-year-olds, 50% for 18-year-olds; Mainichi October 25, 2017). Polls also indicate that higher turnout would have probably benefited the LDP, not the opposition (Scheiner et al., this volume, p. 29).

Four Elections and a Funeral

The 2016 House of Councillors Election

As shown in Table 2.2, the LDP won the House of Councillors election held on July 10, 2016, taking 56 of the 121 contested seats. Although the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and Ishin also gained seats, the LDP and Kōmeitō emerged as the clear winners. It appears very unlikely that Japan will face divided government any time soon (Thies and Yanai 2013). In addition, the LDP and Kōmeitō now possess a two-thirds supermajority in the HC. Moreover, the LDP could also achieve the two-thirds supermajority necessary to amend the constitution in combination with Ishin and minor conservative parties, a position that was reinforced by the 2017 general election.

Table 2.2

July 2016 House of Councillors election results

Note: Other minor parties and independents. Chamber size (S) is 242. Simple majority is 122. Two-thirds supermajority is 162

Though one of the most important implications of the HC election was the possibility of amending the constitution, the LDP campaigned on the economy, not the constitution. It was the opposition—the Democratic Party, JCP, and Social Democratic Party (SDP)—who sought to make opposition to constitutional revision, or protecting the constitution, the dominant theme of the election. Exit polls showed more