The Japanese Diet has a bicameral legislature from which it makes law. The upper house, the House of Councillors, is the weaker body and serves six-year terms staggered every three years. This election is for the more powerful lower house, the House of Representatives, from which most legislation is crafted. The lower house has 300 single-member districts in prefectures across Japan, whose members are elected from the first-past-the-post system. Another 180 seats are elected from what are called multi-member seats. These seats are elected proportionally from super districts typically made up of several prefectures each. Candidates are allowed to run in both single and multi-member seats, so it is possible and likely that some candidates will lose in their home district but still be elected off party lists.
Four years since Junichiro Koizumi earned his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a sweeping mandate, current Prime Minister Taro Aso has called an election at a time where his party has perhaps its most bleak and uncertain future in the past 15 years. The LDP and its predecessors have governed post-WWII Japan for nearly all of its history, but opinion polls are showing a strong opposition to the prime minister and it appears likely opposition forces will take control of government for the first time since the early 1990s.
The main opposition party is the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Its ideological outlook varies depending on who is the current party leader, b
[More...]The Japanese Diet has a bicameral legislature from which it makes law. The upper house, the House of Councillors, is the weaker body and serves six-year terms staggered every three years. This election is for the more powerful lower house, the House of Representatives, from which most legislation is crafted. The lower house has 300 single-member districts in prefectures across Japan, whose members are elected from the first-past-the-post system. Another 180 seats are elected from what are called multi-member seats. These seats are elected proportionally from super districts typically made up of several prefectures each. Candidates are allowed to run in both single and multi-member seats, so it is possible and likely that some candidates will lose in their home district but still be elected off party lists.
Four years since Junichiro Koizumi earned his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a sweeping mandate, current Prime Minister Taro Aso has called an election at a time where his party has perhaps its most bleak and uncertain future in the past 15 years. The LDP and its predecessors have governed post-WWII Japan for nearly all of its history, but opinion polls are showing a strong opposition to the prime minister and it appears likely opposition forces will take control of government for the first time since the early 1990s.
The main opposition party is the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Its ideological outlook varies depending on who is the current party leader, because the DPJ was initially formed from both left-leaning and right-leaning elements. Its leader is Yukio Hatoyama, a centrist and former LDP member. In the vast majority of single member districts the DPJ is trying to unite behind a single centrist/centre-left candidate to avoid vote-splitting in the opposition ranks. Most of these candidates are DPJ members and endorsed by other parties, but in some instances the DPJ is offering its support to minor party candidates. This unofficial coalition adds the Social Democratic Party, People's New Party, and New Japan Party. The LDP has an official coalition partner, New Komeito/Clean Government Party, and only run one candidate from either party in single-member districts with the endorsement of the other party.
Several new parties are running for the first time this cycle, including the Happiness Realization Party, which has fielded candidates in nearly all single-member districts. Other notable new parties are Yoshimi Watanabe's Your Party/Party For Everybody and the DPJ breakaway Reform Club/Japan Renaissance Party.
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