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Japan The Legislature
Article 41 of the constitution describes the National
Diet, or
national legislature, as "the highest organ of state
power" and
"the sole law-making organ of the State"
(see
fig. 7).
This
statement is in forceful contrast to the Meiji
Constitution, which
described the emperor as the one who exercised legislative
power
with the consent of the Diet. The Diet's responsibilities
include
not only the making of laws but also the approval of the
annual
national budget that the government submits and the
ratification of
treaties. It can also initiate draft constitutional
amendments,
which, if approved, must be presented to the people in a
referendum. The Diet may conduct "investigations in
relation to
government" (Article 62). The prime minister must be
designated by
Diet resolution, establishing the principle of legislative
supremacy over executive government agencies (Article 67).
The
government can also be dissolved by the Diet if it passes
a motion
of no confidence introduced by fifty members of the House
of
Representatives, the lower chamber. Government officials,
including
the prime minister and cabinet members, are required to
appear
before Diet investigative committees and answer inquiries.
The Diet
also has the power to impeach judges convicted of criminal
or
irregular conduct.
Japan's legislature is bicameral. Both the upper house,
the
House of Councillors, and the lower house, the House of
Representatives, are elective bodies. The constitution's
Article 14
declares that "peers and peerages shall not be
recognized." Upon
the enactment of the 1947 constitution, the old House of
Peers was
abolished. Members of the two new houses are elected by
universal
adult suffrage, and secrecy of the ballot is guaranteed
(Article
15). The term of the House of Representatives is four
years. It may
be dissolved earlier, however, if the prime minister or
members of
the House of Representatives decide to hold a general
election
before the expiration of that term (Article 7). Multiple
representatives are elected from 130 constituencies based
theoretically on population
(see The Electoral System
, this ch.).
In 1993 the House of Representatives had 511 members.
Members of the House of Councillors have six-year
terms. One
half of these terms expire every three years. There are
two types
of constituencies in the upper house: prefectural
constituencies,
for the forty-seven prefectures and districts, represented
by
thirteen councillors, apportioned according to the
district
populations; and a national "proportional representation"
constituency, represented by 127 councillors, which yields
a total
of 140 in 1992. The proportional representation system,
introduced
in 1982, was the first major electoral reform under the
postwar
constitution. Instead of choosing national constituency
candidates
as individuals, as had previously been the case, voters
cast
ballots for parties. Individual councillors, listed
officially by
the parties before the election, are selected on the basis
of the
parties' proportions of the total national constituency
vote. The
system was introduced to reduce the excessive money spent
by
candidates for the national constituencies. Critics
charged,
however, that this new system benefited the two largest
parties,
the LDP and the Japan Socialist Party (Nihon Shakaito;
after 1991
known as the Social Democratic Party of Japan), which in
fact had
sponsored the reform.
The House of Representatives has the greater power of
the two
contemporary houses, in contrast to the prewar system in
which the
two houses had equal status. According to Article 59, a
bill that
is approved by the House of Representatives but turned
down by the
House of Councillors returns to the House of
Representatives. If
the latter passes the bill with a two-thirds or higher
majority on
this second ballot, the bill becomes law. However, three
important
exceptions to the principle exist; covering the approval
of the
budget, adoption of treaties with foreign countries, and
the
selection of the prime minister. In all three cases, if
the upper
and lower houses have a disagreement that is not resolved
by a
joint committee of the two houses, then after a lapse of
thirty
days "the decision of the House of Representatives shall
be the
decision of the Diet" (Articles 60, 61, and 67). Budgeting
is an
important annual political function, setting both taxes
and the
allowable expenditures of all segments of the central
government,
and the impotence of the upper house has been demonstrated
on a
number of occasions. Nevertheless, the House of
Councillors, with
its fixed terms, cannot be dissolved by the prime
minister. In
times of emergency, the cabinet may convene the House of
Councillors rather than the House of Representatives
(Article 54).
In the July 23, 1989, election for half the members of
the
House of Councillors, the LDP lost its majority. It won
only
thirty-six of the seats contested in the prefectural and
national
constituencies, while the opposition parties together won
ninety,
the largest opposition party, the Japan Socialist Party,
won fortysix (see
table 37, Appendix). This result gave an
admittedly
unstable coalition of opposition groups the opportunity to
use the
limited powers of the upper house to delay or frustrate
initiatives
taken in the LDP-dominated lower house. On August 9, 1989,
for the
first time in forty-one years, the two houses nominated
two
different candidates for prime minister--Kaifu Toshiki of
the LDP
and Doi Takako of the Japan Socialist Party. Although
Kaifu was
finally chosen because of the principle of lower house
supremacy,
the events showed how opposition control of the upper
house could
complicate the political process. In March 1990, the upper
house
rejected a supplementary budget bill for fiscal year
(FY--see Glossary)
1989 that had been proposed by the lower house.
Although
the bill was eventually approved despite rejection by the
upper
house, the wrangling caused some minor inconvenience to
the
country's more than 1 million national civil servants
whose monthly
salary payments were delayed. The more serious upheaval,
which
might have occurred had there been a real deadlock or a
potential
shift in fiscal policies brought about by the opposition
parties,
was avoided.
The LDP won 223 seats in the July 1993 House of
Representatives
election, thirty-three seats short of the simple majority
required
to control the 511-member lower house. With postelection
adjustments and realignments, the Japan New Party head,
Hosokawa
Morihiro, was able to gain the support of the Shinseito,
the
Sakigake, the Komeito, the Social Democratic Party of
Japan, the
Democratic Socialist Party, and United Social Democratic
Party to
form a minority government. This coalition of small
conservative
parties that had broken off from the LDP and
socialist-based
opposition parties differed on many issues but shared the
common
objective of passing political reform legislation. In
early 1994,
it remained to be seen how long and how effectively Prime
Minister
Hosokawa would be able to hold the coalition together.
Data as of January 1994
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