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Japan The Electoral System
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. The minimum voting age for persons of both
sexes 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.
In the general election of February 18, 1990, the
thirty-ninth
held since the first parliamentary election in July 1890,
the 130
multiple-seat election districts of the House of
Representatives
returned two to five representatives, depending on their
population. There were two exceptions: the district
encompassing
the Amami Islands, south of Kyushu, elected only one
representative
to the lower house, while the first district of Hokkaido
elected
six. Successful candidates were those who won at least the
fifth
largest aggregation of votes in a five-person district,
the fourth
largest in a four-person district, and so on. Voters cast
their
ballots for only one candidate. Competition for lower
house seats
in the February 1990 general election varied from district
to
district. Tokyo's fourth district had seventeen candidates
running
for five seats, while the second district in Ibaraki
Prefecture had
only four persons running for three seats. In Okinawa
Prefecture's
single five-seat district, there were only six candidates.
In House of Councillors elections, the prefectural
constituencies elect from two to eight councillors,
depending on
their population. Each voter casts one ballot for a
prefectural
candidate and a second one for a party in the national
constituency
system.
Percentages of eligible voters casting ballots in
postwar
elections for the House of Representatives had varied
within a
rather narrow range, from 76.9 percent in May 1958 to 67.9
percent
in December 1983, but the 67.3 percent turnout in the July
1993
lower house election set a new low. The figure for the
February 18,
1990, general election was 72.4 percent. Although interest
in
politics is greater in urban areas than in rural areas,
voter
turnout in the latter is generally higher, probably
because
constituents have a greater personal stake in such
elections.
Data as of January 1994
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