Japan’s 2019 upper house election: Solidifying Abe,the LDP,and return to a one-party dominant political system

Abstract

Japan’s upper house, the House of Councillors, is a less powerful body than the House of Representatives, the lower house of the national Diet. Yet, electoral results of the upper house can have a significant impact on the government of the day, both for legislative purposes and for judging the credibility of the ruling party and its leader. This article analyses the July 2019 election and its likely impact on the Abe administration, and implications for Japan’s parliamentary democracy and party politics. The article argues that opposition forces are highly fragmented and weak, sustaining the LDP’s dominance in Japanese politics. Such a political landscape is welcomed by the ruling party and its leader, but continuing to entrench the hold on national governance by one dominant party is unhealthy for Japanese democracy.

Keywords

Abe administration House of Councillors 2019 Japan parliamentary democracy Reiwa Era Election Upper House Election 2019 Year of the Boar 2019

Introduction

Japan’s 25th triennial election to the House of Councillors, the upper house of the Japanese parliament (national Diet), was held on 21 July 2019. The timing of the election was distinctive. This was the first national election since transition from the Heisei (1989–2019) to the Reiwa era in May 2019, when Emperor Akihito abdicated and his son Naruhito ascended the throne. And held in the Year of the Boar, a 12-year cycle in the Japanese calendar system, it was preceded three months earlier by quadrennial nationwide local elections for thousands of legislators and local chief executives such as mayors and governors (Jain, 2019). This upper house election was especially crucial for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who sought for his party to maintain – with junior ally Komeito and other like-minded partners – a two-thirds majority in order to push forward his agenda to revise the nation’s constitution. But while Abe’s ruling coalition maintained control of the house, it lost its two-thirds majority. Apart from constitutional revision, many other critical domestic and foreign policy issues challenge the Abe administration.

Unsurprisingly, upper house elections rarely attract international media attention, as this house is not as consequential as the lower house in legislative and budgetary matters or in forming the government. Yet its deliberative functions, its ability to apply breaks on hurried legislation passed by the more powerful lower house (Oyama, 2011: 160), and its status as a ‘permanent’ legislative body (unlike the lower house, this house is never dissolved) have attracted scholars to study its role and importance and the political consequences of its elections (for example, Baerwald, 1974, 1989; Inoguchi, 2002; Ishikawa, 1997; Jain 1993a, 2016; Uchida and Baerwald, 1978).

Furthermore, upper house elections often serve as a barometer to gauge the political health of the incumbent prime minister and government of the day. The ‘report cards’ that elections deliver can play a crucial role in making and unmaking government. For example, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto resigned following considerable loss of LDP seats in the 1998 upper house election (Inoguchi, 2002: 40). Similarly, Prime Minister Abe resigned just a few months after the 2007 upper house election, largely due to his party’s poor performance. This led to a period of political instability for five years, with transfer of power from the LDP to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in 2009, and prime ministers changing annually until Abe’s return in 2012. On the day of the 2019 upper house election, the Tokyo Shinbun (2019a) editorial observed – or perhaps reminded readers – that the ballot box had transferred power from one party to another in Japan only after poor performance of the ruling party in an upper house election.

The 2019 elections did not deliver or inspire dramatic political change. Even so, the results of this election will likely have a significant impact on the Abe administration as it faces difficult political and policy challenges. Results of this election have given Abe an unprecedented sixth consecutive electoral win – three lower house and three upper house – since he was returned to the national helm in 2012. Indeed, Abe is set to become Japan’s longest serving prime minister, breaking the records of pre-war Prime Minister Taro Katsura and post-war Prime Minister Eisaku Sato (Jain, 2018). But while Abe is secure in his leadership position, his long-cherished aim of revising the constitution faces roadblocks; the first being the legal requirement for a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament to initiate a constitutional amendment. Hence, if Abe cannot deal effectively with pressing domestic and diplomatic issues, he may leave little legacy other than being Japan’s longest serving prime minister.

This article explores the developments outlined above to consider the impact of the 2019 upper house election on Japan’s political landscape. The first section details the electoral system as background for understanding election results, key electoral issues and the performance of political parties. I then consider the challenges facing the Abe government and what helped his party to win this election. In the second section, I focus the viewing lens on some important developments the election has revealed: there are more women candidates and candidates with physical disabilities than ever before. I then refract our lens to a key pillar of the election manifesto – Abe’s long-cherished desire to revise the constitution, as noted above. In the third section, I consider the implications of this election for Japan’s politics and parliamentary democracy, appraising the weakness of opposition parties as an important factor for the ruling party’s sixth consecutive win since Abe returned to the prime ministership in 2012. In the final section, I appraise the evolving political landscape and present brief concluding remarks. My overall argument is that this election serves to signal Japan’s return to a one-party dominant system in a coalition framework, while the weak, divided opposition parties lack medium- to long-term policies that offer voters a viable alternative to the LDP for governing the nation. Long-held expectations about the evolution of a two-party competitive system in Japan have all but disappeared, at least for now and in the near future (Reed et al., 2012). Even though the political fortunes of parties and leaders shift in a democracy, the LDP now appears to have its hand at the helm for the long haul – with or without Abe.

The election system

The upper house is a ‘permanent’ chamber of Japan’s parliament because half of its membership is renewed triennially while the other half continues in their six-year term. The election system and house membership numbers have undergone some small changes since the first post-war elections in 1947. The upper house election is based broadly on a two-tier system that combines a large nationwide district and several prefectural districts. The electoral system has seen some changes over the decades. For the nationwide district, for example, the allocation formula has been changed from single non-transferable voting (1947–1980) and closed list proportional representation (PR) (1983–1998) to the open list PR since 2001 (on changes in this system, see Kollner, 2002: 120–127). From 2001 until the 2019 election, there were 242 seats with 121 up for election every three years. In the 2016 election, the 121 seats comprised 73 from 45 prefectural districts (senkyo-ku) using the single non-transferable vote, and 48 through an open-list PR (hirei daihyo) system.¹ At the district level, members are elected from single- or multiple-member districts, depending roughly on the population size of a prefecture. Currently, there are 32 single-member districts and the rest are multi-member (with two to six members). Voters receive two ballots: one for the nationwide open list where they write the name of a party or of a candidate, and another for the district seats where they write the name of the candidate they most prefer from those on the list. The single-seat districts have a first-past-the-post system. In multiple-seat districts, the top two to six candidates are elected, giving rise to intraparty competition, especially in the LDP that runs multiple candidates within districts.

Past electoral reforms have sought to balance the value of votes in rural and urban districts by reducing seat numbers in some of the least populated areas and adding seats in some densely populated areas ( Japan Times, 2018). Before the 2016 upper house election, the Tottori and Shimane prefectures were merged into one electoral district because of the declining population, as were the Tokushima and Kochi prefectures. Thus 47 prefectures were reconfigured into 45 prefectural electoral districts. In a 2018 reform responding to exponential growth in population, two seats were added in Saitama prefecture and four seats were added to the national PR district.² With the addition of six new seats, three in 2019 and three to come in 2022, the house was strengthened from 242 to 245 seats in 2019 and is set for further growth to 248 in 2022.

Elections results

Table 1 captures the results of the 2019 elections. The LDP won 57 of its 67 contested seats, which were seats it won at the 2013 upper house election at the height of Abe’s popularity after he won the lower house election in a landslide only six months previously. The LDP would almost certainly not repeat its 2013 performance because of a number of negative factors that I explain below. This is why Abe had set 53 seats as the target for his coalition to win; when added to the 70 uncontested seats it held, that number would bring the coalition’s total to 123 seats, which was enough to secure a simple majority. The coalition winning 71 seats handsomely exceeded Abe’s target, inspiring Abe to claim in his victory speech that ‘this Upper House election was not about winning two-thirds of the seats, it was about maintaining stability. We achieved this goal’ (NHK, 2019).

Table 1.

House of councillors election results (21 July 2019).

	LDP	KP	CDP	DPP	JCP	JIP	SDP	PH	Others	Ind.	Total
Elected	57	14	17	6	7	10	1	–	3	9	124
PD	38	7	9	3	3	5	0	–	0	9	74
NPR	19	7	8	3	4	5	1	–	3	0	50
Contested	67	11	9	8	8	7	1	1	2	3	117
Uncontested	56	14	15	15	6	6	1	0	0	8	121
Pre-election	123	25	24	23	14	13	2	1	2	11	238
2019 seats	113	28	32	21	13	16	2	0	3	17	245

Party acronyms: LDP = Liberal Democratic Party; KP = Komeito; CDP = Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan; DPP = Democratic Party for the People; JCP = Japanese Communist Party; JIP = Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Ishin); SDP = Social Democratic Party; PH = Party of Hope; Ind. = Independents. Others comprise two members from Reiwa Shinsengumi and one member from Party to Protect the People from NHK.

PD = Prefectural Districts; NPR = National Proportional Representation.

Source: Compiled by the author from the morning editions of Asahi Shinbun (2019), Tokyo Shinbun (2019b), and Yomiuri Shinbun (2019).

Although Abe claimed success, the ruling coalition and pro-amendment groups that supported constitutional change, including the Japan Innovation Party (JIP), could not secure the two-thirds of the chamber (164 seats) necessary to initiate the amendment process. During the several years prior to Abe’s return to power in 2012, the ruling party could not command a majority in the upper house, which made passing legislation difficult. The opposition-controlled upper house could virtually veto bills, creating legislative deadlocks through a phenomenon known as nejire kokkai (the twisted Diet). However, Abe has successfully avoided the twisted Diet phenomenon, even though the LDP does not hold a majority in the chamber on its own.

Since the DPJ lost power in 2012, opposition forces have been busy organizing and reorganizing themselves. The DPJ reincarnated in the form of the Democratic Party (DP), the Party of Hope, the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) of Japan, and the Democratic Party of the People (DPP). The largest opposition party, the CDP, made some gains in this election, almost doubling its strength from nine to 17 seats. Including the seats it won three years ago that were not contested at the 2019 election, the CDP now holds 32 seats. In the 2016 upper house election, the main opposition DP obtained 32 of the 121 seats up for election. But in 2017 the DP effectively disbanded and encouraged all its members to join the Party of Hope, led by the first female Governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike. Because the Party of Hope was a conservative-leaning party, in October 2017 the centre-left wing of the DP formed a new party, the CDP, led by Yukio Edano. In May 2018, the Democratic Party for the People (DPP) emerged from the merger of the DP and the Party of Hope. And in April 2019, the Liberal Party led by Ichiro Ozawa merged into the DPP, making the DPP the largest opposition party in the lower house.

In this context, the CDP did not perform any better in 2019 than the DP did in 2016. But when we add the 21 seats won by the DPP, the opposition performance looks a little better than in the 2016 election. Nevertheless, both the JCP and DPP lost some ground this time and reduced their pre-election strengths by one and two seats respectively to total 14 and 23 seats. On the other hand, the LDP junior ally Komeito and its supporter in parliament, the JIP, increased their pre-election strengths to three seats apiece. Even so, for this group of pro-amendment parties including the LDP, despite some gains it could not reach the super majority figure (two-thirds of seats) in the upper house.

Even in single-seat districts where there was a two-way race between the ruling and opposition parties, the opposition forces proved to be weak. In the 2019 election, the opposition parties – the CDP, SDP, DPP and JCP – joined forces to run joint candidates in most of these constituencies, hoping to gain more seats. But of the 32 seats the LDP won, joint opposition candidates could claim only 10 seats, one seat fewer than in 2016 when opposition parties had won 11 seats.³

The LDP was particularly challenged in some seats that were highly contested. One such seat was Akita, a rural prefecture and traditionally a stronghold of the LDP. However, the LDP could not retain this seat as the incumbent Matsuji Nakaizumi lost to the opposition-supported Shizuka Terata, despite Abe’s campaigning in support of Nakaizumi. Two main reasons explain the LDP loss. One is a gradual erosion in rural support for the LDP because of Abe’s policy of opening up the farm sector to foreign imports through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other such mechanisms. The strong bond between the LDP and the farm sector has weakened over the years, but it has further deteriorated during the Abe administration (Mulgan, 2015; Reed et al., 2012: 354–355). Second, residents of Akita were opposed to the government proposal to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system on the coastal area of the prefecture. Terata particularly campaigned vigorously on this issue.⁴

In Niigata Prefecture, another rural district, the incumbent LDP legislator also lost to a newcomer after being criticized for claiming that as minister he had approved a public works project because it concerned the electoral constituencies of Prime Minister Abe and Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, as I explain below. These two examples give a clear indication of the LDP’s increasing fragility in rural areas, especially when there is a viable alternative to opposition forces, and/or when local residents feel strongly about decisions that are not in the local interest or that have been made as favours. However, a larger question here is why the opposition performed so poorly and why Abe’s party and its allies performed relatively well, even though the government was facing strong headwinds arising out of unpopular policy and political practices.

Factors against Abe and the LDP

Going into the election, several domestic and foreign policy issues were stacked against Abe and his LDP. Abe was well aware of these issues, but his party did not suffer serious consequences. Here we first examine some of the key challenges that Abe faced, and then analyse why these negative factors did not affect Abe’s performance in the way negative factors did in 2007.

Consumption tax: The Abe administration decided to raise the consumption tax from 8 percent to 10 percent, effective from October 2019. Raising tax is never a popular move, especially when an election is around the corner, and it can disadvantage the ruling party. Although other factors were at play, Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita resigned soon after his cabinet introduced the consumption tax in 1989. The Murayama government did not last long after it announced it would raise the consumption tax from 3 percent to 5 percent in 1994. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was another who lost his premiership and the DPJ’s rule soon after announcing a tax hike. Notably, Noda felt so strongly about raising the tax that he was reported to have ‘placed more importance on raising the consumption tax rate than remaining prime minister’ (Yomiuri Shimbun and Asia News Network, 2013).

As per the proposal under the DPJ Noda government in 2012 to raise the consumption tax to 8 percent in 2014 and to 10 percent in 2015, the Abe administration raised the tax to 8 percent in 2014 and postponed a further rise until October 2019. The opposition demanded the LDP postpone the planned further rise beyond 2019. However, Abe showed his strong determination through a tax rise to be implemented in 2019, just a few months after the upper house election.

Pension Records: When Prime Minister Abe took the LDP to the upper house polls in 2007, close to 50 million missing pension records lurked in the background. The LDP suffered a crushing defeat in this election. The polling in 2019 was under similar circumstances, but this time the electoral outcomes were different. Just before this election, the Financial Services Agency prepared a draft report projecting that the elderly in Japan would not have enough financial capacity to support themselves in retirement, so the government needed to inject significant funding into retirement benefits. The report estimated that each retired couple in their 60s would need on average as much as 20 million yen to make up for deficiencies in their pension amount. The Abe administration refused to accept this report and refuted the identified gap. The minister responsible for pension matters, Finance Minister Taro Aso, barely survived a no-confidence motion and a censure motion in parliament.

Scandals: Also lurking in the background were the alleged corrupt practices involving Abe and his wife. In 2017, the public learned that the government sold public land at a ridiculously low price to Moritomo Gakuen, which had links to Abe’s wife Akie. As well as this, Kake Gakuen, whose operator was a close friend of Abe, had been chosen as Japan’s new veterinary school (Ascione, 2018; Mulgan, 2018a). In December 2018, another scandal erupted when it was reported that the monthly survey labour data had been gathered using erroneous methods, negatively impacting upon the social insurance benefits of 20 million beneficiaries. Further, in April 2019, Japan’s State Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Ichiro Tsukada, offered his resignation after admitting he had approved a road construction project connecting the electoral constituencies of the prime minister and the deputy prime minister in Yamaguchi and Kitakyushu, consequently dubbed the ‘Abe–Aso Road’. Although Tsukada retracted his claim and apologized, he finally resigned as minister and, as noted above, subsequently lost his parliamentary seat. One week after the Tsukada incident came the resignation of Japan’s Olympic Minister, Yoshitaka Sakurada, after making a gaffe that hurt the feelings of people living in the disaster-affected areas of Japan’s northeast. Sakurada was also in charge of cyber security and had made himself the centre of unwanted attention in late 2018 when he admitted he had never used a computer in his professional career (South China Morning Post, 2019).

Local Elections and By-elections: Elections preceding a national election are always considered a kind of political barometer for the government of the day. Elections earlier in 2019 yielded both good news and bad news for Abe and the LDP. Overall, however, the elections preceding the 2019 upper house elections were favourable to the LDP.

As noted above, 2019 is the Year of the Boar (idoshi). Masumi Ishikawa (1984, 1997) has analysed in detail the upper house elections held in ‘boar’ years, identifying that this cycle began in 1947 and has produced what he has called the ‘boar phenomenon’ (Ishikawa, 1997: 39). He notes that in this particular electoral cycle, voters and party workers feel exhausted and suffer from fatigue after local elections preceding house of councillors’ elections. For voters there is less incentive to go to the polls, resulting generally in low voter turnout. Ishikawa explains that newly elected local councillors are settling into their offices just as the campaign for the upper house election begins, so these local politicians feel little incentive to work for the elections just ahead. Their own local elections are years away and their personal benefit from campaigning in the upper house election is almost zero.

Ishikawa has claimed that many voters go to the upper house elections only if an influential local person asks them to vote for a particular candidate. In a Year of the Boar upper house election, many potential voters are not approached by any local politicians and see little reason to go to the polls. So while political apathy is rising in Japan, in a Year of the Boar upper house election the low turnout rate is even more salient. It was thus no surprise that this year’s turnout rate was the second lowest (49.2 percent) in history, the lowest being in 1995 (44.5 percent).

The 2019 local elections were held for thousands of local assembly members and heads of municipalities, cities and prefecture governors in two phases – on 7 April and 21 April. Local elections in the Year of the Boar do appear to have some impact on national elections as a kind of trend setter. For example, in 2007 at the local elections the DPJ performed strongly, and a few months later the DPJ also won the upper house elections in a landslide, forcing LDP Prime Minister Abe to resign abruptly. These election results began to gather momentum for the DPJ, and in the 2009 general election the LDP was defeated for the first time by a single opposition party (Krauss and Pekkanen, 2010).

In the 2019 unified local elections in April, the LDP’s performance was generally satisfactory while the opposition remained weak and divided (NHK, 2019a). The opposition forces could not pull their act together to run joint candidates and so gave the LDP candidates an advantage. LDP-supported/independent candidates won 10 of the 11 gubernatorial positions, with the remaining position won by a candidate from a regional party, Osaka Ishin no Kai in Osaka ( Asahi Shimbun, 2019a).⁵ The results of the unified local elections bolstered the prospects of the LDP for the upper house election. Furthermore, in the two gubernatorial elections (in Aomori and Gunma) held since the unified elections, LDP candidates won both (NHK, 2019).

Nevertheless, in the two lower house by-elections held on the same day as the second phase of the unified local elections, Abe and the LDP suffered electoral setbacks. Both these by-elections were a little special. In Osaka, LDP–Komeito-backed candidate Shimpei Kitagawa lost to Fumitake Fujita from the Japan Innovation Party (JIP), an Osaka-based conservative party. In Okinawa, independent candidate Tomohiro Yara, a freelance journalist backed by several opposition parties, defeated the LDP–Komeito-supported Aiko Shimajiri who was formerly an Abe Cabinet minister for Okinawa affairs. While the JIP competes with the LDP in elections, it is generally in sync with the LDP’s agenda nationally, particularly on the issue of constitutional revision. In Okinawa, the stationing of US forces and relocation of military facilities are always controversial, and strong anti-national government sentiment prevails in the prefecture. Yet it is recognized that neither of these defeats created a huge political upset for the LDP in the upper house election; such outcomes were expected given the special circumstances of both by-elections.

Factors helping Abe and the LDP

As discussed above, strong headwinds were at work against the Abe administration. Even so, the party’s performance was satisfactory and it achieved more seats for the party than the target set by the prime minister. All in all, factors favouring Abe outweighed the headwinds.

LDP Manifesto: In the election manifesto, the LDP announced six pillars of LDP policy priority. These ranged from focus on defence, security and diplomacy; income growth through strong economic policy; and creating social infrastructure for a hundred-year life; to regional revitalization; safety and disaster prevention; and revision of the constitution (Kyodo, 2019).

Abe and his colleagues often emphasized these points during election campaigning. To illustrate, on 20 July, the final day of his campaign, during a speech given in the Akihabara district of Tokyo that this author attended, both Abe and Aso emphatically underlined these points. An important slogan – one that might have had a greater effect on voters – reminded prospective voters of the political instability and chaos the DPJ had created and how the Abe government symbolized political stability. Abe urged voters that, ‘The biggest issue to be debated at the upcoming election is whether we want to accelerate reforms befitting a new era under political stability, or slide back into an era of chaos’ (Nagumo, 2019).

Underscoring political stability becomes a more powerful instrument when the LDP is not certain of its performance, as happened in the 1977 upper house election when the party secretary general emphasized political stability (Uchida and Baerwald, 1978: 308). Abe reminded voters of the importance of stability in making key domestic policies to improve Japan’s economy and address social welfare issues. But above all, in his view political stability is critical for maintaining Japan’s strong position on the world stage. Abe has met US President Trump several times, developing a close relationship with him, and has emphasized the importance of Japan–US relations. Abe made the US president feel special by inviting him as the first foreign dignitary to meet Japan’s new emperor in May, the same month that the new emperor ascended the throne.

Foreign policy issues rarely matter in domestic elections, but for these upper house elections the LDP made them number one on the priority list. Abe has actively and visibly engaged Russia to resolve the longstanding bilateral disputed territories issue, has pressed Trump on North Korea’s abduction of Japanese nationals and has acted tough while engaging with China. His strong stance on South Korea, imposing trade restrictions, may also have helped him and the LDP in this election (author’s interviews in Tokyo with Japanese newspaper analysts, 22 July 2019).

Surveys Support Abe and the LDP: In most of the pre-poll surveys, a majority clearly wanted the coalition to retain control. Some 55 percent of respondents in a Nikkei-TV Tokyo survey said they wanted the ruling coalition to retain control of the upper house. About 68 percent aged under 40 wanted to keep the status quo, compared to 47 percent aged 60 and over (Nagumo, 2019). A newspaper poll in July 2019 revealed that 35 percent of respondents preferred the LDP, while only 12 percent or one-third preferred the main rival opposition party, the CDP. Among floating voters, 16 percent preferred the LDP and 12 percent the CDP, but 52 percent were undecided and many of them don’t vote. Overall, support for the LDP was much higher than for the main opposition party ( Asahi Shimbun, 2019b). Many aging rural voters and the elderly in general are becoming ever more discontented with the LDP because of the party’s farm policy and lack of sufficient funding for a reasonable pension scheme. Conversely, young voters are flocking to the LDP, even though deeply concerned at the LDP government’s move to increase the consumption tax,⁶ a phenomenon even reported in the New York Times (Rich and Yamamitsu, 2019). Young voters have been attracted to the LDP not just for political stability, but also for good employment prospects and improvement in the economy, all of which they believe the LDP provides.

Weak Opposition: The LDP’s electoral success in July 2019 was not because the party is particularly strong. More significant was the weaknesses of the opposition parties. As noted above, the main opposition party, the DPJ, which had displaced the LDP to take national governance in 2009, disintegrated not long after the LDP regained power in 2012. The CDP and DPP are the two main opposition forces in the Diet, but even their combined strengths are not enough to upset the LDP’s dominance. Furthermore, although they cooperated to a limited extent in running candidates in the upper house elections, their ideological leanings are significantly different; the CDP is a left-of-centre party, the DPP is a right-of-centre party. The weakness of the opposition is a great strength of the LDP at this historical moment.

Election highlights

Before we turn to discuss the impact of this election on Japan’s parliamentary democracy and party politics, let us look at some key developments related to traditionally disadvantaged segments of Japanese society. We note two in particular: female representation and the representation of people with disabilities.

Women in Politics: Japan is notorious for its low representation of women in parliament. The Japan Times (2019) notes that ‘Japan’s representativeness is the lowest among OECD countries, G7 countries, or even G20 countries, so basically it ranks poorly in the world by any measure’. Japan adopted gender parity in May 2018 through the Law to Promote Co-participation of Men and Women in Politics, stipulating political parties are to aim for parity between male and female candidates when nominating candidates in elections. The 2019 House of Councillors was the first national election since this law was established. Representation by women stood at only 10.2 percent in the lower house, where the ruling LDP represented lower than the overall party average with only 7.8 percent. Before the July election, the upper house had 20.7 percent women, with the LDP’s representation at 15.2 percent (Nippon, 2019). In the 2019 election, 104 of 370 candidates were women, a record-breaking 28.1 percent. The 2019 election returned 28 women parliamentarians, which was just over 23 percent, but this figure fell short of the government’s goal of 30 percent of leadership positions for women by 2020 ( Tokyo Shinbun, 2019b). In other bright spots, women won half of the six contested seats in Tokyo, Kanagawa, and Osaka districts. The rural Akita and Ehime prefectures each elected their first female upper house member in post-war history ( Mainichi, 2019a).

Women’s improved representation in political life is not just at the national level. In the 2019 local elections, the percentage of women who won seats rose 2.3 points from the last elections in 2015, to reach a record high of 18.4 percent ( Mainichi, 2019b).

People with Disabilities: The second disadvantaged group is those with a severe disability. People with physical or intellectual disabilities and mental disorders account for about 8 percent of Japan’s population (Takenaka, 2019). Yet they remain highly marginalized and their interests are hardly represented at all at the political level. In the 2019 upper house election, two severely disabled candidates were elected: one with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and the other with cerebral palsy. Both candidates were elected from a new party, Reiwa Shinsengumi, founded in April 2019. This party is headed by high-profile politician Taro Yamamoto, but he could not retain his seat even with close to one million votes because of the current election rules. His ability to mobilize more than 3000 volunteers and raise some 400 million yen in a relatively short period indicates public support for his policy towards a hitherto neglected group in Japanese society. His party received two allocations based on the PR calculations. As he had prioritized the two candidates on the list, he himself could not gain a seat. Yamamoto is considered a new force in Japanese politics and is known as ‘Japan’s Bernie Sanders’ (Minami, 2019). The pair’s presence in the Diet is likely to raise public awareness of people with disabilities. Although Yamamoto is a highly popular actor turned activist and politician, and has announced plans to run some 100 candidates in the next lower house elections, it is too early to comment on the future of this party and this movement. Historically, many single-issue political parties have come into existence in Japan with some initial success, especially through the national PR seats, but they have disappeared from the political landscape after a couple of elections.

Abe’s mission impossible?

One of Abe’s main political missions since he became prime minister in 2012 has been to accomplish constitutional amendment. Abe is of course not the first prime minister to have raised the prospects of revising the constitution, but no predecessors have advocated for this revision as persistently and forcefully as Abe has. As noted above, he included this issue for the first time in his six pillars of the 2019 election manifesto.

Some provisions in the constitution that Abe seeks to amend are those related to human rights, freedom of speech, disaster management, and educational opportunities. However, the Abe government’s most ambitious and controversial plan is to amend Article 9, the ‘peace clause’ of the constitution. Abe seeks to use this amendment to legitimize the existence of Japan’s Self-Defence Force and make Japan a ‘normal nation’ in national security and defence matters just like most other nations.

In the past, there was neither parliamentary support nor strong public appetite for revising the peace clause. Furthermore, the required procedure is difficult to execute. Any amendment must first be passed with two-thirds yes votes in both houses of the Diet. The proposal must then be endorsed by a national referendum with a simple majority. Before the 2019 election, the LDP and allies had a two-thirds majority in both houses, but the proposal was not ready for submission in parliament. Abe’s hope was to revise the constitution by 2020 (Murakami, 2019), but that hope has faded with the LDP and allies losing their two-thirds majority in the upper house. Abe has not, however, given up on his dream project. Soon after the 2019 upper house election results were clear, Abe stated that ‘although there is no particular deadline, I really want to somehow realize them [the revisions to the constitution] during my term’ (Kyodo, 2019).

Abe’s options seem to be limited. Even his coalition ally the Komeito and its party chief Natsuo Yamaguchi have been cautious on this issue and have not explicitly supported Abe’s proposal. Keeping this in mind, Abe might have to cast his net wider by approaching other like-minded opposition parties, such as the DPP and the JIP. Other opposition parties such as the CDP, SDP and JCP have been and likely will remain philosophically opposed to changes in Article 9. Whether Abe can build a consensus, particularly with opposition parties, remains to be seen. Public opinion remains divided, with more people opposing revisions (48 percent) than supporting them (42 percent) ( Asahi Shimbun, 2019c).

Party system and parliamentary democracy

The results of this upper house election and of others preceding it lead us to identify some short- to medium-term trends in Japanese parliamentary politics and in Japan’s democracy. First, the LDP has once again emerged as the dominant party, with the prime minister and his office (Kantei) becoming very powerful in policy matters (earlier observed by Mulgan, 2018b). Japan was a one-party dominant system for most of the post-war period from 1955 until 1993, when a coalition of opposition formed government under Morihiro Hosokawa (Jain, 1993b). But the LDP returned to power in 1994 in coalition with the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), a long-time nemesis of the LDP. Through most of the Heisei period (1989–2019), coalition became the norm, led by the LDP or by a cluster of opposition parties (Nakakita, 2019). The 1994 electoral reforms raised the prospects for a competitive party system, but only in 2009 did the opposition DPJ form a government after a landslide electoral victory and a crushing defeat for the LDP. Yet the DPJ itself soon fell on its own sword, particularly because of party disunity and policy failures (Kushida and Lipscy, 2013). Since returning to power in 2012, the LDP under Abe has won six consecutive national elections, for the lower and upper houses. It appears that the LDP has never been as strong as it is today. Under the ‘1955 system’, the so-called ‘one and a half party system’ saw the opposition JSP never come close to challenging the LDP’s rule, but with enough political agency to keep the ruling party in check. That deeply important agency to keep the ruling party in check has all but disappeared from Japan’s opposition today.

Second, the opposition camp is highly divided and in disarray, the main reason why the ruling LDP is so powerful. This may be good news for the LDP and Abe, but it is certainly bad for a healthy parliamentary democracy. Current trends suggest very little has changed in Japan as far as party politics in concerned; short-lived excitement in 2009 ended in disappointment for Japanese voters and for those who sought the emergence of a truly competitive party system. Japan today has truly become a ‘democracy without competition’ (Scheiner, 2006).

Third, Abe seems invincible at this time. Analysts project scenarios of the LDP post-Abe, but it is possible that Abe may continue as party president even beyond his third term that expires in 2021, when he will have served a total of nine years as prime minister. The LDP has already changed its party rules to give Abe a third term in 2018 beyond the maximum of two terms that had applied hitherto. Even post-Abe, the names that surface of possible leaders are all hereditary politicians with little by way of new ideas or attractive policies. Shigeru Ishiba, Fumio Kishida, Taro Kono, and Seiko Noda are all from political families. Even the younger generation of LDP leaders represent political dynasties: Yuko Obuchi, Shinjiro Koizumi, Tatsuo Fukuda, Gaku Hashimoto, and Yasutaka Nakasone all have surnames familiar in Japanese politics, as their fathers or grandfathers held prime ministerships (Jain and Kobayashi, 2018). Although factions still dominate in the LDP, their past role as internal checks and balances has almost disappeared, giving the prime minister a much more powerful role than in the past. Furthermore, Japan’s electoral system discourages a high turnover of politicians, and serves to minimize the opportunity for alternation of power among political players and for new aspirants to enter the political arena. Securing party endorsement outside of factions, family members, and favourite political staffers of parliamentarians is still very difficult. And then there are thorny money matters, especially because elections are still hugely expensive. For example, a new party in the nationwide PR district must run at least 10 candidates, with each depositing 6 million yen (US$55,000) and 3 million yen (US$27,000) in a district seat (Greens, 2019).

Conclusion

Japan’s upper house elections are generally lacklustre affairs, although in the past some results have impacted significantly on the government of the day, even compelling some prime ministers to step down. In 2019, the Year of the Boar phenomenon was manifested in various ways, such as yielding the second lowest voter turnout rate post-war, but the impact was not serious, unlike with the last boar election in 2007. The 2019 results point us to some distinctive trends and broad directions in which Japan’s politics now move.

On the positive side, Japanese politics remain stable, giving confidence to both domestic and international constituencies, particularly after prime ministers rotated annually between 2007 and 2012. The national economy under Abe is performing satisfactorily, with the unemployment rate very low. Nevertheless, Japan’s peripheries have reason to claim not to see much trickle-down effect of economic growth into their regions.

Some encouraging developments on this election landscape are also evident in the improved representation of women and other marginalized groups in Japan, such as people with disabilities. Even so, much remains to be done to improve the political representation of many other minorities and peripheral groups in Japan. The next lower house election (due in 2021) will likely indicate if – and how far – this trend gets some traction and moves in an upward trajectory.

On the other side of the ledger we observe a development with negative consequences for Japan’s democratic process. Further reaffirming a trend over recent years, results of the 2019 upper house election suggest that Japan has returned to a one-party dominant political landscape. The LDP, with junior allies, have held power for six and a half years with little political challenge. So many negative factors were stacked against Abe and the LDP, but still as the national leader and party in power they performed relatively well. Eminent Japan scholar Arthur Stockwin has characterized today’s political landscape in Japan as ‘authoritarian leadership with weak opposition’ (Stockwin, 2018: 132). Like for any other nations, political stability is crucial for Japan in a world of uncertainties. The absence of a viable opposition and super ‘strong leadership’ with concentration of power is of course not good news for Japan’s parliamentary democracy. The strength of a democracy, unlike a dictatorial or authoritarian state, lies in the constant possibility of change of government and political shift. Rebuilding political opposition is therefore vital to resuscitating Japan’s democratic life.

To be sure, Japan is one of the oldest democracies in Asia. Yet most of the second half of the 20th century saw almost no change in the nation’s ruling party, even with a well-established electoral system. The shifts away from relentless LDP rule in the 1990s appeared to augur well for more vigorous democratic development, but trends evident in recent elections such as the upper house election in 2019 suggest Japan is now ‘going back to the future’. Change is usually a constant in democracy, so the current form of ‘authoritarian leadership’ and concentration of power in a few individuals and institutions appears to be anomalous. However, epoch-making change either within the LDP or outside it in the near future seems a remote possibility. If opposition forces remain the way they are today, the LDP will most likely continue in power for many more years, with or without Abe.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This paper has benefitted significantly by the author’s discussion with Mr Takashi Kokubu of the Asahi Shinbun, Mr Itaru Oishi of Nikkei newspaper, Professor Reiko Oyama of Komazawa University and Professor Jun Iio of GRIPS-all in Tokyo during the author’s field research from 19–24 July 2019. Professor Hiroaki Mori of Kitakyushu University also provided some useful materials related to the 2019 unified local elections. The normal academic caveat applies, however.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Purnendra Jain

Notes

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