Asian Topics on Asia for Educators || The Government of Modern Japan: Japan's Electoral System

THE GOVERNMENT OF MODERN JAPAN:
JAPAN'S ELECTORAL SYSTEM
The "Medium-size Election District" System

Gerald L. Curtis :: Under this system, three or four or five members to the Diet were elected in a particular constituency, but each voter had only one vote. So in a parliament of 511 seats, but only 130 election districts, a political party that wanted to win a majority of seats, 256 seats, had to run more than one candidate in many of these 130 election districts.

This "medium-size election district" system created a particular kind of political competition that is different than we see in other countries, because what it did was to force people from within the same political party, namely the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which wanted to win a majority of seats, to run against each other. It generated intra-party competition, competition among the members of the same party. Because if you were running for the lower house of the Diet in a district, and you were a member of the LDP and there were two other members of the LDP also running for election in this district — a member of the Socialist Party, and a member of the Kumaito, and a member of the Communist Party — if we say this district perhaps elected five people, there were all these people running. Each voter only had one vote, but five people would be elected.

It makes sense that each of the three Liberal Democratic Party candidates would try to take votes — to get the votes of people who were inclined to vote for Liberal Democratic Party candidates. In other words, each of the Liberal Democratic Party candidates would try to get the support of voters who might vote for one of the other Liberal Democratic Party candidates. So the result was that the LDP candidates competed with each other. And sometimes this resulted in one candidate doing very well, leading to the defeat of another Liberal Democratic Party candidate, even though the party was much more popular than any of the opposition parties that were running in the election.