The Japanese political process has two types of elections.
While the national level features a parliamentary system of government where the head of government is elected indirectly by the legislature, prefectures and municipalities employ a presidential system where chief executives and legislative assemblies are directly elected, independently from each other. Many of the prefectural and municipal elections are held together in since 1947, held in years before leap years; but since each election cycle of every chief executive or assembly of any prefecture or municipality is independent and not reset after resignations/deaths/recalls/no-confidence votes/dissolutions/municipal mergers, there are also many non-unified local elections today. Prefectural and municipal assemblies are unicameral, the National Diet is bicameral, with the two houses on independent election cycles.
Rules and regulations, supervision Both national & local elections are regulated by the of 1950.
Elections are supervised by Election Administration Commissions at each administrative level under the general direction of the Central Election Management Council, an extraordinary organ attached to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC). The minimum voting age in Japan's non-compulsory electoral system was reduced from 20 to 18 years in June 2016. Voters must satisfy a three-month residency requirement before being allowed to cast a ballot.
For those seeking offices, 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. Each deposit for candidacy for national election is 3 million yen (about 27 thousand dollars) for a single-seat constituency and 6 million yen (about 54 thousand dollars) for proportional representation.
National elections National elections include: , held every four years unless the lower house is dissolved earlier to elect all members of the House of Representatives at once. , held every three years in staggered elections to six-year terms with half of the membership up in each class. to fill vacant majoritarian seats after an election has been invalidated, e.g. by a winner missing the legal vote quorum or after election law violations
Japan's post-WWII national legislature, the , has two directly elected chambers, elected on independent electoral cycles:
House of Representatives The has 465 members, elected for a rarely completed four-year term, 289 members in single-seat constituencies and 176 members by proportional representation in 11 regional "block" constituencies.
General elections of members of the House of Representatives are usually held before the end of a four-year term as the chamber may be dissolved by the emperor on the advice of the Cabinet. Most prime ministers use that option. The only exception in post-war history was the "Lockheed Election" of 1976 in which the Liberal Democratic Party lost its seat majority for the first time.
The single-seat constituencies are decided by plurality, and the proportional seats are handed out in each "block" constituency to party lists proportionally (by the D'Hondt method) to their share of the vote. Each voter votes twice, once for a candidate in the local constituency, and once for a party in the regional "block" constituency. In a parallel system, there is no link between votes in one tier and seat numbers in the other; but so-called of one candidate in both tiers simultaneously are allowed. If such dual candidates lose in the majoritarian tier, they still have a chance to be elected in the proportional block. Parties may also place dual district and block candidates on the same list rank; in that case, the system determines the order of candidates.
House of Councillors The has 245 members (248 from 2022), elected for a fixed six-year term, 147 (2022–: 148) members by single non-transferable vote (SNTV) in 45 single- and multi-seat constituencies (most are prefectures, two combined constituencies comprise two neighbouring prefectures each) and 98 (2022–: 100) by proportional representation (by D'Hondt method) with optionally open lists in a single, nationwide constituency.
Regular/Ordinary elections of members of the House of Councillors are held once every three years. In staggered elections, half of the House of Councillors comes up for election every three years in elections. The term is fixed, the House of Councillors cannot be dissolved. This, too, is a parallel electoral system. Dual candidacies are not allowed. As in House of Representatives elections, voters have two votes: In the majoritarian election, the vote has to be for a candidate, but in the proportional election, the vote may be for either a party list or a single candidate; in the latter case, the vote counts as both a vote for the party list (to determine proportional seat distribution), and as a preference vote within that list (to determine the order or proportional candidates within that list). The district magnitudes in the majoritarian tier vary between one and six, dependent on, but not fully proportional to the population of each prefecture. In single-member constituencies, SNTV becomes equivalent to first-past-the-post, whereas seats are usually split between different parties/alliances in multi-member constituencies (and in the proportional constituency by definition). Therefore, the are more likely to swing the election result and often receive more media and campaign attention. The proportional election to the House of Councillors allows the voters to cast a preference vote for a single candidate on a party list. The preference votes strictly determined the ranking of candidates on party lists before 2019. Since the 2019 election, parties are allowed to prioritize individual candidates on their proportional list over voter preferences in a . In the 2019 election, almost all parties continued to use completely open lists; exceptions were the LDP which used the "special frame" to give secure list spots to two LDP prefectural federations affected by the introduction of combined constituencies in 2016, Reiwa Shinsengumi which used it to give secure list spots to two candidates with severe disabilities, and the minor "Labourers' Party for the liberation of labour".Jiji Press, 4 July 2019: 特定枠、れいわ・労働も利用【19参院選】, retrieved 18 September 2019.Mainichi Shimbun, 5 July 2019: 2019参院選 公示 特定枠に5候補者 比例に導入、優先的に当選 , retrieved 18 September 2019.
Double elections The electoral cycles of the two chambers of the Diet are usually not synchronized. When the 1947 constitution came into effect, the first House of Councillors election was held several days apart from the 23rd House of Representatives election. Only in 1980 and 1986, general and regular election coincided on the same day because the House of Representatives was dissolved in time for the election to be scheduled together with the House of Councillors election in early summer.
By- and repeat elections Vacant district seats in both Houses are generally filled in by-elections. Nowadays, these are usually scheduled in April and October as necessary. Vacant proportional seats in both Houses and district seats in the House of Councillors that fall vacant within three months of a regular election are filled by : the highest ranking candidate on a proportional list or in the electoral district who was not elected and is not disqualified takes the seat. Disqualifications may, for example, happen if a candidate for the House of Councillors runs for the House of Representatives or vice versa, or after a violation of campaign laws.
Election of the Prime Minister Between 1885 and 1947 in the Empire of Japan, the prime minister was not elected by the legislature, but responsible to, chosen and appointed by the Emperor. In practice, the usually nominated a candidate for appointment. The and its elected lower house, the House of Representatives, which were set up in 1890 according to the Imperial Constitution, had no constitutionally guaranteed role in the formation of cabinets.
Since 1947, the Prime Minister has been chosen in the (ja) in the National Diet. It is held after a cabinet has submitted its resignation – the outgoing cabinet remains as caretaker cabinet until the Imperial inauguration ceremony of a new prime minister –; a cabinet must resign en masse under the constitution (Articles 69 and 70) 1. always on convocation of the first Diet after a general election of the House of Representatives, 2. if the post of prime minister has fallen vacant – that includes cases when the prime minister is permanently incapacitated, e.g. by illness, kidnapping or defection –, or 3. if a no-confidence vote in the House of Representatives is not answered by the dissolution of the chamber. Though both Houses of the Diet vote in two-round elections to select a prime minister, the House of Representatives has the decisive vote: If the two Houses vote for different candidates (as they did in 1948, 1989, 1998, 2007 and 2008), a procedure in the may reach a consensus; but eventually the candidate of the House of Representatives becomes that of the whole Diet and thereby prime minister-designate. The designated prime minister must still be ceremonially appointed by the Emperor in the to enter office; but unlike some heads of state, the Emperor has no reserve power to appoint anyone other than the person elected by the Diet.
In 2001, LDP president and Prime Minister Junichirō Koizumi instituted an advisory council to investigate the possibility of introducing direct popular election of the prime minister in a constitutional revision.Kantei: Advisory Council to Consider the Direct Election of the Prime Minister
Latest results 2026 local elections
2026 House of Representatives election
2025 House of Councillors election
Held in July 2025, the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Komeito lost its majority in the House of Councillors. The LDP’s national vote share fell to 21.6%, the lowest result in the party’s history. The coalition’s decline was driven by growing support for smaller opposition parties. LDP party president and prime minister Shigeru Ishiba would eventually announce his intention to resign in September 2025.
List of national elections
Apportionment
In the 1980s, apportionment of electoral districts still reflected the distribution of the population in the years following World War II, when only one-third of the people lived in urban areas and two thirds lived in rural areas. In the next forty-five years, the population became more than three-quarters urban, as people deserted rural communities to seek economic opportunities in Tokyo and other large cities. The lack of reapportionment led to a serious underrepresentation of urban voters. Urban districts in the House of Representatives were increased by five in 1964, bringing nineteen new representatives to the lower house; in 1975 six more urban districts were established, with a total of twenty new representatives allocated to them and to other urban districts. Yet great inequities remained between urban and rural voters.
In the early 1980s, as many as five times the votes were needed to elect a representative from an urban district compared with those needed for a rural district. Similar disparities existed in the prefectural constituencies of the House of Councillors. The Supreme Court had ruled on several occasions that the imbalance violated the constitutional principle of one person-one vote. The Supreme Court mandated the addition of eight representatives to urban districts and the removal of seven from rural districts in 1986. Several lower house districts' boundaries were redrawn. Yet the disparity was still as much as three urban votes to one rural vote.