Abstract
This chapter traces out the major political events between the December 2014 and October 2017 general elections in Japan. The chapter covers the reduction in size of the House of Representatives (from 475 to 465 seats), the lowering of the voting age from 20 to 18, the results of the 2016 House of Councillors election won by Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, the 2016 Tokyo Gubernatorial Election won by Yuriko Koike, the creation of the Party of Hope and the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and the decline of the Democratic Party (previously the Democratic Party of Japan).
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Notes
- 1.
HC elections are held every three years but the term for each representative is six years. Half of the members are thus up for reelection in each election, and each prefecture must have at least two seats if voters are to participate in every HC election.
- 2.
Mainichi July 11, 2016. “Kenpo, keizai de kakusare, sanbunnoni ‘shirazu’ tasuu yuukensha 150nin ni kiku” https://mainichi.jp/senkyo/articles/20160711/ddm/041/010/164000c.
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Pekkanen, R.J., Reed, S.R. (2018). Japanese Politics Between 2014 and 2017: The Search for an Opposition Party in the Age of Abe. In: Pekkanen, R., Reed, S., Scheiner, E., Smith, D. (eds) Japan Decides 2017. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76475-7_2
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