Japan: Denying voting rights to prisoners constitutional: Tokyo High Court | The Japan Times

The Tokyo High Court ruled Monday that denying prisoners the right to vote is constitutional, rejecting a plaintiff’s demand that the proportional representation segment of last July’s Upper House election be invalidated. The ruling conflicts with a decision handed down in September by the Osaka High Court, which ruled that denying prisoners the right to vote is unconstitutional. It was the first judgment on the public offices election law provision restricting voting rights for convicts.

Japan: Court: Barring prisoners from voting violates Constitution | The Asahi Shimbun

The Osaka High Court on Sept. 27 ruled that denying prisoners the right to vote violates the Constitution, an unprecedented decision hailed by human rights lawyers but blasted by the Justice Ministry. A senior ministry official said the ruling was “totally unexpected” and could create problems in the judicial system. “If the law is revised to give voting rights to prisoners, who make up the majority of people in justice institutions, it would have considerable ramifications,” the official said. “We will have to hold talks with the internal affairs ministry.” Presiding Judge Hiroshi Kojima dismissed the government’s argument that prisoners lack a law-abiding spirit and cannot be expected to exercise their right to vote in a fair manner. The judge also noted that prisoners are allowed to vote in a national referendum, which is required in procedures to revise the Constitution.

Japan: Election Candidates Embraced Net, but Did Voters? | Wall Street Journal

Japanese politicians across the political spectrum jumped at the opportunity to use the Internet in campaigning for Sunday’s election, the first to be held after the lifting of a ban on using the Web in the run-up to a national vote. But while a media survey shows that the vast majority of candidates used the Net as a campaigning tool to garner votes from younger and tech-savvy voters, another poll indicates there is still a long way to go before all voters embrace the Internet as a primary source of information for deciding who they will support. Analysis of the media survey also shows that although the victorious Liberal Democratic Party boasted the ability to reach the largest number of people with its messages on social media, it ranked only fifth in terms of the quantity of tweets posted on microblogging site Twitter. Leading the way on planet Twitter was the Japanese Communist Party, arguably the most enthusiastic convert to the ways of Internet campaigning since the law changed. The survey by national broadcaster NHK showed that 91% of candidates for the upper house election used social media services such as Twitter and Facebook to post information about their campaign platforms, rally schedules, and videos of previous speeches and messages from supporters. According to analysis of the survey conducted with assistance from NTT Data, election tweets from candidates of all major political parties during the campaign period totaled 53,000, with almost 20% of those postings coming from the JCP.

Japan: Election Win by Ruling Party Signals Change in Japan | New York Times

Japanese voters handed a landslide victory to the governing Liberal Democrats in parliamentary elections on Sunday, strengthening the grip of a party that promises accelerated changes to Japan’s economy and a shift away from its postwar pacifism. By securing control of both houses of Parliament for up to three years, the win offers Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — an outspoken nationalist who promises to revitalize Japan’s deflationary economy and strengthen its military — the chance to be the most transformative leader in a decade. Although a lackluster turnout indicated that Mr. Abe might not have as much of a mandate as his supporters hoped, the margin of victory was large enough to suggest he has an opportunity to also bring stability to the country’s leadership after years of short-lived and ineffective prime ministers.

Japan: End of the Manifesto Election? | Wall Street Journal

Attempts over the last decade to emphasize the importance of clear policy platforms in Japanese elections seem to have come full circle. Baffled voters in the current campaign are facing a bewildering array of candidates and a muddle of issues in Sunday’s upper house poll. With newspapers and Internet sites vying to give voters clearer ideas on which candidates to vote for, an independent political think tank has judged the election manifestos of Japan’s main parties to be the worst in years. In a study published on its website Wednesday, Genron NPO dissected the election platforms of the nine national parties contending the election, as it has done for the last seven elections since 2003. In a thorough analysis, it graded each manifesto for elements such as clarity of goals, achievability, relevancy and presentation on 12 main issues, including fiscal, economic, social security, energy, diplomatic and agricultural policy. The results were the equivalent of straight F grades for all the parties. On a scale of 1 to 100, the best manifesto was judged to be the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s with 29 points. Its coalition partner New Komeito scored 21, Your Party came in at 21 points, and the Democratic Party of Japan placed fourth at 16 points.

Japan: Voters Weigh Candidate Compatibility | Wall Street Journal

While compatibility tests are often used in gauging relationships or job prospects, they have also proven to be popular among voters seeking the right electoral candidate. More than 500,000 people have used Yahoo Japan’s “Compatibility Test” ahead of upper house elections on Sunday. The test is a series of 11 questions based on the major issues of the campaign, such as constitutional revision and the consumption tax. The would-be voter chooses his level of agreement with the statement: from fully agree, to fully oppose, with the merits and demerits of the policies listed underneath. Completely opposed to any revisions to Japan’s postwar constitution? Democratic Party of Japan’s representative for Tokyo, Kan Suzuki, may be your man. Feel it’s necessary for Japan to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership but not without protection of the agricultural sector? Your Party’s proportional representative Yukio Tomioka agrees with you 100%.

Japan: Gloves off: Japan’s upper-house election | The Economist

As the orange van cruises central Tokyo, Kan Suzuki, a politician from the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), scours the street for voters. Leaning from the window, he blares out his name through the van’s loudspeakers, and a team of white-gloved ladies known as uguisu-jo, or warbler girls, echoes him, waving starchily at a lone pensioner. Then Mr Suzuki retreats inside, to his iPad. For the first time in Japan, the law now allows him to update his home page during an election campaign. For years the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), in office until 2009 and again from late last year, resisted changing outdated laws banning digital campaigning. Its older politicians had not a clue about social media. Others feared negative smear campaigns or worried that a Barack Obama-inspired internet machine could hand victories to the more technically minded DPJ. Until this election campaign—for the upper house of the Diet, where half of the seats are up for grabs on July 21st—all online activity had to freeze just when candidates most wanted to reach voters.

Japan: Campaign for Parliamentary Election Begins in Japan | New York Times

Campaigning for the July 21 parliamentary election began across Japan on Thursday, with opinion polls forecasting major gains for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his economic revival plan. At stake in the election are half of the seats in the upper house of Parliament, where his main opponents, the Democratic Party, now have control. Mr. Abe’s conservative governing party, the Liberal Democrats, soundly defeated the Democrats in December in elections for the more powerful lower house of Parliament, and the polls so far suggest that they will repeat that feat in the upper house. If they succeed, Mr. Abe will be the first Japanese prime minister in years to break a rapid cycle of rise and fall for the country’s leaders. Control of both houses of Parliament would give Mr. Abe more freedom to push forward a doctrine that his party now proudly calls Abenomics, a cocktail of monetary stimulus, government spending and promised economic changes meant to jolt Japan out of its long deflationary slump.

Japan: Prime Minister Abe hops and flips in voter-wooing game | Stuff.co.nz

It’s a bird, it’s a plane … It’s a cartoon version of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, hopping and somersaulting his way through the sky in a smartphone game app his party hopes will lure young voters ahead of a July 21 election. A growing number of Japanese politicians are venturing into the cyber world after a legal change allowed the use of social media in campaigns, setting up Facebook pages and twitter accounts to woo voters before a July upper house election. But the app, which has the imprimatur of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), goes further in its effort to court tech-savvy youngsters, who tend to be apathetic about politics and put off by traditional campaigns featuring white-gloved politicians blaring their names and slogans over loudspeakers.

Japan: Revised election law allows wards to vote by proxy | The Japan Times

The House of Councilors enacted a law Monday that gives wards the right to vote, meaning that about 136,000 adults under legal guardianship will be able to cast ballots in the Upper House poll this summer. The Upper House of the Diet unanimously approved a bill to amend the Public Offices Election Law by removing Article 11, which prevents wards from exercising their right to vote. The bill passed the Lower House earlier. Under the revision, adults who are under guardianship will be able to exercise their voting rights via proxies. Proxy voting will also be allowed in national referendums on constitutional amendments.

Japan: Diet OKs Internet election campaigns | The Japan Times

A bill to permit the use of the Internet during election campaigns was passed into law by the Upper House on Friday, clearing the way for more robust online interaction between candidates and voters, beginning with July’s House of Councilors poll. The revision to the Public Offices Election Law will allow political parties and candidates to electioneer online by updating their home pages or blogs and using social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter to post comments, among other things.

Japan: Appeal sparks outrage over voting rights curb | The Japan Times

The father of a woman with Down syndrome who filed suit to regain her right to vote slammed the government Thursday for appealing a Tokyo District Court ruling that declared unconstitutional a provision in the election law that denies voting rights to adults under guardianship. “I don’t know what reasons the ministries have, but is it right to leave the state of unconstitutionality as is?” Seikichi Nagoya, the father and guardian of the lawsuit’s plaintiff, Takumi Nagoya, said at a news conference in lashing out at the appeal the government filed Wednesday. “I’m enraged.” Nagoya demanded that the government withdraw its appeal and revise the law so that his daughter, who was unable to attend the news conference due to work, can vote.

Japan: Hiroshima Court Rules December Election Invalid in Two Districts | WSJ

In a landmark ruling Monday, a Hiroshima court ruled the results of the December lower-house election invalid in two districts due to the disproportionate weighting of votes in those districts. It was the first time a Japanese court ruled election results invalid on such grounds. It is seen as a victory for constitutional rights activists, who have long argued disparities in the weighting of votes in different districts violates the constitution. The ruling ups the ante on lawmakers to fix the system. A string of past court rulings has found that the current electoral system doesn’t uphold the principle of “one person, one vote,” as prescribed in the constitution. Still, the rulings acknowledged the validity of the results — until now. Yet neither of the winning candidates in the two districts — including Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida — will need to immediately worry about their jobs.

Japan: Conservatives win landslide election victory | latimes.com

The conservative party that dominated post-war Japan is back in power after a three-year absence, in a landslide election victory Sunday that will result in hawkish Shinzo Abe returning as prime minister. Abe, 58, who served in the post once before, is likely to pursue a tougher stance toward China and prevent the nation from abandoning nuclear energy. The conservative Liberal Democratic Party was projected by NHK Television to win 291 out of 480 seats in Japan’s lower house, while its ally, the New Komeito Party, had 30. That would give them the two-third majority needed to overrule the upper house, perhaps breaking deadlocks that have long stymied Japanese governments.

Japan: Election Draws Record Number of Parties | WSJ.com

Official campaigning for Japan’s general election kicked off Tuesday with the main opposition party leading in voter support. But the crowded race is likely to result in a coalition government plagued again by gridlock and policy stagnation. A record number of parties—12 in total—are expected to register more than 1,400 candidates to compete for the 480 seats in the lower house. The leaders of the two main parties—Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and main opposition leader Shinzo Abe—both hit the campaign trail starting in Fukushima prefecture, highlighting the region’s significance in the wake of the March 2011 tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis.

Japan: Nuclear power issue central to Japanese election | UPI.com

A new political party, expected to become the unifying force of an anti-nuclear energy coalition, has been formed in Japan ahead of next month’s elections for the lower house of Parliament. The upcoming vote would be the first national election since the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. In announcing the Japan Future Party on Tuesday, Shiga prefecture Gov. Yukiko Kada, an environmental sociologist, said the phasing out of nuclear power would be one of her party’s six key policy issues, Asahi Shimbun reports.

Japan: Japan Prime Minister dissolves parliament; vote set for Dec 16 | KEYC

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda dissolved the lower house of parliament Friday, paving the way for elections in which his ruling party will likely give way to a weak coalition government divided over how to solve the nation’s myriad problems. Elections are set for Dec. 16. If Noda’s center-left party loses, the economically sputtering country will get its seventh prime minister in six and a half years.

Japan: Two Minor Parties Merge Ahead of Japan Election | WSJ.com

Two minor parties led by local Japanese politicians—who have stirred controversy with hawkish views on matters ranging from relations with China to Japan’s wartime past—formally merged Saturday as campaigning for the Dec. 16 national election ground into gear. With the most recent opinion poll showing the ruling Democratic Party of Japan trailing the opposition Liberal Democratic Party but narrowing the gap, the former governor of Tokyo and the mayor of Osaka jointly presented what they said will be an alternative force in Japanese politics at a news conference. But while Shintaro Ishihara, the former governor of the capital, and Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto both have local power bases and have garnered support in polls in recent months, a survey conducted Thursday and Friday by Japanese daily newspaper Asahi showed both minor parties still trailing the incumbent DPJ and opposition LDP by a long way. More than half of those polled, however, said they supported no particular political party.

Japan: Elections set as Premier Yoshihiko Noda pledges to dissolve parliament | The Washington Post

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda suggested Wednesday that he will dissolve the lower house of parliament Friday, triggering an election that is likely to oust Noda and his unpopular party from power. The government said the election will be held Dec. 16. In a testy debate with opposition leader Shinzo Abe, Noda said he would go ahead with the move in exchange for cooperation on a bill to shrink the size of parliament. Officials from Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) quickly said they would agree to the deal.