Tokyo, the center of Japanese political and economic life, is growing more than any other jurisdiction — mostly by drawing people from other prefectures — and sends forty-two representatives to the Diet between its twenty-five single-member districts and its seventeen proportional representation seats.The LDP won twenty-three of twenty-five SMDS in 2005, with Komeito and the …
Tag: Tokyo assembly election
A decisive day?
Although the government parties rallied from behind as the night went on, the LDP and Komeitō failed to recapture a majority of the seats in the Tokyo metropolitan assembly, the goal set by the LDP.NHK has called all but three seats, with the opposition parties currently holding sixty-five, one more than the sixty-four needed for …
The LDP falls in Tokyo
As of this writing, the DPJ has surpassed the thirty-eight it held before the election, winning forty-two seats. It is twenty-two short of a majority, with seventy-six remaining. (Sankei is updating results here; Asahi is here.)The DPJ will become the largest party in the Tokyo assembly, and given the disparity in the early results, it …
Uh oh
NHK reports that turnout exceeded fifty percent. I can't imagine that's good news for the government.
On the eve of destruction?
The denizens of Tokyo have started voting for representatives to the metropolitan assembly, and the LDP is already explaining away a defeat. Turnout may be up compared with 2005, which, as Jun Okumura notes, bodes ill for the LDP and Komeitō.Appearing on TV Saturday, Hosoda Hiroyuki, the LDP secretary general, said that the election will …
The LDP has exhausted its credit with the Japanese people
Asō Tarō and the LDP failed in the first of two electoral challenges that will precede the dissolution of the House of Representatives and the forthcoming general election.Kawakatsu Heita, the DPJ-backed candidate in the Shizuoka gubernatorial election, defeated Sakamoto Yukiko, the LDP- and Komeitō-backed candidate, on Sunday, this despite a split in the DPJ vote …
Continue reading The LDP has exhausted its credit with the Japanese people
Tokyo election open thread
I was walking in Takadanobaba this afternoon and noticed a keijiban for the Tokyo election. As I looked over the candidates, I was having trouble finding the poster for the LDP candidate, which struck me as odd. After looking carefully at the posters, I finally found him.Why was it so hard to locate the LDP …
The Tokyo election truce
The campaign for the 12 July Tokyo assembly election officially began Friday, marking the beginning of what could be the Asō government's last stand.The prime minister and his supporters are, of course, doing everything they can to dismiss the notion that Asō Tarō's fate somehow rests upon the party's performance in the Tokyo election, even …
Protesting too much?
In a short span of time, Prime Minister Asō Tarō, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kawamura Takeo, and LDP Secretary-General Hosoda Hiroyuki rejected the attempt by Asō's opponents to link the LDP's performance in the July 12 Tokyo assembly election to Asō's future as LDP leader.At a press conference Wednesday, Kawamura echoed Hosoda in insisting that there …
Time for a mercy killing
After a brief period of buoyancy, the bottom has finally fallen out of the Asō government.In addition to the drops below twenty percent approval in the Mainichi and Kyodo polls, the government's approval rating dropped 8.7% to 17.5% in the Sankei poll, with its disapproval rating rising ten points to 70.6%, a poll in which …
Tobias S. Harris 