Japan’s Local Elections: The Rise of Nippon Ishin

On April 9, Japan held the first half of its 2023 unified local elections. Nine governors, 2,260 prefectural assembly members, and six mayors of ordinance-designated cities were elected. (The second half of the election, held on April 23, featured races for city mayors, city councils, and their equivalents in other local administrative units.) Although the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) retained its dominance, the big story coming out of the elections for Japanese politics was the resurgence and geographic spread of Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party) and Osaka Ishin. Osaka Ishin is a regional opposition party, but is making geographic gains through its national branch, Nippon Ishin.

Osaka Ishin, the regional political party that became the foundation of Nippon Ishin, has held Osaka’s governorship and mayorship since 2011. On Osaka Ishin’s home turf, its candidates performed well. Osaka Governor Yoshimura Hirofumi won reelection, and Yokoyama Hideyuki won the mayoral election to replace outgoing Matsui Ichiro. While the LDP has attempted to campaign in Osaka in the past, this year, LDP headquarters remained aloof from the races in Osaka Ishin’s stronghold.

The newer development is that Nippon Ishin, the national version of the party, is seeing success in other regions. Nippon Ishin candidate Yamashita Makoto managed to win the gubernatorial race in Nara Prefecture. This is the first time Ishin has won a gubernatorial race outside of Osaka.

Although Ishin party leader Baba Nobuyuki claims that voters in Nara Prefecture want the party to make Nara more like Osaka, ideological affinity is not the only explanation. It undoubtedly helped that the LDP made a tactical error when they could not decide on a single candidate to back, thus giving Ishin an easy victory over the divided competition.

All told, Nippon Ishin won 69 seats in prefectural assemblies, and Osaka Ishin won 55. In Osaka Prefectural Assembly, Ishin kept their majority by winning 55 of the 79 seats; in Osaka City Assembly, they achieved a majority for the first time by wining 46 of 81 seats. Also for the first time, Ishin won prefectural assembly seats in Gunma and Tochigi in the Kanto region and Kagawa in Shikoku.

Both the LDP and the current main opposition, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), are wary of Ishin’s advances. While Ishin and the CDP have collaborated on policy before, Ishin may be prepared to push their own candidates to replace the CDP as the largest opposition party. Komeito, the LDP’s junior coalition partner, also historically had a cooperative relationship with Osaka Ishin – a non-compete agreement, if you will. While optimists in Komeito believe that Ishin will continue to honor Komeito’s turf by not fielding competing candidates, pessimists are concerned that Ishin will more aggressively compete against Komeito going forward.

The ruling LDP, meanwhile, did score major victories with the gubernatorial races in Hokkaido and Oita. Hokkaido was the only race in which the ruling and opposition parties went toe-to-toe. The LDP is particularly pleased with the result of the Hokkaido election because of that, especially given that Hokkaido is traditionally a liberal stronghold. The LDP also won 51 percent of the 2,260 contested seats in the 41 prefectural assembly elections. This is the third time in a row – 2015, 2019, and 2023 – that the LDP has won a majority of prefectural assembly seats.

In the April 23 by-elections for vacant seats in Japan’s national parliament, the LDP secured four out of five seats, a net gain of one seat compared to its pre-election position. Nippon Ishin won one, adding to its representation in the Diet. The CDP, meanwhile, came away with losses in all three of the by-elections it contested.

In other news, a record 316 women were elected on April 9. That is a significant increase from the last record: 237 women elected in the first half of the 2019 unified elections. Continuing that trend, a record seven women were elected as mayors in the April 23 elections, and six of Tokyo’s 23 wards are now headed by women, setting another record. Even though victorious female candidates accounted for 14 percent of the 2,260 prefectural assembly seats, it is still a far cry from the government’s target of 35 percent.

It is worth noting that even though the LDP had the most successful female candidates in terms of absolute numbers (68), the LDP also had the worst ratio of successful female candidates versus women who ran (5.9 percent).

All the results discussed above should be read in the context of declining voter turnout, however. Average voter turnout in the 41 prefectural assembly elections on April 9 was a record low of 41.8 percent. That may in part be due to a lack of competition, with over half of the local races only having one registered candidate.

Whether the election results can be interpreted to mean that “the Japanese public” supports the Kishida Fumio cabinet – let alone Kishida’s policies on defense or combatting the declining birth or LGBTQ rights – will require more careful analysis of who did not vote in this round and what they care about. Voters who stayed home this time could potentially show up to vote later if they are sufficiently provoked.

Admittedly, however, the general apathy in Japanese politics makes the sudden emergence of the other 58 percent of the Japanese voting public extremely unlikely. Sadly, such voter apathy in turn will encourage LDP complacency. For that reason, Ishin’s rise may be a net benefit for Japanese public if it forces the LDP to try to realign with the priorities of the public, whether they voted this time or not.