ANALYSIS - Campaigning begins for Japan’s Upper House

By Todd Crowell

TOKYO (AA) - Although polling does not officially begin for another week, sound trucks are already patrolling Japan's neighborhoods blaring out the name of their candidates, while aspiring politicians harangue morning commuters outside railroad stations.

Japan is gearing up for a July 10 general election to the House of Councilors, the upper house of the country’s bicameral parliament. Up for grabs are 121 seats, or exactly half of the members.

Much will be at stake in the election. It will be the last upper house election in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration, and thus the last real chance he has to pursue some of his favorite policies, such as amending the constitution.

Other issues include ratification of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement (a trade agreement among 12 Pacific Rim countries), his controversial security laws, and a general overall verdict on his three and a half year tenure in office.

“I seek voters’ trust,” he has said.

But the issue that seemed uppermost in Abe’s mind was his decision to postpone a rise in the national sales tax to 10 percent until 2019, when he will conveniently be out of office. He speaks as if he needs a voter endorsement to do what is popular.

Abe postponed the tax increase once before, and won a landslide election to the lower house of parliament.

Aside from the tax issue, Abe can be said to have three goals in the upcoming poll.

Goal one: Do not lose seats. Japanese premiers do not usually survive a shellacking in an upper house election. Abe knows this from bitter experience. He resigned in his first term as premier to take the blame for losing the upper house majority in the 2007 election.

Goal two: Maintain at least a majority with help from coalition partner Komeito.

Losing a majority in the upper body causes prime ministers endless headaches, even if they have a secure majority in the “more powerful” House of Representatives, or lower house of parliament.

The upper house is actually a very powerful institution. With few exceptions, bills killed in the upper house stay killed.

Goal three: Win a two-thirds, super majority, which, with its similar supermajority in the lower house, would permit the government to propose amendments to the American-written constitution for the first time since the charter was adopted in 1947.

It is far from certain that Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) can get this super majority even with the help of its coalition partner. It will find no support from the two largest opposition groups, the Democratic Party and communists.

However, there are seven minor parties each with 1-3 seats in the upper house that conceivably could provide the votes to put him over.

Abe’s party is positioned to do well in the election. Recent public opinion polls -- buoyed by U.S. President Barack Obama’ recent visit to Hiroshima -- give the LDP 55 percent approval, versus 8 percent for the Democratic Party (DP) the main opposition party.

Moreover, many of the MPs up for re-election gained office six years ago, when the then Democratic Party of Japan was riding high (members of the upper house have fixed, six-year terms, like the United States Senate).

This election should be an important test for the opposition’s new joint campaign strategy that the DP forged with the Japanese Communist Party. They agreed to coordinate their candidates in the 32 single-seat electoral districts so they do not split the vote.

In the 2013 election the LDP won 29 of these districts, even though the combined opposition vote often was higher than that of the LDP.

Members of the House of Councilors are chosen partly from single member districts and partly through proportional voting.