General elections were held in Japan on 27 December 1969. The result was a victory for the Liberal Democratic Party, which won 288 of the 486 seats. Voter turnout was 68.51%, the lowest since 1947. This was the first general election in Japanese history in which candidates were allowed limited use of

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

as a means for campaigning, something that had been formerly proscribed under Japan's strict election campaign laws. The main national policy issue at the time was the possibility of reverting

Okinawa is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 km2 (880 sq mi). Naha is the capital and largest city ...

, which had been under American military occupation since the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, back over to Japanese control. Nonetheless, as is characteristic of Japanese elections, voters were more interested in pocket book issues, or "livelihood problems" (''kurashi mondai''), over pressing national and foreign policy questions. The election was marked by relative apathy, especially among young people in urban areas, with voter turnout in Tokyo being the lowest in the country, dropping from 63.12% in the last election to 56.35% in the 1969 election. Moreover, old districting laws from the pre-war period were still in effect, and as urban areas increased in population, individual rural voters (who were heavily skewed towards the LDP) were disproportionately more powerful than the average individual urban voter. In any event, the actual popular vote of the LDP had been continuously sliding down since its formation, and the LDP's increase in seats was more attributable to its competent endorsement of only a limited number of local seat candidates when compared to the

Japan Socialist Party The was a socialist and progressive political party in Japan that existed from 1945 to 1996. The party was founded as the Social Democratic Party of Japan by members of several proletarian parties that existed before World War II, including ...

, which ran too many candidates and thus split votes at a disastrous rate. Ironically, what little increase in support the JSP saw was found primarily in rural areas rather than urban areas, the latter of which were traditionally seen as the base of the JSP's support; the young

Kōmeitō , formerly New Komeito and abbreviated NKP, is a conservative political party in Japan founded by lay members of the Buddhist Japanese new religious movement Soka Gakkai in 1964. Since 2012, it has served in government as the junior coalit ...

and reformed

Japanese Communist Party The is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left List of political parties in Japan, political party in Japan. With approximately 270,000 members belonging to 18,000 branches, it is one of the largest non-governing Communis ...

had been gradually making inroads into urban areas, further eating away at the JSP's strength.

Results

Ichirō Ozawa is a Japanese politician and has been a member of the House of Representatives since 1969, representing the Iwate 3rd district (Iwate 2nd district prior to the 1996 general election and Iwate 4th district prior to the 2017 general election). H ...

won a seat in the House of Representatives for the first time, becoming the youngest elected legislator at the time. He went on to become a powerful political figure in the LDP and other parties. Future prime minister

Tsutomu Hata was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan for nine weeks in 1994. He took over from Morihiro Hosokawa at the head of a coalition government. Shortly after he had been appointed Prime Minister, the Japanese Socialist Party l ...

was drafted to run in the election following his father's death, and won a seat for the first time. Future prime minister

Junichiro Koizumi Junichiro Koizumi (; , ''Koizumi Jun'ichirō'' ; born 8 January 1942) is a former Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2001 to 2006. He retired from politics in 2009. He is ...

also attempted to win his late father's seat in the election, but lost.

By prefecture

References

{{Japanese elections Japan 1969 elections in Japan General elections in Japan December 1969 events in Asia Election and referendum articles with incomplete results