House of Councillors The is the upper house of the National Diet of Japan. The House of Representatives is the lower house. The House of Councillors is the successor to the pre-war House of Peers. If the two houses disagree on matters of the budget, treaties, ...

elections were held in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

on 8 July 1956,Table 13: Persons Elected and Votes Polled by Political Parties - Ordinary Elections for the House of Councillors (1947–2004)

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications The is a cabinet-level ministry in the Government of Japan. Its English name was Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications (MPHPT) prior to 2004. It is housed in the 2nd Building of the Central Common Government Of ...

electing half the seats in the House plus two vacant seats in the other half. The Liberal Democratic Party won the most seats, but failed to win a majority. It was the first national election under the 1955 System, approximately a two party system of

Ichirō Hatoyama was a Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1954 to 1956. A conservative, Hatoyama helped oversee the 1955 merger of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party to create the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), of which Hatoyam ...

's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that was created in the "conservative merger" of 1955 and Suzuki Mosaburō's reunified

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 ...

(JSP). The later dominant LDP failed to win a majority. A key campaign issue was Prime Minister

's plan to revise Article 9 of the constitution – any change of the constitution requires a two-thirds majority in both chambers of the Diet. The left parties aimed to win at least a third of seats to prevent any constitutional change. Another issue was the government's plan to replace the elected prefectural boards of education with appointed ones, a plan fiercely opposed by the left: In June 1956, on the LDP's request the police intervened in the "deliberations" in the Diet when Socialist Councillors resorted to violence.

Results

Two by-elections for the class of Councillors elected in 1953 were held simultaneously: The candidates with the 51st and 52nd highest vote shares in the national vote (one Socialist and one Liberal Democrat) were elected for three-year terms. Takenaka Tsuneo, who was elected as a member of the Japan Dentists' Federation, later joined the LDP.

By constituency

References

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

, July 23, 1956
Japan: Swing to the Left
* The Senkyo election archive

{{Japanese elections

House of Councillors (Japan) elections 1956 elections in Japan July 1956 events in Asia Election and referendum articles with incomplete results

Results

By constituency

See also

References