House of Councillors 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 ...

in 1977. Only half of the

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, ...

was up for election. The main question of this election was whether or not the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) would be able to retain its hold on an absolute majority of the seats in the House of Councillors, something it has maintained since the party's founding in 1955. Early forecasts had speculated that this dramatic downturn for the LDP may have been possible, but in the end the LDP kept its razor-thin hold on majority control by having four LDP-allied independents cooperate with it. As per usual for the time, the LDP did very well in the sparsely-populated single member districts and even managed to hold its own not only in the two-member districts, but even in the more heavily urbanised three- and four-member districts which were projected to be tough wins for the LDP. The LDP's clearest struggling was in the national district, where its popular vote declined by 8.5% when compared to the previous House of Councillors election. In any event, the pessimistic forecasts of the election results ended up influencing the LDP's approach in fielding relatively few candidates, and members of the party believed that if they disregarded the polls and fielded more candidates, they could have won a larger share of the seats in this election. Meanwhile, 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 ...

also saw a loss in seats (partly due to

vote splitting Vote splitting is an electoral effect in which the distribution of votes among multiple similar candidates reduces the chance of winning for any of the similar candidates, and increases the chance of winning for a dissimilar candidate. Vote spl ...

caused by former member

Saburō Eda was a Japanese party politician, prominent in the postwar period, who served two terms in the House of Councillors (Japan), Member of the House of Councillors and four terms in the House of Representatives (Japan), Member of the House of Repre ...

's SCL splinter party siphoning away votes from the JSP. The

Japanese Communist Party The is a left-wing to far-left political party in Japan. With approximately 270,000 members belonging to 18,000 branches, it is one of the largest non-governing communist parties in the world. The party advocates the establishment of a democr ...

also saw a decline in fortunes, with

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 the Democratic Socialist Party showing the most promise among well-established opposition parties.

Results

By constituency

References

{{Japanese elections

House of Councillors (Japan) elections House of Councillors election Japanese House of Councillors election Election and referendum articles with incomplete results