The Hokkaido at-large district is a constituency 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, ...

in the

Diet of Japan The is the national legislature of Japan. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives (, ''Shūgiin''), and an upper house, the House of Councillors (, '' Sangiin''). Both houses are directly elected under a paralle ...

(national legislature). It consists of the prefecture ''(dō)'' of Hokkai ōand is represented by six Councillors electing three at a time every three years by

single non-transferable vote Single non-transferable vote or SNTV is an electoral system used to elect multiple winners. It is a generalization of first-past-the-post, applied to multi-member districts with each voter casting just one vote. Unlike FPTP, which is a single-winn ...

for six-year terms. In the election period from 2019 to 2022, Hokkaido's Councillors are (party affiliation as of September 2019): *

Gaku Hasegawa is a member of the House of Councillors of Japan from Hokkaido. He belongs to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). In 1990 he enrolled at Hokkaido University and majored in Business Administration. While attending university, he, with five other ...

( LDP, Hosoda faction; term ends in 2022), *

Eri Tokunaga is a Japanese politician and former television reporter from the Democratic Party of Japan. She currently serves as member of the House of Councillors for the Hokkaido At-large district. Before entering in politics she worked as reporter for ...

( DPFP; term ends in 2022), * Yoshio Hachiro ( CDP; term ends in 2022), *

Harumi Takahashi is a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party and currently a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet (national legislature). She served as governor of the prefecture of Hokkaido for four terms from 2003 to 2019. She graduat ...

( LDP; term ends in 2025), * Kenji Katsube ( CDP; term ends in 2025) and * Tsuyohito Iwamoto ( LDP; term ends in 2025). After the House of Councillors had replaced the House of Peers according to the constitution of 1947, Hokkaido was represented by eight Councillors. In the early years of the

1955 System The , also known as the one-and-a-half party system, is the dominant-party system in Japan that has existed since 1955, in which the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has successively held a majority government with major opposition par ...

, all four seats went to the two major postwar parties, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and 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 ...

(JSP). But smaller parties such as 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 ...

(JCP) had a chance to pick up seats in Hokkaido as the vote share sufficient to gain a seat was often significantly below 20 percent. The high number of candidates increased the risk of

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 ...

for the major parties: In 1974, two incumbent LDP candidates and conservative independent Tatsuo Takahashi ranked 5th, 6th and 7th leaving all four seats to the center-left to left opposition parties Kōmeitō, JSP and JCP. In a major reapportionment in 1994 the number of Councillors from Hokkaido was halved to four. It became effective in the 1995 and 1998 elections. During the period as two-member district, Hokkaidō usually split seats evenly between opposition and ruling parties like most two-member districts – although the Democrats unsuccessfully aimed for both seats in the 2004, 2007 and 2010 elections. In another 2015 reapportionment, effective in the two classes from the 2016 and 2019 elections, Hokkaidō's representation in the upper house was raised to six.

Elected Councillors

Recent election results

Notes: * Decimals from anbunhyō ("fractional proportional votes" from ambiguous votes) omitted; note that the rounded whole numbers may still include fractions of numbers >2 of ambiguous votes and do not necessarily represent "whole" voters * (2016 only) (*): ineligible as runner-up replacement ''(kuriage-tōsen)'', lost deposit

References

* House of Councillors
Alphabetical list of former Councillors
{{coord missing, Hokkaidō Prefecture Districts of the House of Councillors (Japan) Politics of Hokkaido