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 Japanese

national Diet The is the national legislature of Japan. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives (Japan), House of Representatives (, ''Shūgiin''), and an upper house, the House of Councillors (Japan), House of Councillors (, ...

is made up of 245 members elected from 45 districts plus a national proportional representation list. Until 2015, there were 47 districts which coincided with the 47

prefectures of Japan Japan is divided into 47 prefectures (, ''todōfuken'', ), which rank immediately below the national government and form the country's first level of jurisdiction and administrative division. They include 43 prefectures proper (, ''ken''), two ...

. In order to address the imbalance in voter representation between rural and urban voters, the Public Officers Election Law was amended in 2012 and again in 2015. The 2015 amendment sees the merger of the two smallest districts, Tottori and

Shimane is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. Shimane Prefecture is the second-least populous prefecture of Japan at 665,205 (February 1, 2021) and has a geographic area of 6,708.26 km2. Shimane Prefecture borders Yamaguc ...

, to create a combined Tottori-Shimane at-large district, as well as the merger of

Kochi Kochi (), also known as Cochin ( ) ( the official name until 1996) is a major port city on the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea, which is a part of the Arabian Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of K ...

and

Tokushima is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku. Tokushima Prefecture has a population of 728,633 (1 October 2019) and has a geographic area of 4,146 km2 (1,601 sq mi). Tokushima Prefecture borders Kagawa Prefecture to the nort ...

districts (the third- and fourth-smallest districts) to create a combined

Tokushima-Kōchi at-large district The is a constituency of the House of Councillors in the Diet of Japan (national legislature). The district was formed in 2015 from a merger of the Tokushima and Kōchi at-large districts. Liberal Democratic Party member was elected as its fir ...

. Other changes to the number of Councilors have also been made to address the imbalance. Below is a table of districts, sortable by name, magnitude and voter disparity, based on the official number of registered voters as of September 2015.

List of districts

National PR block

In addition to the smaller districts mentioned above, the House of Councillors also has a single block for the entire nation. It elects 50 members per election (100 in total) based on the

D'Hondt method The D'Hondt method, also called the Jefferson method or the greatest divisors method, is a method for allocating seats in parliaments among federal states, or in party-list proportional representation systems. It belongs to the class of highest- ...

References

{{Japan House of Councillors Districts

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 ...

Districts of the House of Councillors of Japan

List of districts

National PR block

See also

References