Japanese Upper House Election: Taro Yamamoto Won Seat in Tokyo With 4th Highest Votes, Communist Party Increased Seats Significantly

LDP and Komei won 76 seats together, bringing the overall number of seats in the Upper House (including the seats not contested this time) to 135, well past the simple majority of 121. DPJ collapsed from pre-election 44 to only 17, even though it is still the 2nd largest party overall.

It was almost funny to see the media, both newspapers and TV, keep telling the voters throughout the day and evening on July 21 (the election day) that the voter turnout was going to be so low that it would be the record-low. Here's Mainichi, saying the voter turnout as of 6PM was only 32.64%, and it was low across the nation. However, Yomiuri reports that the final turnout two hours later at 8PM was 52%. It is still low, but above 50% and not the record-low like the media has been telling the voters. It seems 20% of voters showed up in the last two hours of voting, except for places where the voting was finished earlier (35% of all voting stations nationwide).

Anyhow... Here's the election results, per Asahi Shinbun (English labels are by me):

And the results of Tokyo, per Yomiuri Shinbun, showing Taro Yamamoto close 4th after a Japanese Communist Party candidate (a 30-year-old woman), beating an experienced LDP politician (who still won the seat) and beating a DPJ candidate who was supported by many "famous" and "well-known" people but couldn't win the seat:

What's not so good is this, also from Asahi - overall numbers of Upper House Councilors of each party. To LDP and Komei, add Boy-wonder's Japan Restoration Party and Your Party whose policies are hardly different from those of LDP; you get the two-thirds majority, enough to change the Constitution. Abe has already declared that what he is going to do, now that he has the "mandate", having won both Houses of the Diet.

For sure, Komei Party says it is against the radical change of the Constitution as proposed by LDP, but it still wants to modify certain clauses. There are DPJ politicians who are for changing the Constitution.

After the win of Yamamoto was confirmed, I was surprised to see some of the influential experts on Twitter resorted to propagating totally false information about Yamamoto. They are people who think the fear of radioactive contamination in Japan and particularly in Fukushima Prefecture is way overblown. As far as I have followed, they have so far not resorted to manufacturing a lie about people they do not agree with, and they are usually the ones who appreciate accuracy in data.

But not this time. One such expert tweeted that Taro Yamamoto is "racist" (against people in Fukushima, he means; at least he doesn't use the transliterated katakana word) because Yamamoto just said in an NHK interview that the agricultural produce in Fukushima was nuclear waste. Yamamoto said no such thing, as it turned out. He said 100 Bq/kg contamination had been considered nuclear waste until the Fukushima accident, and after the Fukushima accident it is the safety limit for food.

I have problems myself with some of Yamamoto's opinions and understanding of things, but I didn't expect these experts to manufacture a lie like this to attack someone they don't agree with.

The other phenom in the election, Yohei Miyake, didn't win in the proportional representation part of the election for the Green Party, but he got over 150,000 votes (the highest in the Green Party). He has declared he will run again in three years in the Upper House election, and says he's glad his movement contributed to the win by Yamamoto.

Tweet