Legislative branch: National Diet
Aside from passing new laws, the Japanese National Diet also authorizes the national budget as well as treaties and designates the Prime Minister of Japan. The ordinary sessions of the Diet are scheduled every year for 150 days from January. Additional extraordinary sessions and special sessions may be called for the rest of the year, for example, to pass supplementary budgets. The Diet is a bicameral legislature divided into the House of Representatives (lower house) and the House of Councillors (upper house).The House of Representatives holds more power and can veto upper house bills with a two-thirds majority. The lower house can also pass a vote of no-confidence against the Cabinet. The members of the House of Representatives are in office for four years unless the Prime Minister dissolves the house, or a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet is passed before the end of the term. The House of Councillors, by comparison, cannot be dissolved, and its elections are conducted every three years to replace half of the members. Since its establishment in 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has held the most seats overall and has been the majority party for most of its history.
Executive branch: Cabinet
The Cabinet of Japan enforces the laws, adopts measures and policies, and drives foreign diplomacy. To form a new Cabinet, the Diet first designates a new Prime Minister. The newly elected Prime Minister then chooses up to 19 members of the Ministers of State and inaugurates the new Cabinet. Ministers of State supervise the administration of 11 ministries.Highly dependent on the nation’s cabinet approval rate and the political landscape, Prime Ministers tend to resign comparatively often in Japan. After the start of the Heisei period in 1989, four Prime Ministers stepped aside with a serving time of less than a year. As of 2022, Shinzo Abe was the Prime Minister who led the Cabinet continuously for the longest time in history. He also held a record for the longest-serving Japanese Prime Minister, a total of 3,188 days in office.
The shocking assassination of Abe in July 2022 started an intense discussion about the close connection between Japanese politicians and religious groups. The murderer claimed that Abe’s perceived connection with the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (the Unification Church), a controversial religious group founded in South Korea in 1954, was his main motive. Nearly half of the LDP diet members admitted to having ties with the group during the investigation conducted by the LDP after the incident. This result promoted accusations that members of the national diet were exerting their influence in favor of the group in exchange for votes and electoral support. The current cabinet led by Fumio Kishida is under increased scrutiny on how it will further address this issue.
