What's unified about Japan's Unified Local Elections

April 2023 is the four-year mark which requires prefectures, cities, towns, villages, and the 23 wards of Tokyo to hold local elections.

The system was established by the American Occupation in 1947 to allow for elections to take place all over Japan at the same time in order to drive interest in voting and elections.

Since that time, due to natural disasters which have cancelled elections, and other factors, the 2023 Unified Local Elections will only take place in only 26.72% of all Prefectures, Cities, Towns, Villages, and the 23 wards of Tokyo.

There should be two elections for each of 1,1789 electoral districts, one for Governor/Mayor/Town Head/Village head, and one for the respective councils and this would come 3,578 elections.

How many will take place in April 2023? Well, right off the bat, the elections are not even on the same day; so much for unified. Elections will be held on either 9 or 23 April, with one town in Fukuoka, Fuckichi Machi, will be on 30 April.

So who’s voting in April.
Prefectural voting for both governor and assembly all seem to be set for 9 April. 39 out of 47 assemblies and 9 gubernatorial elections will be held. Therefore, out of the possible two elections for each prefecture which would be 47 X 2, there will be only 48 elections in total.

In Tokyo’s 23 special wards, council elections will be held in 20 wards, and mayoral elections in only 12 of the 23. Total count; possible elections 23 X 2 (46), actual elections 31. All will be held on 23 April.

At the local level of cities, towns, and villages, of which there are 1719. One election for mayor (or town/village head), and one for council would mean there should be 3,438 races. But how many are there in actuality? There will be 213 elections for mayor (5 on 9 April, and 208 on 23 April), and 663 elections for council (17 on 9 April, and 646 on 13 April).

Where does this bring us?
Here’s the math: 213 (local mayors) + 663 (local councils) + 12 (special ward mayors) + 20 (special ward councils) + 39 (prefectural assembly) + 9 (prefectural governors) = 956

 So out of 3578 potential elections, there will be only 956 elections accounting for only 26.7% of the total.