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Kagawa at large district

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The Kagawa at-large district (香川県選挙区, Kagawa-ken Senkyo-ku) is a constituency of the House of Councillors in the Diet of Japan (national legislature). It consists of Kagawa Prefecture and elects two Councillors, one every three years by a first-past-the-post system for a six-year term. In the first election in 1947, Kagawa like all districts used single non-transferable vote to elect both its Councillors in one election.

Th Councillors currently representing Kagawa are:

  • Emiko Uematsu (DPJ; term ends in 2013) and
  • Yoshihiko Isozaki (LDP; term ends in 2016).
  • Single-member districts (ichinin-ku) for the House of Councillors often play a decisive role for the outcome of elections as little swing in votes is required to achieve a change of the Councillors elected there. Kagawa in predominantly rural Shikoku has in most elections voted for candidates from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP); but in 1950, 1965, 1971 and in the landslide election of 1989 – the first that led to a nejire kokkai ("twisted parliament": opposition control of the House of Councillors) – the main opposition Japan Socialist Party (JSP) managed to pick up a seat in Kagawa. Following the decline of the 1955 System of LDP and JSP and the party realignments of the 1990s, the JSP was replaced by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) as main opposition party. DPJ candidate Emiko Uematsu could win Kagawa by a large margin against LDP incumbent Kenji Manabe in the 2007 election that also led to a nejire kokkai.

    References

    Kagawa at-large district Wikipedia