Upper House Election: Japan Election Sees Second Highest Number of Women Running; Momentum Gaining for Balanced Representation

The Yomiuri Shimbun

1:00 JST, July 5, 2025

The official campaign period for the House of Councillors election began Thursday with 152 women entering the race — the second highest figure on record. Of these, 102 are running in prefectural constituency races and 50 in the proportional representation bloc, bringing the share of female contenders to 29.1% of all candidates.

In the previous election in 2022, a record 181 women ran, accounting for 33.2% of the total candidates; this year’s ratio ranks just below that milestone.

A bipartisan piece of legislation that calls on political parties to make sincere efforts to field male and female candidates in equal numbers for national and local elections, called the law on promotion of gender equality in the political field, took effect in 2018.