Lower House Seat Bill Unlikely to Be Enacted This Session

Jiji Press

12:37 JST, December 13, 2025

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — A bill related to a cut in the number of seats in the House of Representatives is unlikely to be enacted during the ongoing extraordinary session of the Diet, which ends Wednesday.

While senior officials of the ruling parties affirmed Friday that they do not rule out the option to extend the session, opposition parties remain strongly opposed to the bill, which was submitted by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, to the lower house on Dec. 5.

The framework bill includes a clause stipulating that if the ruling and opposition blocs fail to reach a conclusion on the issue within the next year, 25 single-seat constituency seats and 20 proportional representation seats in the all-important lower chamber will be cut automatically.

The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and others have taken issue with this clause. The lower house currently has 465 seats — 289 constituency seats and 176 proportional representation seats.

The bill has yet to be referred to the lower house special committee on political reform, which is currently holding deliberations on three bills submitted by the ruling and opposition parties regarding a review of political donations from companies and other organizations.

As the opposition side is seeking ample time for deliberations on the donation bills, enough time will unlikely be secured for debates on the lower house seat bill even if it reaches the special committee.

On Friday, LDP Diet affairs chief Hiroshi Kajiyama and his JIP counterpart, Takashi Endo, held a meeting to discuss the ruling camp’s plans for the final phase of the Diet session.

After the meeting, Kajiyama told reporters, “We won’t deny the possibility of extending the Diet session.” He indicated that the ruling side will continue encouraging the opposition camp to agree to put the political donation bills to a vote and launch deliberations on the lower house seat legislation.

JIP leader Hirofumi Yoshimura told reporters, “We need to reach a conclusion [on the Lower House seat bill] even by extending the parliamentary session.”

The ruling parties hold a majority in the lower house, but not in the House of Councillors, meaning that it is impossible to enact the lower house seat bill without cooperation from opposition parties even if parliamentary deliberations start on the legislation.

At a meeting Friday, Yoshitaka Saito, the CDP’s Diet affairs chief in the upper house, told his LDP counterpart, Yoshihiko Isozaki, that if the ruling camp forcibly puts the bill to vote at the lower house, the opposition side will absolutely reject deliberations on the bill at the upper house.

“Even if the Diet session is extended, there’s no way that the bill would be enacted,” Saito told reporters after the meeting.

A senior LDP member said, “There’s no point [in extending the Diet session] if the bill is not enacted.”

A JIP executive said it would be “difficult, realistically” to pass the bill during the ongoing session.