Gap Remains in LDP over Constitutional Revision

Tokyo, May 5 (Jiji Press)–The difference of opinions remains among members of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party over a proposed revision of the Constitution. While LDP lawmakers in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, the country’s parliament, hope to speed up work on drawing up an emergency clause in preparation for serious events such as large-scale natural disasters, those in the House of Councillors, the upper chamber, are considering canceling the integration of prefectural constituencies for the Upper House as their focus in amending the Constitution. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, also LDP president, has recently vowed to pave the way for the Diet to propose a constitutional amendment in a year. The gap between the Lower House and Upper House members of the party is expected to be a challenge. “I hope to hold next year’s party convention in a state where we can say that ‘we have laid the groundwork’ for proposing a constitutional revision,” Takaichi said in this year’s LDP convention on April 12, stressing her determination to reform the nation’s fundamental law. Following the leader’s remark, the party is accelerating work on constitutional revision. In the Lower House, the LDP-led caucus has 316 of the chamber’s 465 seats, or more than two-thirds of the total, a level required for proposing revising the Constitution, as a result of the party’s stunning victory in the Feb. 8 general election. The party has instructed the secretariat of the Lower House to draw up a concrete image of the envisaged emergency clause. The Lower House’s Commission on the Constitution is expected to receive the draft image at a meeting of senior members May 12 and kick off debates May 14. Based on its ruling coalition agreement with the Japan Innovation Party, the LDP aims to submit a draft of the emergency clause to the Diet within fiscal 2026, which ends next March. The emergency clause would, among other things, allow an extension of lawmakers’ terms of office in situations where it is difficult to hold elections. “We are now at the stage of working out details of the draft emergency clause,” the LDP’s Yoshitaka Shindo, the ruling coalition’s leader in the commission, said. The Democratic Party for the People, an opposition party, is ready to offer cooperation. Attention is being paid to whether the LDP will aggressively push ahead with deliberations at the commission on the back of its comfortable majority in the Lower House although the main opposition Centrist Reform Alliance and others in the opposition camp remain cautious about the matter. Meanwhile, the ruling bloc-led caucus in the Upper House is 46 seats short of a two-thirds majority in the 248-seat chamber. The Upper House’s Commission on the Constitution is chaired by Hiroyuki Nagahama of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, a situation requiring the ruling coalition to seek cooperation from the opposition side to advance deliberations on constitutional amendment. The LDP hopes to hold the commission’s next meeting May 20. But no concrete schedule has been decided. LDP lawmakers in the Upper House are placing top priority on canceling the integration of the two pairs of sparsely populated neighboring prefectural constituencies in western Japan–Tottori and Shimane, and Tokushima and Kochi–to make it easier to obtain cooperation from opposition parties in revising the Constitution. The fate of the integrated Upper House constituencies is an issue of common concern for both the ruling and opposition sides. The issue “could open the way” for cooperation between the ruling and opposition camps, said Masaji Matsuyama, head of LDP lawmakers in the Upper House. Whether Takaichi and LDP executives in the chamber can work together is another challenge. Relations between them were strained earlier this year over the schedule for Upper House deliberations on the government’s fiscal 2026 budget. Matsuyama met with Takaichi at the prime minister’s office April 28 to improve communication such as by reporting plans for parliamentary deliberations in May and later, including on constitutional revision. The prime minister and LDP lawmakers in the Upper House are slated to hold a series of meetings from late this month. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]