The prime minister is the head of government and is chosen by the freely elected parliament. The prime minister selects the cabinet, which can include a limited number of ministers who are not members of the parliament. Japan’s emperor serves as head of state in a ceremonial capacity.

In September 2021, following the resignation of Yoshihide Suga, the LDP chose Fumio Kishida as its new leader, and the parliament voted to confirm him as prime minister a few days later. Kishida won a fresh mandate from lawmakers in November of that year, following the October parliamentary elections.

The parliament, or Diet, has two chambers. The more powerful lower house, the House of Representatives, has 465 members elected to maximum four-year terms through a mixture of single-member districts and proportional representation. The upper house, the House of Councillors, has 248 members serving fixed six-year terms, with half elected every three years using a mixture of nationwide proportional representation and prefecture-based voting. The prime minister and his cabinet can dissolve the lower house, but not the upper house. The lower house can also pass a no-confidence resolution that forces the cabinet to either resign or dissolve the lower house.

Legislative elections in Japan are free and fair. In the October 2021 lower house elections, the LDP won 259 seats, and its coalition partner, Komeito, took 32. Some independents later joined the LDP, adding to its majority. The largest opposition group, the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), won 96 seats, and smaller parties and independents captured the remainder.

In the July 2022 upper house elections, the LDP and Komeito won 76 seats out of the 125 contested, giving them a majority of 146 seats in the chamber. The CDP won 17 seats, while smaller parties and independents again accounted for the remainder.

Japan’s electoral laws are generally fair and well enforced. Campaigning is heavily regulated, which typically benefits incumbents, although the rules are applied equally to all candidates.

Malapportionment in favor of the rural districts from which the LDP draws significant support has been a persistent problem, despite a series of reforms to reduce the disparity with urban districts. Three members were added to the upper house in 2022 as part of the reform effort. After courts ruled that the level of malapportionment in the 2021 lower house elections had been “in a state of unconstitutionality,” the Diet adopted legislation in November 2022 to revise boundaries for as many as 140 districts, with the aim of keeping the disparity between the most and least populated districts below a two-to-one ratio.

Parties generally do not face undue restrictions on registration or operation. Ten parties were represented in the Diet as of 2022, and independents also held a number of seats in each chamber. Splits and mergers among existing parties are not uncommon.

While the LDP has governed for most of Japan’s postwar history, there have been democratic transfers of power to and from alternative parties. Opposition parties are represented in the parliament and govern at the subnational level.

People’s political choices are generally free from improper interference by powerful interests that are not democratically accountable.

Citizens enjoy equal rights to vote and run in elections regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Women remain underrepresented in government. While a nonbinding 2018 gender parity law urges parties to nominate equal numbers of male and female candidates, 33.2 percent of all candidates and 28.0 percent of winning candidates in the 2022 upper house elections were women, for a total of 64 women in the chamber. Women held 46 seats, or less than 10 percent of the total, in the lower house of the Diet as of 2022.

About 600,000 ethnic Koreans born in Japan hold special residency privileges but not Japanese citizenship, meaning they are ineligible to participate in any elections at the national and local levels. Most but not all are South Korean nationals, and they have the option of applying for Japanese citizenship.

The Ainu, an Indigenous people numbering at least 20,000, live mostly on the northern island of Hokkaido. The Ainu Party was launched in 2012 to increase their political representation, though it has yet to win seats in the Diet.

Elected officials are free to govern without undue interference, though senior civil servants have some influence over policy.

The prevalence of corruption in government is relatively low, media coverage of political corruption scandals is widespread and vigorous, and officials who are implicated face criminal prosecution. In the second half of 2022, prosecutors arrested officials at several companies for allegedly bribing a former member of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games organizing committee to win official sponsorships.

Some government officials have close relations with business leaders that could raise concerns about conflicts of interest. Retiring bureaucrats often quickly secure high-paying positions with companies that receive significant government contracts.

The government generally operates with openness and transparency. Access to information legislation allows individuals to request information from government agencies, though in practice the law has not always been implemented effectively. Government officials have at times withheld information from lawmakers and the public in connection with political scandals. In January 2022, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism punished 10 officials who were found to have been involved in overstating government data on monthly construction orders, which are used to calculate Japan’s gross domestic product.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed in the constitution, and Japan has a highly competitive media sector. However, press freedom advocates have criticized a 2014 law that allows journalists to be prosecuted for revealing state secrets, even if the information was unknowingly obtained. A 2017 report by the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression noted concern about pressure on the media from the government, and recommended the repeal of Article 4 of the Broadcast Act, which gives the government the power to determine what information is “fair” and thus acceptable for public broadcast.

Under the traditional kisha kurabu (press club) system, institutions such as government ministries and corporate organizations have restricted the release of news to journalists and media outlets with membership in their clubs. While the club system has been criticized for privileging the major dailies and other established outlets that belong to it and potentially encouraging self-censorship, in recent years online media and weekly newsmagazines have challenged the daily papers’ dominance of political news with more aggressive reporting.

Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitution, and there are no substantial barriers to religious practice or the expression of nonbelief. The constitution also stipulates that no religious organization shall receive any privileges from the state.

In July 2022, during a campaign rally for a candidate in the upper house elections, former prime minister Shinzō Abe was assassinated. The gunman, who was quickly detained, reportedly blamed the Unification Church for bankrupting his family through its controversial extraction of donations and other revenue from adherents, and he targeted Abe because the former leader had a close political relationship with the church. Subsequent news reports revealed links between many LDP politicians and the Unification Church, raising concerns about their tacit endorsement or protection of the religious group’s practices. In a cabinet reshuffle in August, Kishida dismissed seven ministers who had disclosed connections to the church. The LDP conducted its own investigation, stating in September that 179 of its 379 members of parliament had disclosed links to the church and related organizations.

Academic freedom is constitutionally guaranteed and mostly respected in practice, but education and textbooks have long been a focus of public and political debate. While there is not a national curriculum or single official history text, the Ministry of Education’s screening process has approved textbooks that downplay Japan’s history of imperialism and war atrocities.

The government generally does not restrict personal expression or private discussion. Some observers have raised concerns that antiterrorism and anticonspiracy legislation that went into effect in 2017 could permit undue surveillance.

Freedom of assembly is protected under the constitution, and peaceful demonstrations take place frequently. In 2022, protests were held on topics including nuclear disarmament, the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are generally free from undue restrictions and remained diverse and active in 2022.

Most workers have the legal right to organize, bargain collectively, and strike. However, public-sector workers are barred from striking, and some, such as firefighters and prison staff, cannot form unions. Labor unions are active and exert political influence through the Japanese Trade Union Confederation and other groupings.

Japan’s judiciary is independent, and judges cannot be removed arbitrarily. Japanese citizens may remove individual Supreme Court judges through a majority vote in periodic reviews that coincide with parliamentary elections. In November 2022, in compliance with a Supreme Court ruling that May, the Diet adopted legislation that allows Japanese citizens living abroad to participate in these national votes.

For serious criminal cases, a judicial panel composed of professional judges and saiban-in (lay judges), selected from the general public, render verdicts.

Constitutional guarantees of due process are generally upheld. However, observers have argued that trials often favor the prosecution. There are reports that suspects have been detained on flimsy evidence, arrested multiple times for the same alleged crime, or subjected to lengthy interrogations that yield what amount to forced confessions. Police can detain suspects for up to 23 days without charge. Access to those in pretrial detention is sometimes limited.

People in Japan are generally protected from the illegitimate use of physical force and the threat of war and insurgencies. Violent crime rates are low. However, organized crime is fairly prominent, particularly in the construction and nightlife sectors; crime groups also run drug-trafficking and loan-sharking operations.

Prisoners who face death sentences or are accused of crimes that could carry the death penalty are held in solitary confinement, sometimes for years at a time. There are frequent reports of substandard medical care in prisons. One person was executed in 2022, having been convicted of multiple murders.

Societal discrimination against foreigners and various minority groups has generally declined over time, but it can affect access to housing and employment.

A law adopted in 2016 was intended to eliminate discrimination against Japan’s estimated three million burakumin—descendants of feudal-era outcasts. The law obliges national and local governments to provide advice, support, and education on the issue, but it does not assign penalties for acts of discrimination.

A 2019 law officially recognized the Ainu as an Indigenous people of Japan, though critics noted that it failed to offer an apology for past mistreatment.

Japan-born descendants of colonial subjects (particularly ethnic Koreans and Chinese) also experience discrimination. A 2016 hate speech law calls on the government to take steps to eliminate discriminatory speech against ethnic minorities, but it does not carry any penalties for perpetrators.

LGBT+ people face social stigma and in some cases harassment. There is no national law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In 2016, sexual harassment regulations for national public officials were modified to prohibit harassment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Employment discrimination and sexual harassment against women are common.

Asylum is granted to less than 1 percent of those who apply each year under Japan’s strict screening process, and very few refugees are accepted for third-country resettlement in Japan. Soon after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Japanese government agreed to accept friends and relatives of the 1,900 Ukrainians already residing in Japan, designating the newcomers as “evacuees” with temporary residency and work permits. There were more than 2,000 such individuals in the country by year’s end.

There are few significant restrictions on internal or international travel, or on individuals’ ability to change their place of residence, employment, and education.

Property rights are generally respected, and individuals are free to establish and operate private businesses.

While personal social freedoms are mostly protected, there are some limitations. The country’s system of family registration, koseki, recognizes people as members of a family unit and requires married couples to share a surname, which usually defaults to the husband’s surname. This can create legal complications for women as well as children born out of wedlock or to divorced parents, among others.

There is no legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Japan, though some municipal and prefectural governments, including the Tokyo metropolitan government, have passed legislation allowing the registration of same-sex partnerships.

Domestic violence is punishable by law, and protective orders and other services are available for victims, but such abuse often goes unreported.

Individuals generally enjoy equality of opportunity, and the legal framework provides safeguards against exploitative working conditions. However, long workdays are common in practice and have been criticized as harmful to workers’ health. Many workers are temporary or contract employees with substantially lower wages, fewer benefits, and less job security than regular employees.

The government announced in July 2022 that it would review the foreign technology trainee program, in which about 328,000 trainees were participating at that time. According to investigations in some prefectures, roughly 60 to 70 percent of the companies employing foreign trainees violated labor laws, suggesting that abuse and exploitation may be common throughout the program.

Commercial sexual exploitation remains a problem. Traffickers frequently bring foreign women into the country for forced sex work by arranging fraudulent marriages with Japanese men.