Government & Politics

Topics in the Government & Politics category of the the country japan knowledge base.

| Topic | Description | |——-|————-| | Diet of Japan | Japan’s bicameral national legislature—the House of Representatives and House of Councillors—declared the “highest organ of state power” under the 1947 Constitution. | | Imperial Succession | The 1947 Constitution and Imperial Household Law governing the world’s oldest hereditary monarchy—male-only succession, the 2019 Akihito abdication and Reiwa era, and the female-succession debate. | | Postwar Constitution & Democracy | Japan’s 1947 Constitution—popular sovereignty, an enumerated bill of rights, the pacifist Article 9, and the Allied-occupation reforms that built the postwar democracy. | | The Imperial Household | The world’s oldest hereditary monarchy—the Emperor as constitutional symbol of state, the Imperial Household Agency, the Three Sacred Treasures, the ceremonial calendar, and the male-line succession crisis. | | Liberal Democratic Party | Japan’s dominant conservative party (founded 1955)—the “1955 System,” factional politics, the postwar developmental economy, and near-continuous rule through the 2024 loss of its lower-house majority. | | Supreme Court of Japan | Japan’s highest court and sole constitutional tribunal under the 1947 Constitution—its fifteen justices, its exceptionally restrained exercise of judicial review, the popular-review check (kokumin shinsa), and landmark rulings on Article 9 and equality. | | Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) | Japan’s principal economic ministry and successor to MITI—architect of the postwar industrial miracle through strategic-sector guidance, administrative guidance, keiretsu coordination, and today’s energy, semiconductor, and green-growth policy. |