【by Takefumi Ukai, June 2026】
1. Introduction
The extension of suffrage is commonly understood as a means of realizing the ideal of popular self-government. Yet if this normative objective is set aside, what institutional purposes remain for expanding the franchise? Framed in this way, the question invites us to detach elections from democracy and to reconsider them as instruments of political power.
One possible answer is that the expansion of suffrage serves to incorporate previously excluded populations into the existing political order. Such a measure may function to accommodate social groups whose political influence has grown, thereby reducing the risk of opposition. Alternatively, it may be intended to mobilize newly enfranchised populations in ways that reshape existing configurations of political power. In either case, extending the franchise reflects a calculated political decision: the governing authorities are willing to weaken the relative influence of established elites in order to preserve the stability of the regime itself.
This article examines how such a political logic emerged through a circulation of discourse connecting Japan’s late wartime colonial policies with debates over postwar electoral reform. More specifically, it traces continuities between discussions surrounding the extension of electoral rights to colonial subjects during the final months of the Pacific War and arguments advanced in support of electoral reform after Japan’s defeat. By following this circulation of political discourse, the article seeks to illuminate not only the relationship between colonial rule and democratization but also the broader logic through which state power justified the extension of political participation.
2. Colonial Electoral Reform at the End of the Pacific War
On 17 March 1945, one week after the Great Tokyo Air Raid, the Japanese government submitted a bill to amend the House of Representatives Election Law to the Imperial Diet. The proposal was remarkable in that it would, for the first time, establish electoral districts in Korea (23 seats) and Taiwan (5 seats), thereby granting their residents representation in the House of Representatives. However, suffrage in the colonies was to remain highly restricted. Article 151 of the bill limited the franchise to male imperial subjects aged twenty-five or older who had continuously paid at least fifteen yen in direct national taxes for more than one year. Thus, while universal male suffrage had already been introduced in metropolitan Japan two decades earlier, Korea and Taiwan were to receive only a limited franchise. Although the bill passed both houses of the Diet, the necessary imperial ordinance for its implementation was never issued before Japan’s surrender. It should also be noted that elections to local assemblies had already been introduced in Taiwan in 1935 under similar property qualifications, with most successful candidates being Japanese settlers.
Rather than recovering this legislative proposal simply as a forgotten historical episode, this article focuses on the political reasoning that justified the extension of electoral rights under the desperate conditions of the final stage of the war. In explaining the bill before the House of Representatives on 18 March, Prime Minister Koiso Kuniaki described it as a measure intended primarily to improve the political treatment of the residents of Korea and Taiwan. Since the annexation of Korea and the acquisition of Taiwan, successive colonial administrations had pursued the principle of isshi dōjin (equal and impartial treatment). As a result, he argued, colonial subjects had gradually developed the qualities and consciousness expected of kōkoku shinmin (imperial subjects). Their industrial, economic, and cultural development, together with their contributions to the war effort, supposedly demonstrated this progress. Conscription had already been introduced in both colonies, while many colonial subjects had volunteered for military service, including participation in special attack units. Under these circumstances, Koiso maintained, granting them participation in national politics would inspire them and further strengthen total mobilization for the war.
At the same time, Koiso insisted that the “special circumstances” of Korea and Taiwan required a different electoral system from that of metropolitan Japan. Citing the educational level, cultural conditions, and the limited development of local self-government in the colonies, he argued that universal suffrage was inappropriate. The property qualification was therefore presented as a practical means of restricting the electorate, while eligibility to stand for election remained identical to that in the metropole. The number of representatives allocated to each colony was likewise justified on the basis of these circumstances, amounting to roughly one representative for every one million inhabitants.
Deliberations in the House committee began on 19 March. Committee members repeatedly emphasized the military contributions of Koreans and Taiwanese, portraying their wartime service as evidence of successful imperial assimilation. Economic productivity, industrial importance, and even the damage suffered in air raids were invoked as indicators of their value to the empire. The discussion also extended to the degree of linguistic and religious assimilation, suggesting that these factors were regarded as relevant to the question of political inclusion.
One of the most revealing interventions came from Kinoshita Makoto, a committee member with extensive experience in colonial administration. While welcoming the government’s recognition of colonial residents as imperial subjects, he questioned the logic of imposing tax qualifications on those who had ostensibly become members of the imperial polity. If the purpose of suffrage were merely to restrain the sovereign’s power of taxation, a property qualification might be understandable. Yet if the emperor intended to extend political participation to all loyal imperial subjects, taxation could not provide a coherent standard. If genuine imperial loyalty were the criterion, Kinoshita argued, educational attainment would constitute a more appropriate—though still imperfect—measure.
The government’s response exposed the arbitrariness of the proposed reform. Home Minister Ōdachi Shigeo offered only vague explanations, claiming that various practical considerations had been taken into account and that educational qualifications would be difficult to administer. When questioned further about the rationale for the fifteen-yen tax requirement and the allocation of one representative per one million inhabitants, he openly admitted that no clear principle had guided these decisions. Although he described the reform as a landmark in Japan’s constitutional development and a foundation for the further imperialization of colonial subjects, the criteria underpinning the legislation remained largely ad hoc. The bill was approved by both the House of Representatives and the House of Peers without substantial amendment and promulgated on 1 April 1945. Yet it never came into force because the implementing imperial ordinance was never issued before the end of the war.
3. Postwar Electoral Reform and the Lowering of the Voting Age
Following Japan’s surrender, the government moved quickly to revise the House of Representatives Election Law. On 27 November 1945, it submitted a new amendment to the Imperial Diet. The proposed reform introduced women’s suffrage, adopted a large electoral district system with limited voting, relaxed restrictions on election campaigning, and lowered the age requirements for both voting and candidacy.
The lowering of the voting age emerged as an immediate political issue after the war. On 31 August 1945, the cabinet approved special measures concerning voter registration in preparation for the coming election. At a cabinet meeting on 18 September, Prime Minister Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko emphasized the need for a fundamental revision of the election law. The task of drafting the legislation subsequently fell to the Shidehara Cabinet, established in October. Home Minister Horikiri Zenjirō quickly consolidated the ministry’s position around three principal reforms: the introduction of women’s suffrage, the adoption of large electoral districts, and the lowering of the voting and candidacy ages. These proposals were approved by the cabinet in October and formally incorporated into the government’s draft legislation later that month.
The urgency of electoral reform stemmed not only from the approaching expiration of the wartime Diet but also from uncertainty regarding the demands that would be imposed by the Allied occupation authorities. The cabinet therefore decided to lower the voting age to twenty for both men and women and the minimum age for candidacy to twenty-five. Although a special parliamentary committee had already begun examining electoral reform, its earlier recommendations had not included either women’s suffrage or changes to the age requirements, indicating that these measures emerged primarily through the government’s own initiative.
During committee deliberations in December, Home Minister Horikiri advanced three principal arguments in support of lowering the voting age. First, he claimed that the spread of education and culture, together with young people’s participation in wartime economic and social activities, had significantly improved their knowledge and capabilities. Second, he argued that young adults already possessed not only legal capacity under civil law but also sufficient political judgment and a sense of public responsibility. Third, he maintained that the participation of energetic and idealistic young voters would revitalize electoral politics and contribute to the construction of a “new Japan.”
In subsequent deliberations, Horikiri further emphasized that those between the ages of twenty and twenty-five had devoted themselves to military service and wartime production. Their experiences, he argued, had equipped them with the capacity to exercise sound political judgment. Significantly, this justification encountered almost no opposition in either house of the Diet. Apart from occasional remarks describing the reform as “inevitable,” legislators offered little sustained debate over the reduction of the voting age. After repeating the same arguments before the House of Peers, Horikiri secured approval without substantial amendment. The revised election law was promulgated on 17 December 1945, establishing, for the first time under the Meiji Constitution, voting rights at the age of twenty and eligibility for candidacy at twenty-five.
The arguments employed to justify postwar electoral reform closely resembled those advanced only months earlier in support of extending limited suffrage to Korea and Taiwan. In both cases, wartime experience served as the principal rationale for expanding political participation. Yet the institutional outcomes were fundamentally different. During the final stage of the Pacific War, the same logic was used to legitimize a restricted colonial franchise, whereas after Japan’s defeat it became the basis for expanding universal suffrage within the metropole. This continuity suggests that wartime political discourse survived the transition from empire to postwar democracy, even as it was mobilized in support of markedly different electoral institutions.
4. Conclusion
This article has examined the circulation of political discourse linking Japan’s late wartime colonial policy with postwar electoral reform. It has shown that the extension of suffrage to adult male colonial subjects in Korea and Taiwan during the final months of the Pacific War and the introduction of universal suffrage for men and women aged twenty in the postwar reforms were justified through strikingly similar political arguments rooted in wartime experience.
The electoral systems that these arguments supported, however, differed fundamentally. In the colonies, wartime service and imperial loyalty were invoked to legitimize a restricted franchise based on property qualifications. In postwar Japan, many of the same claims regarding political maturity, public responsibility, and wartime contribution were redeployed to justify an expansion of democratic participation through universal suffrage. The continuity of political discourse therefore coexisted with a profound discontinuity in institutional design.
The significance of this finding extends beyond the familiar argument that war can serve as a catalyst for democratization. More revealing is the way in which state power constructed and justified different hierarchies of political inclusion while relying upon remarkably similar rhetorical resources. The criteria used to determine who was deemed qualified for political participation were presented as objective, yet the legislative debates reveal that they rested on highly contingent and often arbitrary foundations.
The distorted circulation of political discourse traced in this article thus exposes the unstable relationship between democracy and the institutional exercise of state power. Elections undoubtedly constitute a cornerstone of democratic government, but the political authority that defines who may participate in them should itself remain an object of critical scrutiny. If democratization is to be understood as an ongoing political project, it must encompass not only the expansion of suffrage but also the continuous critical examination of the arbitrary power through which democratic institutions themselves are constituted.
(Note: Parts of this article overlap with Ukai Takefumi, Blind Spots of Democracy (Asahi Shimbun Publications, 2025). The records of the Imperial Diet cited in this article were consulted through the Imperial Diet Proceedings Search System (https://teikokugikai-i.ndl.go.jp/#/).)
AUTHOR
Takefumi Ukai is Professor in the Department of International Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, Seinan Gakuin University, Japan. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Hitotsubashi University. His research focuses on political theory, democratic theory, the history of political thought, and the concepts of sovereignty, representation, constituent power, and political temporality. He is the author of Seiji sekinin: Minshushugi to Tomoni Ikiru (Political Responsibility: Living with Democracy, Iwanami Shinsho, 2022), Minshushugi wa Itsu Seiritsu Suru no ka: Jikan to Min’i no Seijigaku (When Does Democracy Begin? The Politics of Time and the Popular Will, Iwanami Shoten, 2025), and Minshushugi no Shikaku: Tsukurareta Kōreisha to Wakamono no Bunretsu to Tairitsu (Blind Spots of Democracy: The Constructed Divide between Older and Younger Generations, Asahi Shinsho, 2025).