Political Parties & Elections
With the early elections for the Metropolitan Assembly in 1965 due to a corruption scandal, Tokyo became the first prefecture not to hold its assembly elections in the unified local elections (tōitsu chihō senkyo) when prefectural and municipal elections throughout the country take place in April every four years since 1947; by 2011, it was one of six prefectures not to do so, the others being Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki and Okinawa. Tokyo's gubernatorial elections had always been held as part of the unified local elections from 1947 to 2011. But following Shintarō Ishihara's resignation in October 2012, Tokyo held an early gubernatorial election in December 2012 and has left the unified election cycle.
The four largest established national political parties of the past decade (Liberal Democrats, Democrats, Kōmeitō, Communists) are represented in the Tokyo Assembly as well as a few local. The Social Democratic Party, formerly Japanese Socialist Party, which had been the second major party for much of the postwar era lost its one remaining seat in the 2001 election.
Read more about this topic: Government Of Tokyo
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