As the election for Tokyo governor took place, I wanted to better understand how they were elected, and more generally what are the different local elections in Japan and how they work.
Although documentation in English about elections at the national level is easily available, I couldn't find anything precise about prefectural and municipal elections… From what I still got, I understood that at the prefectural level, there are two different elections for the governor, and for the prefectural assembly, and same at the municipal level for the mayor and the municipal assembly.
But it still is very unclear and I have a lot of questions: For how many years all of them are they elected? Are the terms of the same length? If yes, are the elections for the governor and the prefectural assembly (respectively the mayor and the municipal assembly) held at the same time? And what are the voting systems? First-past-the-post? A proportional party-list system? Several elections in multiple constituencies? Are all prefectural (resp. municipal) elections held at the same time in every prefectures (resp. municipalities) of Japan?
Thanks in advance for your answers!
by Voynin