Sohei Kamiya, 48, representative of the Sansei Party, appeared on TV Asahi’s “Beat Takeshi’s TV Tackle” (Sunday noon) on the 26th. He expressed his thoughts on the proposal to reduce the number of Diet members. The Japan Restoration Association (JRA) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have hastily made the reduction of the number of Diet members an absolute requirement in their negotiations for a coalition government. Yoshifumi Yoshimura, the leader of the Restoration Association, had indicated that he would reduce the number of seats in the House of Representatives by 50, or about 10% of the total, starting with proportional seats. The coalition agreement reached between the two parties includes the phrase, “With the goal of reducing the number of lower house seats by 10%, we will submit a draft lawmakers’ bill to the extraordinary Diet session for passage,” without using the word “proportionally” in the sentence. When asked if Mr. Kamiya had made it clear that he was absolutely opposed to the policy of reducing the number of proportional members under the current system, he replied, “I said that I was vehemently opposed to this,” and then added, “I have been calling for a review of the electoral district system and the electoral system itself, and reducing the number of members of the House of Representatives is a set of measures that will be taken in conjunction with this review of the number of votes. I have been calling for a review of the electoral district system and the electoral system itself, so it would be fine if the fixed number of Diet members is reduced slightly in combination with that. On the other hand, “Mr. Ishin, you often talk about reforms to cut your own throat, but these reforms have ruined the Japanese economy and other areas, so cutting a few dozen Diet members will not make the national budget go up all at once. He added, “What my party is saying is that in Japan today, there are only three craftsmen per legislator, which is more than the number of legislators. It costs the lawmakers a tremendous amount of money to hire these people, so unless the number of secretaries and staff members are properly assigned to the lawmakers and their legislative abilities are improved, the lawmakers are not functioning properly,” he emphasized. Hideo Higashikunihara, former governor of Miyazaki Prefecture and a member of the House of Representatives, said, “From a global perspective, the number of Diet members in Japan is not particularly large,” Kamiya continued, “Only the United States has fewer, because compared to Europe, Japan has fewer.
