6/25/2020 Details of 1999 (Gyo-Tsu) 35 | Judgments of the Supreme Court principle that the difference in the numbers of population between constituencies be kept less than 1:2 (Article 3, para.1); on the other hand, it adopted the 'plus one' system (Art.3, para.2). However, as discussed before, the adoption of the latter itself prevented the realisation of the former, and therefore, those two provisions had been incompatible in the first place. Furthermore, if one looks at the process of discussion at the Constituency Council, there was a strong interest for equal value of votes within the Council, and at first, the Council presented the view that 'it is necessary to respond to the present strong demand for rectifying the discrepancy in the value of votes' and was about to adopt the unconditional 'maximum remainder system' for all 300 members of the House of Representatives elected from small constituencies, there was strong dissatisfaction among members of the House from those prefectures where reduction in the number of seats was inevitable. As a kind of a political compromise, a government bill which adopted the 'plus one' system and applied the 'maximum remainder system' only to the remaining number of seats was submitted, and the Council had no way but to approve this. Thus, the 'plus one' system was adopted by taking into account factors other than those as related to the numbers of population and other technical factors such as administrative division and geography which can be considered in demarcating the constituency boundary as a matter of course, and instead, has been adopted by considering factors which are totally different in nature and arbitrary; therefore, its justifiability can hardly be acknowledged. (4) The majority opinion is of the view that the 'plus one' system was adopted 'for the purpose of enabling the opinion of those people who live in prefectures with relatively small numbers of population to be sufficiently reflected in politics and based upon this presupposition, demarcation of constituency boundaries by taking into account depopulation was within the discretion of the Diet in relation to the equality in value of votes. However, this view cannot be supported for the following reasons: (i) Nowadays, with significant progress in the means of communication, transport, media, there is little reasonable ground for considering such factors. (ii) The 'plus one' system is intended to increase the value of votes of people who live in prefectures with relatively small numbers of population compared with those who live in other prefectures, and is nothing but a system which differentiates the value of votes by the type of place where voters live. Such differentiation in the people's right to take part in politics solely on the difference of the place of residence should not be allowed. (iii) Measures against depopulation is an important task which should be considered in politics, but this issue should be handled by members of the Diet as representatives of all the people elected under the system of equal value of votes. Infringement of the equality of the value of votes is not permissible on the ground of measures against depopulation. (iv) There is a system similar to the 'plus one' system, in which all prefectural constituencies were allocated two seats. This was adopted by the Law on the Election of Members of the House of Councillors (Law No.11, 1947). Taking into consideration that the Constitution has set the term of the members of the House of Councillors at 6 years and provided that half of them stand for reelection every three years, this system seems to have been adopted to avoid the existence of constituencies which do not hold elections at the time of re-election, and there is some rationale for this system. However, for an election of the members of the House of Representatives, such constitutional limitation does not exist at all, and therefore, there is no reason to adopt this system. (5) To summarise, we think that affecting the equality in the value of votes by adopting the 'plus one' system as a measure for depopulation can never be allowed under the Constitution. Apart from this, it should be pointed out that the effectiveness of this system against depopulation itself is very questionable. (i) Based upon the result of the Census of October 1990, there are 15 prefectures which benefited from the adoption of the 'plus one' system as compared to the situation where the 'maximum remainder' https://www.courts.go.jp/app/hanrei_en/detail?id=458 10/23