Polling places opened nationwide at 07:00 a.m. local time (22:00 July 9 GMT) and three hours later the turnout reached 6.18%, just 0.53% higher compared to the 2019 elections. Voting will close at 08:00 p.m.
Elections to the House of Councilors are held every three years, but, unlike the lower house, only half of the deputies are re-elected. The upper house has 248 seats, 125 of which are up for election, with 50 lawmakers elected by proportional representation and another 75 by plurality voting. A total of 545 candidates from 15 parties are contesting for the mandates.
According to the NHK broadcaster, some 16.12 million people, or around 15% of all voters, cast their ballots in early voting.
Voters receive their ballots during Japan's upper house election at a polling station in Tokyo on July 10, 2022. - Polls opened on July 10 in Japan's upper house elections, just two days after former prime minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated while on the campaign trail.
© AFP 2023 / TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA
The coalition of Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito party is projected receive over 63 seats in the ongoing election, while the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party may secure only 13 to 25 seats, a public opinion poll published by the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun revealed on Monday.
This year's election campaign is likely to go down in Japan's history for the high-profile assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his campaign speech in support of one of the candidates of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in the city of Nara on Friday. Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, approached the politician from behind and fired two shots from a distance of about 10 meters (33 feet). Police said Abe was conscious immediately after being wounded, but then, during transportation, his condition became critical "with cardiac and pulmonary arrest." Later in the day, Nara Medical University hospital pronounced him dead.