This volume is designed to provide basic data on postwar Japanese elections. It differs from other reference volumes in several respects. First, it is designed for English speakers. One can use this volume with no knowledge of Japanese. It thus makes Japanese electoral returns available to a larger audience. Second, and most importantly, the data are arranged by district over time, making it easy to follow a given district or a particular candidate over the entire postwar period. The presentation is designed to make it easy to see “what happened” in each district in each election: who retired, who fielded new candidates, whose vote went up and whose went down. Each table should make it relatively easy to analyze the dynamics of Japanese politics at the election district level. [xi]

Steven Reed is on the faculty of policy studies at Chuo University, Hachioji City, Tokyo, Japan.