Election campaign regulation and the Supreme Court of Japan

Election speech is an essential part of political speech and needs to be vigorously protected. Nevertheless, in Japan, the Japanese Public Office Election Act places the most restrictive regulations on election campaigning in the world. And the Supreme Court of Japan has upheld all of these regulations. As a result, all these regulations have seriously impacted elections and politics in Japan. This chapter critically examines how election campaigning is regulated in Japan and whether such regulations should have been upheld by the Supreme Court of Japan.