Retrospective Japanese general election, 1942

Yep, it's back.

The election of 1942 took place in the middle of the war. All pre-war parties have been forced to merge into the Taisei Yokusankai, a puppet group controlled by the junta.

Apart from that, the House of Representatives has lost all its power, while unlike in previous elections, most left-leaning politicians are no longer allowed to run - unless they were the members of the Nationalist Socialist faction if the former Shakai Taishuto, but in such case, they would run under the Taisei Yokusankai banner.

Despite that, quite a number of anti-war moderates successfully ran in the election as they were supported by the judiciary establishment, though they would be labelled as "non-Yokusan candidates". Prominent anti-war activist Saito Takao, who was expelled from the House just a year ago, managed to become a candidate again, and is once again running an anti-militarist platform.

Meanwhile, the fascist Touhou Party was allowed to run as well, under the banner of "non-partisans".


[Above: Nobuyuki Abe, former Prime Minister and President of the Taisei Yokusankai]


[Above: Seigo Nakano, leader of the "Non-partisan" group and the fascist Tohokai, and the official Opposition Leader of His Majesty)

The first time I see a 100% for one single group in any of my Asian retrospective threads after 10 votes. A very resounding rejection of fascism and militarism

Tony said:

The first time I see a 100% for one single group in any of my Asian retrospective threads after 10 votes. A very resounding rejection of fascism and militarism

Click to expand...

Voting for a party whose policies would lead to the deaths of millions of Chinese and others and the fire and atomic bombings of Japanese cities is as bad as voting for the Nazis. Someone on here will probably do it

This is like a big middle finger up to fascism and nationalism.

If that was the election result, the junta would have collapsed overnight, and we may well see the Emperor himself staging a coup against Tojo Anyway, down with militarism!

Still 20 hours to go, but I think I can already declare the winner

Prime Minister Saito Takao? Sounds good!

Turquoise Blue said:

Prime Minister Saito Takao? Sounds good!

Click to expand...

Yep, that's what would probably happen in TTL. I would more likely make the Wikibox of this election like a war-Wikibox, depends on if I have enough time tonight.

While I would provide OTL information for you to vote in restrospective elections, when I create a tiny TL based on the list of restrospective prime ministers purely using TTL results (which would not even be ASB since Japanese prime ministers tend to serve short terms, quite easy to explain things), I may say the far-right military staged a coup in 1939 against the civilian government, and tries to wage war against the outside world. Then given even worse preparation than in OTL, Japan is crushed very soon, leading to internal discontent. The military refused to recognize the elections results of 1942, but Emperor Hirohito staged a counter-coup and overthrown the Tojo regime (similar to Victor Emmanuel's coup against Mussolini). Saito Taiko became prime minister, and sought peace with the West and China, and would continue the military's effort to clean up corruption to avoid the return of special interest groups that would give the military another excuse to stage a coup.

Since the Soviet Union is yet to be involved in the war, Japan would keep Modern-day Southern Sakhalin despite losing all its other territories gained after 1890. The emperor, more popular in Japan than Victor Emmanuel III in Italy, would survive a referendum in the future of the throne by a 65-35 margin, where only some communist, socialist strongholds and Okinawa would marginally vote against monarchy,