General elections were held in Japan on 10 December 1972. The result was a victory for the Liberal Democratic Party, which won 271 of the 491 seats. Voter turnout was 71.76%.
Little changed in the aftermath of the election; the LDP saw a slight decrease in seat numbers (debatably due to it fielding more candidates than ever before as a result of regained confidence in 1969),中野士朗『田中政権 八八六日』（行政問題研究所1982年、255頁-） and its vote share remained below 50% (even with the addition of conservative-aligned independents). The Japan Socialist Party won over 100 seats following its disastrous results in the 1969 Japanese general election, although infighting continued within the party over choosing cooperation with Kōmeitō or the Japanese Communist Party, coined "Civil Service or Joint Struggle". Fears remained that it would be overtaken by the resurgence of the JCP.
The Japanese Communist Party was arguably the biggest winner of the election. Its seat count nearly tripled in relation to the 1969 election, and in the span of two elections, it had gone from 5 to 38 seats. This meant it beat its post-war peak of 35 representatives in 1949. The other two opposition parties, the DSP and Kōmeitō, suffered losses despite cooperation with each other. Kōmeitō was going through a series of scandals around its censorship of press critical to it (aptly named the ) which severely damaged its public image, and gave favor to the JCP, with image of the Soka Gakkai as a cult beginning to emerge. The DSP also lost 12 seats.
Results
Seats won per district
By prefecture PrefectureTotalseatsSeats wonLDPJSPJCPKōmeitōDSPOthersInd.Aichi2096131Akita8521Aomori7511Chiba139211Ehime9621Fukui431Fukuoka19543232Fukushima12102Gifu972Gunma1073Hiroshima12831Hokkaido2211911Hyōgo1994231Ibaraki1293Ishikawa651Iwate853Kagawa642Kagoshima11623Kanagawa1453321Kōchi5311Kumamoto106211Kyoto103232Mie9621Miyagi9621Miyazaki6321Nagano137411Nagasaki95211Nara5311Niigata15105Ōita752Okayama10631Okinawa5212Osaka237466Saga541Saitama138311Shiga541Shimane541Shizuoka1483111Tochigi10631Tokushima5311Tokyo3913710612Tottori4211Toyama6222Wakayama63111Yamagata853Yamaguchi9621Yamanashi532Total491271118382919214
References