Photo/Illutration Mana Tamura delivers an address outdoors with her son on her back in Tokyo’s Kokubunji on July 3. (Amane Shimazaki)

When candidate Mana Tamura delivered a stump speech on a Tokyo street during the Upper House election in July, her 4-year-old clung to her back.

This is a normal part of life for Tamura and her son, who fussed about having to come along for the ride on the campaign trail. But Tamura soon began to think that it was actually “unclear” whether bringing him with her could violate Japan’s election law.

Under the Public Offices Election Law, it is illegal for children younger than 18 to be involved in elections. Anyone found guilty of using a child in a campaign can face fines of up to 300,000 yen ($2,180)or up to a year in prison, and can even temporarily lose their rights to vote and run for office.

But the law does not strictly define what the difference is between involving a child in a campaign and having them accompany the candidate.

The sorts of concerns Tamura raised about the lack of clarity in the law have long gone unaddressed, which has made it difficult for parents of young children to seek higher office.

Local election administration commissions across Japan typically only give vague replies that say they deal with such matters on a case-by-case basis.

But the central government has finally come out with guidelines through the internal affairs ministry to start shedding light on the matter.

They say, for example, that politicians can breast-feed babies in their campaign vans during elections, but they caution them against holding children in their arms while delivering stump speeches on the streets.

At a Nov. 9 meeting of the Upper House’s special panel on political ethics and the electoral system that explored the matter in depth, Takae Ito of the Democratic Party for the People said, “Some candidates cannot stage campaigns unless their children are allowed to accompany them.”

Ito asked what the internal affairs minister at the time, Minoru Terada, thought of the Tokyo election administration commission's decision in July to allow “candidates or their staff to stay with their children” during campaigns.

“That is in line with the internal affairs ministry’s opinion,” Terada replied.

Ito then presented 13 specific scenarios and asked which of them might violate the law.

Terada answered that a candidate breast-feeding aboard their campaign van or raising their arms in the air in celebration with their children following their victory poses “no problem.”

But Terada said giving a stump speech while holding a child is something that would have to be examined “individually to determine whether they are being used (as props) to help the candidate win.”

Ito, who ran for office during her child care leave, argued it is difficult for those leaving their companies to run in election campaigns to find day care nurseries for their children under the current framework.

“Improving the environment for running in elections will be important,” Ito said.

Professor Yutaka Shinada, an expert on electoral systems at Kobe University’s graduate school, welcomed the new guidelines as something that will help make politics more inclusive.

“It marks a step toward discussions on the involvement of parents with small children in politics,” said Shinada.

But he also said election administration panels and other entities should hold debates about whether the law is unintentionally preventing parents from becoming involved in politics.

“What is significant is how the election administrators respond once a new voice is raised,” he said. “The time has come to tidy up the legal gray zone.”

The guidelines are just the start of efforts to bring more parents into politics.

A multipartisan project has already been launched to help support mothers campaigning in unified local elections to be held next spring. 

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