Photo/Illutration A Lower House election candidate gives a speech in Tokyo at the start of the campaign period on Oct. 15. (Kazuhiro Nagashima)

A record high 314 women are running in the Lower House election, but the ratios of female candidates at the two ruling coalition parties are both below 20 percent, the lowest among major political parties.

Women accounted for 23.4 percent of all 1,344 people who registered their candidacies on Oct. 15, when the 12-day campaign period started for the Oct. 27 election.

The percentage is another postwar record.

Still, the ratio of female candidates is well below the government’s goal of 35 percent for national elections by 2025 under the Basic Plan for Gender Equality.

The previous records were 229 female candidates in the 2009 Lower House election and a 17.8-percent female-candidate ratio in the 2017 poll.

Among political parties for this election, only two met the 35-percent goal.

Women accounted for 37.3 percent of the Japanese Communist Party’s 236 candidates and 37.9 percent of Sanseito’s 95 hopefuls.

For the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which fielded 342 candidates, the ratio of women was 16.1 percent, up from 9.8 percent in the previous Lower House election in 2021.

While the ratio of LDP-backed women running in single-seat constituencies was a paltry 9.4 percent, the ratio of those listed exclusively for the proportional representation portion was 39.5 percent.

A fund-raising scandal that beleaguered the ruling party was a factor behind the disparity.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, president of the LDP, prohibited politicians who failed to report proceeds from fund-raising parties from being listed as proportional representation candidates.

The LDP enlisted more women to fill the void on the party’s proportional representation roster.

Komeito, the junior coalition partner, which put up 50 candidates, came in dead last, with a female-candidate ratio of 16.0 percent.

In their campaign pledges for the Lower House election, both the LDP and Komeito laid out a goal of increasing the ratios of their female Diet members to 30 percent within 10 years.

The candidate lists for the Oct. 27 election indicate the two parties have a long way to go to reach their own goals.

However, opposition parties cannot brag about gender balance in their candidate lineups, either.

At the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, women accounted for 22.4 percent of its 237 candidates.

Hiroshi Ogushi, chair of the CDP’s Election Strategy Committee, said the ratio of its female candidates in single-seat constituencies is more than double that of the LDP.

But he conceded that the overall percentage is “nothing to be proud of at all.”

For Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party), the ratio of female candidates stayed below 20 percent for two consecutive Lower House elections, at 17.7 percent.

The figure for the Democratic Party for the People was 21.4 percent, down from 29.6 percent in the previous election.

Women accounted for 34.3 percent of Reiwa Shinsengumi candidates and 29.4 percent of Social Democratic Party candidates.

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