TAs the July 11 Upper House election draws near, the parties add more candidates to their slates and, predictably, many turn out to be athletes and showbiz personalities with no political experience. Celebrity candidates have been a fixture of Japanese elections as long as there have been Japanese elections, but it seems only recently that the media has pointed out how cynical that is.
The Upper House is the place where celebrities go to die, which makes sense given how the voting works. Candidates for the Diet are split between contituencies and proportional blocks. In Lower House proportional elections, the voters select parties, while in Upper House proportional elections they can cast ballots for either a party or a specific candidate. The votes for candidates are added to the votes cast for their respective parties, which means that a candidate with higher name value can pull lesser known candidates in the same party along on his or her coattails.
The more famous the candidate, the more likely that person's party will do well.