Political parties, including the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the major opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, submitted a bill to parliament on Thursday calling for decency in campaign posters.
The bill to revise the public offices election law is expected to get through parliament during its current session scheduled to end in late June.
The move comes after some campaign posters drew controversy in last summer's Tokyo gubernatorial election for depicting an almost fully naked woman and an advertisement for a sex services shop.
The bill stipulates that campaign posters must not contain degrading content. It also seeks to require the names of candidates to be put on posters and impose a fine of ¥1 million or less on anyone who advertises a product or service on posters.
The bill also calls for deliberations on ways to tackle misinformation on social media and address the practice of people filing candidacies to support others.
The legislation was devised with this summer's "Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election and House of Councilors election in mind," Ichiro Aisawa, chairperson of the LDP's Research Commission on the Election System, told reporters.
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