There are rising expectations that Ms. Chikage Ogi, the first female president of the House of Councilors, will do a good job. She has impressive credentials, having been elected to the Upper House for a fifth 6-year term -- a record number for an incumbent Upper House member. Ms. Ogi once headed the New Conservative Party, a splinter group (she rejoined the Liberal Democratic Party after 10 years), and served as minister of land, infrastructure and transport. She is an outspoken politician with a winning personality.

The Lower House, it is said, represents the "politics of numbers" and the Upper House the "politics of reason." In other words, the former is thought to have more power but less prestige than the latter. Put another way, the upper chamber is primarily in a position to "complement and restrain" the lower chamber. Debate in the Upper House should be more farsighted and more rational, the argument goes, because it is never dissolved for a snap election.

In reality, though, that is not the case. The Upper House has long ceased to work the way it should. It has become as much an arena of partisan politics as the Lower House. No wonder many see it as the "carbon copy" of the Lower House. Electoral systems for both chambers are similar, allowing a number of candidates who have lost in Lower House elections to recover their seats in Upper House elections.