A recent proposal by a panel of experts at the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry for more diverse forms of municipal assemblies seeks to address a grim challenge to sustaining democracy in Japan's rural areas. Because of the rapidly aging and declining population, there is a shortage of people willing to run for their local assembly. In small towns and villages, a majority of assembly members win their seats uncontested.

Last year, a sparsely populated village in the mountains of Kochi Prefecture made headlines when it contemplated the idea of abolishing its elected assembly in favor of an all-resident council, which verges on direct democracy, because it feared that the assembly will soon become unsustainable amid a dearth of candidates. Although the village has shelved the idea for now, its problems are not unique and could potentially crop up in many other depopulated municipalities.

Currently, assemblies for prefectures, cities, towns and villages — the deliberative organs of local public entities under Article 93 of the Constitution — run on a uniform mechanism irrespective of size, with members directly elected by local residents voting on budgets and ordinances. The report compiled by the ministry panel last Monday proposed creating two new forms of local assemblies for small towns and villages. Each municipality will be asked to decide between maintaining the current mechanism or adopting one of the two new options.