Abstract
Though most observers agreed that pension was the biggest issue in the 2007 Japanese Upper House Election, how people viewed this issue has not been fully discussed in electoral studies. This research examines the structure of the election issues as well as the meaning of the pension issue for Japanese society using 3 types of text data: 1) diet member’s statements, 2) coverage of newspapers, and) people’s answers to open-ended questions about the election issues. Analysis of text data possesses the advantage of avoiding preconceived notions about the meaning of the issues, since it uses spontaneous remarks from people. The results show that though political elites mainly discuss the pension system and the media focuses on the opinion of parties about the pension issue, ordinary voters’ views did not depend on attitudes toward the pension system itself but on their evaluation of the policies and the performance of the government of that period.
