General elections were held in Japan on 30 April 1942 to elect members of the House of Representatives. They were the only elections held in Japan during World War II. By this time, the House of Representatives had lost much of its power to the military dictatorship, a process that had begun with the "Manchurian Incident" when the Imperial Army invaded Manchuria without approval from the (then still civilian) cabinet in 1931. Since 1932 when Admiral Viscount Saitō Makoto was appointed prime minister of the first so-called "national unity cabinet", fewer members of the political parties in the House of Representatives had held any significant role in government. Additionally, the military had by this point sought to transform Japan into a totalitarianone-party state.