World

Japan parties pin hopes on stars

By Kyoko Hasegawa (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-07 08:07

Japan's Olympic judo medalist Ryoko Tani waves at a campaign event for the upcoming Upper House elections in suburban Tokyo. Kazuhiro NOGI / Agence France-Presse

CHIBA, Japan - Japan's judo queen Ryoko Tani, after years of deftly putting her opponents to the mat, is among a lineup of celebrity candidates hoping to join the rough and tumble of politics.

Like other sports stars and entertainers before her, the 34-year-old is throwing her hat into the electoral ring in an upper house vote on Sunday, hoping to turn her popularity as an athlete into ballot box muscle.

At a recent campaign event at a suburban Tokyo railway station, hundreds of excited fans gathered to catch a glimpse of the seven-time world judo champion, double Olympic gold medalist and proud mother-of-two.

"The gold medalist Yawarachan is coming!" proclaimed a billboard, using her nickname - the name of a popular manga cartoon character based on Tani's life.

Mobile phone cameras clicked away as the judo queen emerged from a sleek black car, dressed in an elegant black suit and white shirt, smiling, shaking hands and promising her fans: "Thank you very much - I'll do my best."

Tani, who is married to a professional baseball player, won gold in the 48-kilogram division at the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Games, making her name a byword for self-discipline and willpower for many Japanese.

She was handpicked for the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) by the chief architect of its electoral landslide last year, Ichiro Ozawa.

The beaming martial artist promised to support national sports and bring home gold again from the 2012 London Olympics.

Her ballot box prospects look good. Under the proportional representation system, voters nationwide can either choose a party or an individual candidate, giving well-known stars a big head start.

Japan has a long tradition of putting up celebrity candidates in national elections. Professional wrestlers, TV celebrities, musicians and a Nordic ski Olympics gold medalist now hold seats in the Diet's upper chamber.

Actors and entertainers have become vote-collecting machines in a strategy dubbed "the giant panda who gathers the people".

This time around the DPJ has put up two more Olympic medalists, while the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has added an actress and two professional baseball players to their party lists.

The LDP's Junko Mihara, 45 - who played a female teenage delinquent in a 1980s high school TV drama - drew a mostly male crowd in Shimbashi, the heart of a cluster of bars and karaoke joints known as "salarymen town".

The tiny Sunrise Party of Japan, created by LDP defectors, has meanwhile recruited Kiyoshi Nakahata, 56, a former baseball player with the popular Yomiuri Giants known for his jocular comments.

Agence France-Presse

(China Daily 07/07/2010 page24)