Latest update: 12/12/2012 

- elections - Far-right - Japan


Is Japan leaning to the right ahead of general elections?

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Right-wing parties are hoping to do well in upcoming elections in Japan. Eighty-year-old nationalist Shintaro Ishihara is the man who came up with the idea of buying the Senkaku islands - the subject of a sovereignty dispute with China - from their private owner. His Japan Restoration Party is now polling in second place, just behind the Liberal Democratic Party, whose leader Shinzo Abe is expected to become Prime Minister again. But the LDP also seems to be echoing right-wing policies.

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