Vote Gollum! And be careful what you wish for, Squire Shinzo...

Before the weekend's typhoon and earthquake scuppered the first week of campaigning, the Upper House election frenzy was taking shape very nicely. I took a trip up to the critical battleground of Niigata and was  struck by the positioning of the Abe posters.

Remember that Squire Shinzo is not actually standing for election in this election. It is his party that is duking it out for the 121 available Upper House seats - the posters of the hapless squire are there to remind voters that a vote for the LDP is a vote of confidence for the man in the Kantei.

Pictured (right) is a classic example of the genre. Placed just next to a farmhouse and a rice field in a part of Japan that has, over the years, wallowed in the piggy munificence of a quite staggering LDP-administered pork barrel. Note also how the tie-less Abe (Forget my princeling past...I'm like you, farmer-boy!) Is captured wistfully gazing at the heavens. Dear god, he might very well be thinking, please find some way to make these pension-starved, deflation-ravaged bumpkins trust me again...some natural disaster perhaps, where I can appear statesman-like vigorous and youthful.

Doesn't he also look a little bit like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings? Those bulging eyes that at one moment appear simpering and credulous but a second later appear scheming and Machiavellian?

Comments

[Alex]

I don't know about Abe. Seems that David Pilling does not dislike him that much.........