Japan election-linked firms rush to prepare for lower house poll
Election-related businesses in Japan are scrambling to prepare for the Feb. 8 House of Representatives election, which is set to be held just 16 days after the lower chamber of the Diet, the country's parliament, was dissolved.
The 16-day window is the shortest lead-up to a general election since the end of World War II, and businesses are receiving an influx of orders from those planning to file candidacies.
"It's too abrupt," Koichi Ishibashi, 60, head of a campaign car rental firm in Yonago, Tottori Prefecture, western Japan, said. "I'm getting more calls than ever before."
Ishibashi said that his company's roughly 70 campaign cars, equipped with loudspeakers and driven through constituencies to appeal to voters during the campaign period, were booked within three days after news reports that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was considering calling a snap election.
The firm is currently rushing to put signboards on the vehicles.
"We will run well-maintained campaign cars despite there being little time," Ishibashi said.
A printing company in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward that handles campaign posters saw a surge in orders and inquiries. The company said that it is declining new orders as it lacks staff due to the unexpected Lower House dissolution.
"We will make sure deliveries are made on time," company President Hiroshi Saito, 74, said.
Suguru Takahata, 48, head of an information technology firm in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward that offers election-related services such as online advertisements for politicians, said his company will "ensure that ads are free of mistakes despite the short election triggered by the unpredictable dissolution," noting that mistakes in ad wording could violate the public offices election law.
The cautious tone comes as an increasing number of candidates utilise social media and the internet in recent elections.
Meanwhile, a producer of "daruma" traditional Japanese good fortune dolls, an indispensable fixture of campaign offices in Japanese elections, had predicted that the Lower House would be dissolved.
"My intuition based on experience told me (the snap poll) would come soon," daruma-making veteran Sumikazu Nakata, 73, said. "We have been increasing production since last December, so we are fully prepared."
[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
