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Why the campaign is a van shouting a name
The 選挙カー is not a failure of imagination, it is what the law leaves. The 公職選挙法 regulates campaigning in unusual detail: going door to door to ask for a vote — 戸別訪問 — is prohibited outright, the official campaign period is short (twelve days for a general election), and the number of posters, vehicles and pieces of literature a candidate may use is capped and specified. The intent was to stop money and pressure deciding elections, and the effect is that the cheap, legal, available channel is a loudspeaker repeating a name until it is familiar. The substance, such as it is, arrives as the 選挙公報, a broadsheet delivered to every household with each party and candidate given the same space — genuinely useful, and the thing to read. Voting happens at the local primary school or community center, and 期日前投票 has become very popular, since you can vote for roughly two weeks beforehand at a city office without giving a reason. Turnout in national elections has often run barely above half. The part that applies to Alex is simple and worth stating plainly: foreign residents cannot vote in Japan at national or local level, permanent residence included. The Supreme Court said in 1995 that granting local voting rights to permanent residents would not be unconstitutional, so it is a matter for legislation, and no such law has passed. A handful of municipalities have let foreign residents take part in non-binding local 住民投票. That is the whole of it.