Abe, unlike most politicians, acts as if he has clear answers for Japan’s problems. And with Article 96, Japan may be willing to give him the power to try solving them without asking too many questions about what exactly he intends to do.

This may not have been a good election year in the United States or Israel where the “idiot voter” trumped common sense and economic reason, but in Japan, one of the few First World countries with an older population that isn’t diluted by immigrants, the politics have turned to the right.

Outnumbered by Japan’s senior citizens, young people “don’t go to vote because they feel it doesn’t really count,” said Noguchi, who urged lawmakers to connect the younger generation to the political process by ending the ban on social media use by candidates during the official campaign.

To understand who Ishihara is, imagine if Barry Goldwater had written Catcher in the Rye or if Jack Kerouac had somehow turned into Joe McCarthy