House of Councilors lawmaker Mitsuru Sakurai of the Democratic Party of Japan has produced multimedia business cards that introduce his political activities with images and sound when used in a personal computer.
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| Mitsuru Sakurai of the Democratic Party of Japan shows off his new CD-ROM business cards at the Diet building in Tokyo's Nagata-cho district. |
Sakurai's cards are an example of an emerging trend among politicians to use information technology to appeal to the public, especially young voters.
The cards are actually 1 mm-thick business-card size CD-ROMs. They include among other information, a link to Sakurai's Web site.
"My target is young people and I'd like them to get interested in politics through computers," the lawmaker said.
A native of Sendai who was first elected in 1998, Sakurai, 44, said friends helped him create the software and music for the cards.
He produced 10,000 cards at a cost of 1.8 million yen.