The Liberal Democratic Party is running a cartoon attack ad in an attempt to discredit opposition pledges to improve child care and abolish road tolls.
The cartoon, carried on the LDP's Web site, depicts a dinner conversation in a high-rise restaurant between a woman and a character resembling Democratic Party of Japan leader Yukio Hatoyama as a young man.
"I can make you happier, why don't you switch to me," the man says, promising free expressways and support for education, child care and the elderly. When the woman asks how he will pay for it all, the man responds: "I'll think about the details after we get married."
Prime Minister Taro Aso dissolved the Lower House on Tuesday and called an election for Aug. 30. His party, which has only been out of power for 10 months since 1955, is focusing on the opposition's inexperience in government.
Forty-two percent of respondents in an Asahi Shimbun poll published Monday said they would vote for the DPJ, compared with 19 percent for the LDP. The opposition, which has controlled the Upper House since 2007, had a public approval rating of 31 percent, compared with 20 percent for the LDP, according to the poll.
The DPJ plans to encourage consumer spending by providing as much as ¥5.3 trillion in child support and lowering gasoline taxes. The party ran an ad in Wednesday's Asahi and Nikkei newspapers signed by Hatoyama that said: "The moment of changing history is near. Finally a change of government."
The LDP's cartoon ends with a disbelieving sigh from the woman followed by the slogan: "Can you entrust your life with confidence without any basis? The LDP has a basis."