The summer Upper House election is looking increasingly like an athletic competition as both ruling and opposition parties field sports stars to woo independent voters.
But it remains to be seen whether such efforts will translate into ballot-box success, and whether the ruling Democratic Party of Japan can use celebrity candidates to burnish its tarnished image with some glamour.
"Fielding well-known public figures has an obvious advantage for political parties in luring independent voters who don't support a particular party, and who are relatively prone to be attracted to a candidate's name value and public image," said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.