film) is a 68 min. documentary that covers the campaigns of those candidates who tried to win one of the five seats in Tokyo during the Upper House election in 2007. It shows Japan’s electoral machinery in full steam and focuses on the question of how Japanese candidates try to appeal to voters. The documentary depicts different strategies and techniques, and presents a lively picture of political culture in Japan.
“Pictures at an Election” was filmed virtually “single-handedly” by political scientist and then DIJ senior research fellow Axel Klein (now Duisburg-Essen University, Germany) during the 17 days of electoral campaigning in July 2007. On most days he spent 15 hours out on the streets of Tokyo, from Kita-Senju in the Northeast to Futago-Tamagawa in the Southwest, following the major candidates on their campaign trails. Since back then election laws prohibited candidates and parties from updating their websites during the campaign period the daily route was mostly decided on the basis of information collected from the election headquarters of the candidates. After conducting interviews with many of the politicians featuring in the documentary, Klein edited the many hours of material between August 2007 and March 2008. In the years since then the documentary has been distributed for free to more than 100 universities all over the world.
In 2021, two factors contributed to the decision by the DIJ and Axel Klein to publish the material on YouTube. First, the pandemic made on campus teaching impossible in many world regions so that online access to teaching material like “Pictures at an Election” became helpful. Second, the (unintended) protagonist of the documentary, MARUKAWA Tamayo, became Minister in charge of Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality and Minister of State for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games in February 2021. This documentary shows how she started her political career with her first election campaign.
