Contributed by Steven Clift

When the head of Japan's top opposition party gave a heated speech in Tokyo this week, party officials did what seemed natural in one of the world's most technology-savvy countries -- they put a movie clip of the speech on the party Web site.

But only hours later, election officials called the Democratic Party of Japan to say the movie clip was in danger of violating the country's election laws. By Wednesday morning, the video was gone.

Candidates in Japan's Sept. 11 elections for the lower house of Parliament are finding their efforts to reach out to voters via the Internet hampered by the nation's 1950 election laws.

The regulations stipulate that each candidate can only distribute 35,000 postcards and 70,000 leaflets during the official election campaign period. TV and radio spots can be used by parties, but not individual candidates.

The law effectively bars all other media, preventing candidates from using the Internet and e-mail to disseminate images, and parties and candidates from updating their Web sites until after polls close.

Critics say it's time for an update.

"Until now, speeches on the street, as well as TV and newspapers, have been enough to reach out to voters during elections," said Chikako Aoki of Yes! Project, a group established by young business leaders last week to get more young people interested in politics.

"But times are changing, and media used in election campaigning also need to change," she said.

The restrictions are coming to the fore in this year's hotly contested race for the 480-seat lower house in which Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party and their coalition partners are pitted against the DPJ and other opposition parties.

The no-Internet policy could especially hinder Democrat candidates as they try to reach out to Web-savvy city voters, among whom they have made significant gains in the last two elections. The LDP's traditional power base, meanwhile, is in the countryside.

"The DPJ has repeatedly called for election laws to be reformed to allow for better use of the Internet, but for now we intend to abide by current regulations," said Katsuhiro Harada, an official in charge of the party's campaign.

"The feeling is that the laws are outdated," he added.

The clash between the 50-year-old campaign law and 21st century politics is not without a price for the LDP. The country's best-known Internet entrepreneur, Takafumi Horie, is running as an independent, but with the backing of the ruling party.

Horie has stopped updating his popular Internet blog -- which was registering over 50,000 hits a day -- since Aug. 18, the day before he announced his candidacy.

Livedoor, his Internet services company, has also stopped carrying news stories on its Web portal site that mention specific election candidates, spokesman Kazuyoshi Omura said. The site plans to run an election special as soon as the elections are over.

Although individual candidates also cannot use the radio or TV to call for votes, parties are allowed to run TV commercials, which began airing across the country on Tuesday.

Koizumi dissolved the lower house on Aug. 8 and called next month's elections after the upper house rejected his bid to split up and sell the postal delivery, savings and insurance services, creating the world's largest private bank.

Since then, he has ousted anti-reform lawmakers from his party and recruited celebrities like Horie to run against his former colleagues.

On Wednesday, the LDP ran a commercial with the silver-haired Koizumi -- who took office in 2001 -- looking serious in a crisp suit.

"Four years ago, I promised the public that I will pursue reforms, even if that meant breaking up the LDP. Postal privatization is a promise that I made to the Japanese people," he says.

In the DPJ ad, Katsuya Okada, head of the Democratic Party of Japan -- also in a suit against a pure white background -- calls out to voters for change.

"Change is definitely needed in politics," Okada says. "Don't give up on Japan -- the Democratic Party." (AP)

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