Junya Ogawa, age 49, is on his 5th term for the House of Representatives, and calls himself a geek who wants to make a difference for Japan.
When the House of Representatives was dissolved on October 10, 2003, the camera was pointed to then-32-year-old Ogawa, who was running for the first time from the opposition the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). In a sincere manner he said that he was “second to none when it came to servicing for the people in Japan”, and since then we took recordings of him whenever possible. In 2005, Ogawa was elected for the first time; and when the DPJ took over in 2009, he enthusiastically said, “Now is our turn to change the Japanese politics”. As a young potential politician, he was very much expected by both conservative and liberal debaters.
However, Ogawa started to suffer when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) regime, led by the Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, was formed in 2012. As much as he felt the sense of crisis over the populism of the right-wing nationalist Abe, the opposition party was weak, and he could not even succeed in the weak party. He diligently appealed his policies, but his thin desire for power led his family to question his potential as a politician. In the 2017 General election, he was tossed about by the factional disputes in the opposition party. What did the director Oshima see through the 17 years of observing Ogawa - hope or despair? This film questions the future of Japan through Ogawa. |
