Toyama Koichi is a 36 year old street musician, who in his spare time heads the Kyushu Fascist Party.

He has recently served 2 years in jail for sedition, and comes across, on a good day, as totally unhinged. So how did he garner 15 000 votes in the Tokyo gubernatorial election?

Much of it can be put down to his rather controversial, albeit compelling political speech, aired on television, and rapidly uploaded to YouTube. Containing such riveting lines as “If I get elected, they will be terrified. I myself will be terrified.” It's no surprise that it took off the way it did.

In a move that could only have helped his popularity, Tokyo’s election commission asked for the video to be removed from YouTube. He subsequently became something of a Japanese interweb phenomenon, 2^nd in popularity only to anime character, “Haruhi Suzumiya.”

In the ensuing fray, the video was co-opted, edited and remixed, spawning, amongst others, a Star Wars version, a JPop version, and my favourite, a 1930’s styled vintage version. 

The story ends rather dully, with Shintaro Ishihara, the incumbent Liberal Democrat winning convincingly, with 2 811 486 votes.

UPDATE: Apparently the embedding on the video has been "disabled by request". There are a couple of other versions but if you want to watch the one with English subtitles do so here.