ZAKZAK informs me that it will soon be easier to follow my favorite politicians, like Taro Aso and Sumio Mabuchi (pictured above (left) with Terry Itoh):
(Paraphrased)
Easily Search Diet Member’s Activities… Yahoo! Opens Politics Site
Yahoo! Japan will start “Yahoo! Everyone’s Politics,” a political information site where one can easily search politicians’ actions and proposals submitted to the Diet, from Feb. 22. It will also be possible to read comments written by Diet members and political parties.
Users can search for politicians by name, party affiliation, and election district. In addition to bios and daily political activities penned by the Diet members themselves, they have also instituted a function to monitor members’ voting records.
Yahoo! has been explaining the contents of the service to political parties and Diet members since around the summer of 2005. Some said that inputting all that data would be cumbersome, but there were many who responded positively to the service as an opportunity to directly connect with their constituents. As of now, approx. 200 of the 720 Diet members in both houses have written entries, and that number is expected to grow.
The site will not contain ads from normal companies but will instead display ads related to the political parties and elections. The site can be accessed from the Yahoo! portal, and the company expects approximately 2 million hits per month. Yahoo! users are often in their 20s and 30s, and Yahoo! has commented that they would like this to promote understanding of politics and lead to an increase in voter turnout.
ZAKZAK 2006/02/06