Photo/Illutration The Diet building in Tokyo (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

I once generated an “average face” of politicians.

That was in 2009, the year the opposition Democratic Party of Japan won the Lower House election and came into power. I wanted to visualize a face that would symbolize this change of government.

Using image-processing software that was still new at the time, I input the positions of the eyes and mouths on the photos that were being processed.

The resulting average face of the 26 DPJ women who were newly elected to the Diet had markedly arched eyebrows.

As for the average face of the 20 high-profile Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito lawmakers who lost in the election, the prominent feature was droopy eyes.

I felt somewhat let down by both these images, as I’d been anticipating something more assertive, for better or for worse.

Shoji Yamafuji, a recently deceased illustrator known for his caricatures of politicians and celebrities, lamented in his book “Nigao-e” (Portrait), “(Not only among politicians) but in society at large today, there are fewer faces with distinctive personality.”

In his “Black Angle” caricature series in the now-defunct weekly Shukan Asahi magazine, Yamafuji drew former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and entrepreneur Kenji Osano—both major players in the Lockheed bribery scandals—as a potato and another vegetable.

And he attached a caption that was itself a delightfully cheeky parody of a famous quote by author Saneatsu Mushanokoji (1885-1976)—“Nakayoki koto wa utsukushiki kana,” which translates literally as “Being friends is a beautiful thing.”

Yamafuji also once wrote that the facial transformations of people were similar to the changing appearances of vegetables: “Greenhouse-grown vegetables are uniform in size and shape and look good. But they have lost their flavor and natural roughness.”

The Lower House was dissolved on Oct. 9, with a snap election scheduled for Oct. 27.

Let me think of those who will win the election and gather in the Diet. Will there be daikon radishes that are big and look impressive but be practically hollow inside? Scrawny carrots that grew in fields that have been in the same family for generations? Or “gobo” burdock roots that are smeared with the mud of the LDP slush fund scandal?

Browsing the vegetable aisle at a supermarket, I examine them carefully, only to become frustrated and annoyed that the selection would hardly make anyone happy.

But I still have to choose, so I pick one that’s at least not objectionable.

It’s time to be acutely reminded of the weight of the word “sovereign.”

—The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 10

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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