Who the heck is Suzuki Kan then? Suzuki-san is a member of the House of Councillors of the National Diet of Japan. Basically, he's a Member of Parliament. He's hoping to be re-elected to the upper-house in July. Suzuki-san has opened an office in Second Life (if you can locate it, let us know! doumo ^^)

The problem, essentially, is the rather complex, specific and outdated electoral regulations. The Public Office Election laws (now 50 years old) says that images and text used in election campaigns can only be disseminated or distributed via postcards and pamphlets. Oho! Does that mean that they can't use the Web? Yes, a recent ruling interpreted the law in such a way as to prohibit the the creation or update of web-pages during the campaign period. Kind of refreshing, actually.

We're not really sure what that means for Suzuki-san's office in Second Life, but, heck, we hope it works out for him.

(Thanks BBC News, Tokyo)