A 19-year-old Keio University student is aspiring to bridge the gap between politicians and citizens, especially young people, with an online platform app called PoliPoli that uses innovative technologies to facilitate communications between them.
Kazuma Ito, CEO of PoliPoli Inc., believes most voters seldom get an opportunity for direct contact with politicians except during elections, and the distance between them has not narrowed despite online political campaigning being legalized in 2013 and the voting age being lowered from 20 to 18 in 2016.
"Seiji (politics) may seem very square, yet that's not the actual case," Ito said in a recent interview with The Japan Times. It's about real people with real concerns, such as improving narrow roads or addressing the problem of child abuse, he explained.