Independent candidate Teruaki Masumoto, 48, hoped to keep a fire alive as he tried to get the attention of passersby outside Tokyo's Iidabashi Station on June 24, the day campaigning for July 11 House of Councilors election kicked off.
He fears that public apathy, coupled with government disinterest, will douse the flame he has kept since his sister, Rumiko, was spirited away by North Korean agents in 1978. He, like others whose kin were abducted to Pyongyang, have held out hope, even when confronted with the North's admission that their loved ones are dead, including his sister.
"After Sept. 17 (2002), some government officials wanted to normalize diplomatic relations with North Korea and (thus) tried to draw the curtain on the abductions," Masumoto said, referring to the date of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's historic Pyongyang summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.