KUMAMOTO — The city of Yamaga, at the northern edge of Kumamoto Prefecture, is a landscape marked with rice paddies. The farmers who tend them are a socially conservative lot — a loyal source of support for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
Yamaga, population 58,000, is particularly symbolic because it is part of the district of former agriculture minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka — the influential but scandal-tainted Lower House member who hanged himself in May after the eruption of a political funds scandal. This is also the hometown of the district's LDP candidate in Sunday's election, incumbent Issui Miura.
But a chat with farmers around here quickly reveals that loyalty to the LDP is not what it once was.