Fundraising is a big part of an elected official's life, especially in a country where individuals are not accustomed to offering donations to politicians or political parties.

So when Barack Obama reportedly collected $640 million during the U.S. presidential campaign last year, mostly from individual donations via the Internet, many politicians in Japan probably sighed with envy.

In 2007, 67,650 political bodies submitted political funding reports to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry and election offices in each prefecture. The earnings from those bodies totaled about ¥287.9 billion, of which ¥44.3 billion was donated by individuals. There are no records showing how much of that came through the Internet.