The issue of growing inequality and the question of how to deal with it has loomed large in the Lower House election campaign, which concludes Sunday, with even the right-leaning Liberal Democratic Party integrating related policies into its manifesto.

But one measure that had previously looked set to be a key policy has been noticeably absent, after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida did an abrupt U-turn on a possible hike to the capital gains tax — a pledge in his LDP leadership campaign — which was supposed to make the rich pay their fair share.

While the issue has been out of the spotlight this time, it could come back somewhere down the line, with parties of all stripes focused on a redistribution-oriented economic agenda.