In Japan, media politics have not prevailed because of several systematic reasons, such as oneparty rule by the Liberal Democratic Party for almost 40 years, peculiar election system, and so on.
But, some political reform, such as the public aid to the political party, the emergence of the other major conservative party (New Fronteer Party), the reform of the election system to the minor electoral district system, created the condition to encourage more media strategies.
In 1996 general election, many political advertisements appeared. Especially, New Fronteer Party invested far more campaign funds for political advertisements than Liberal Democratic party.
At first, New Fronteer Party focused on the issue about the consumer tax, and attacked the policy of Liberal Democratic Party, but Liberal Democratic party took the effective revenge by attacking the contradiction of the policy of New Fronteer Party about the consumer tax by the political advertisements.
This advertisement was magnified by the media coverage, and New Fronteer Party lost its reliability.
As a result, Liberal Democratic Party won in the general election, but both political parties increased the political distrust especially among the independent or the floating voters by going negative.