As Election Nears, Japan's Politics Turn Sour

It has never been a secret that Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto’s gangster father was a yakuza who hailed from a social underclass that has often been discriminated against in past years. Newspaper and magazine articles have alluded to this without making much of an issue out of it. Until now. With Japan’s national elections looming in the not-to-distant fut…