It's a sad fact that Japanese people, especially the young, are losing interest in politics.
However, 21-year-old Tokyo resident Mizuki Takura is an exception.
When she was 18, Takura was a high-school exchange student in the United States. It was a presidential election year, and her friends there were excited about the race for the White House. But such enthusiasm for politics was new to Takura, and their fervor came as a shock.
"I was embarrassed because I didn't know anything about Japanese politics and couldn't answer anything people asked me," she recalled.
After returning to Japan last autumn after studying for two years at Dickenson College in Pennsylvania, Takura enrolled at Sophia University as a junior in April. But in addition to her studies, she began looking for opportunities to work for politicians to learn something about politics firsthand. "I wanted to see what it is like with my own eyes," she said.