Stranger and stranger. This is his best trick since Fuji-Cola. From AFP, July 29:

TOKYO: Among the candidates running for seats in Japan's parliament this weekend is the former president of another country who is under house arrest on the other side of the world.

Peru's ex-president Alberto Fujimori, who holds Japanese nationality thanks to his ancestry but cannot leave a house in Santiago, Chile, is believed to be the first former head of state ever to seek national office in another country.

While his candidacy is highly unusual, he is just one of a number of high-profile figures whom Japanese political parties have tapped in hopes of bringing out voters in Sunday's election for the upper house of parliament.

Other candidates in the election — expected to deliver a rebuke to conservative prime minister Shinzo Abe — include a former adviser to the Dalai Lama, the father of a young golf star and a television anchorwoman.

Fujimori was drafted by the People's New Party, a small conservative opposition group which is polling at less than one per cent. It is difficult to predict if he will win due to Japan's complex election system.

Fujimori, who on Saturday was celebrating his 69th birthday, has borrowed his slogan from a Tom Cruise film, calling himself The Last Samurai, who can restore Japanese traditional values of hard work and humility. "I will stake my life for the samurai nation of Japan!" the exiled leader said in a campaign video from Chile, speaking Japanese with a Spanish accent.

The former president remains a controversial figure in Peru. Proponents credit the US-educated academic with saving the economy and crushing a Maoist rebellion over his 10-year tenure, but critics accuse him of trampling human rights.

He fled to Tokyo in 2000 amid a corruption probe and faxed his resignation from a hotel. He stayed in exile in Japan for five years before he flew to Chile in an apparent bid to return to Peru. He was arrested and put under house arrest as Chile examines requests from Peru to extradite him to face charges.

But Fujimori enjoys wide sympathy among Japanese conservatives. In 1997, he ordered elite troops to break a four-month siege by leftist guerrillas of the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima. Seventy-one hostages were saved, many of them Japanese. Fourteen militants were killed, along with one hostage and two soldiers.

See our last posts on Peru and the indefatigable Fujimori.