Japan needs to focus on its ailing economy, not a nationalist agenda

The cacophony at the suburban railway station rises not so much to a crescendo - which might suggest something melodious - as a terrible din. Endless, mindless slogans are brayed into a microphone and sprayed via the loudspeaker system over the passing public.

Most Japanese seem unmoved, neatly sidestepping outstretched hands proffering election propaganda pamphlets urging support for their candidates in Japan's general election tomorrow.

Opinion polls suggest that the long-time former ruling Liberal Democratic Party will be returned to power in coalition with the Buddhist Komeito and with support from the up-and-coming Japan Restoration Party, led by the octogenarian nationalist Shintaro Ishihara and the populist mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto.

Such an outcome would be justice against the Democratic Party of Japan for its failure, after three years in power and as many prime ministers, to fulfil its grand promises or to rescue the nation from falling back into recession after two decades.

But justice can be cruel, too. It would put Shinzo Abe back in power as head of the LDP, which laid the foundations of the economic mess. Abe was prime minister in 2006 but gave up after a year because he could not take the strain.

His return could presage turbulent times. Abe has a nationalist agenda, including a revision of Japan's constitution to get rid of Article 9, which renounces war, and to make the self-defence forces an army also in name. In winning the party's leadership in September, he said: "Japan's beautiful country and seas are under threat, and young people are having trouble finding hope in the future amid an economic slump."

With new leaders in Beijing eager to show their national strength on the seas, the risk is that the present sullen stand-off over who owns the Diaoyu Islands (Senkakus in Japan) could worsen into a cold war from which neither country nor the rest of Asia would benefit.