A Happiness commercial posted on YouTube this week lays out the stakes. The North Korean leader is preparing to nuke Tokyo's Imperial Palace, bring Japan to its knees and enslave its people. 'Japan will be unable to do anything about this because of its constitution,' Mr Kim sneers in the clip, referring to the so-called 'pacifist' clause - Article 9 - of the 1947 document written under United States occupation that renounces the right to wage war.

Against pictures of a mushroom cloud exploding over Tokyo and red ink slowly drowning the nation, the narrator warns that China ultimately lurks behind this plot. 'With a population of 1.3 billion, China will rule the world,' intones the voice of Mr Kim. 'And North Korea will be No 2.' Neither the ruling Liberal Democratic Party nor its likely successor, the Democratic Party of Japan, have an answer to this threat, Happiness says. 'The very existence of the nation hangs in the balance.'

For those wondering how the narrator is privy to the thoughts of probably the world's most reclusive leader, the answer is simple: the Happies have a hotline directly to his subconscious.

A book released this week, The Guardian Spirit of Kim Jong-il Speaks by founder Ryuho Okawa, explains that the voice of Mr Kim's guardian angel warned him of the plans. Mr Okawa also tunes in to the thoughts of Japan's wartime monarch, Hirohito, and his predecessors.

Being able to commune with the dead is but one string to 'Master' Okawa's bow. A reincarnation of Buddha, he achieved great enlightenment in 1981, the party's website records, 'and awakened to the hidden part of his consciousness, El Cantare, whose mission is to bring happiness to all humanity'. Before he founded the Happy Science religion in 1986 he wrote books in which he channeled the spirits of Mohammed, Christ, Buddha, Confucius and Mozart. Conveniently, the prophets had much the same message: Japan is the world's greatest power and should ditch its constitution, rearm and take over Asia.

Mr Okawa, 53, a finance graduate of The City University of New York, has reportedly written 500 books - about 18 per year since he attained enlightenment. His wife, Kyoko, officially the leader of the party - the religion's political wing - is also a Buddhist saint: the reborn Aphrodite and the bodhisattva of wisdom and intellect.

So far at least, the Japanese press has largely ignored this exotic 'third choice'. For many here, the Happies smell suspiciously like a cult, but they are certainly taking the election seriously. In a rare interview with the respected magazine Bungei Shunju this month, Mr Okawa explained that they had fielded candidates in every electoral district in the country - more than the ruling LDP.

Followers say that after nearly two decades of economic and social problems they are attracted to Mr Okawa's support for a strong, resolute nation. 'Japan is pitiful today,' Hiroko Hirota, 52, a Happy Science member who works as a nurse in Tokyo. 'We can't keep depending on the US and the rest of the world. We have to stand up for ourselves.'

Tomohiro Machiyama, a journalist once sued by Happy Science for criticising them in print, said that those views, and the Happies' programme of tough love and self-help echoed the Christian fundamentalist movement in the US. 'It's the idea that you're the elite, the ones chosen by God. It's an attempt to bring social Darwinism to Japanese politics.'

Translating those beliefs into political power has proved easier said than done. Tokyo voters shunned the Happies in last month's municipal election, which ended LDP rule in the city and set the DPJ up for a historic national win this month. 'Parties that are too openly backed by a religious organisation have a really hard time getting broader support in Japan,' said Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Tokyo's Sophia University.

New Komeito, the LDP's coalition partner, controversially backed by the lay Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai - had 'real mobilisation power', said Professor Nakano. But he thinks it is unlikely that the Happies can rival them. 'I doubt that the party has a comparable army of dedicated supporters, in spite of the public display of its money and clout.'

Tokyoites had their fill of apocalyptic cults in the 1990s when Aum Shinri Kyo gassed the Tokyo subway in 1995 in a bizarre plot to take over the government. Twelve people died and 5,000 were injured in what remains Japan's worst terrorist attack. Machiyama sees obvious parallels with the Happies. 'They both attract people who consider themselves elites. Aum followers were highly educated but they were social losers. They wondered, 'Why can't I get ahead?''

Shoko Egawa, an investigative journalist who was almost murdered by Aum followers after she sounded early alarm bells, has also noted the similarities - Aum famously turned deadly after its unappealing stew of religion, doomsday science and politics was rejected by voters in 1990. Its attack came as Japan struggled with the fallout from a profound economic transition that has only deepened since. 'The worry is what will happen to Happy Science after they fail in this election,' says Egawa. 'That's the unknown that we must think about.'