Some Japanese use the indigenous verb “kaeru”. Others favour the Chinese loan-word “henka”. Yukio Hatoyama, president of the opposition Democratic party of Japan, sometimes even pulls out the Obamaesque “chenji”. However they choose to say it, the word on people’s minds ahead of Sunday’s potentially historic election is “change”.

Opinion polls suggest that the centre-left DPJ, with a campaign built around the slogan “change of government”, is poised to win a landslide victory – a result that would transform Japan’s political scene, long dominated by the ruling Liberal Democratic party.