It hardly looked like a fair fight: in one electoral ­corner the former defence minister and the veteran politician’s powerful vote-gathering machine while in the other, a waif-like 28-year-old health activist and political neophyte.

Yet when Japan’s parliament, the Diet, reconvenes this month after August’s historic general election, it will be soft-voiced young Eriko Fukuda who takes a lower house seat, not Fumio Kyuma, the vanquished heavyweight from the long-ruling Liberal Democratic party.