Campaigning for election in Japan: A documentary

I zapped into a documentary by chance last night which was shown on the German-French culture channel Arte. It was about some guy named Yamauchi Kazuhiko who was told by his party to run for a post in the local city council in Kawasaki. I don't really know if the constituancy he was running for was named Miyabae or not, as I said, I joined the program as it was already running.
So this poor Yamauchi-san tries the best he can to get the best resuult for his party and the documentary accompanies him on his way. He's meeting up with old friends of his at a hotel room. The friends are very confused when Yamauchi-san's wife tells them that she has to refer to herself as "kanai" (housewife) instead of "tsuma" (wife) because some party officials told her so. Yamauchi-san's party is the LDP, the governing party in Japan. They have been in power for almost all the time after the 2nd World War and this documentary is set during a time when Koizumi Junichiro was still prime minister. They seemed to have quite a few elections going on their, so when the prime minister was joining the campaign the main candidate - I presume she ran for a place in parliament - poor Yamauchi-san had to stand a whole lot lower than the other candidates.
Also what was very confusing was that there was almost no talk about the program the guy was standing for. It seemed like he had none. He had to built up a base of supporters from out of nowhere (something which was done by supporters of another candidate from the same party) and he had to pay for the campaign all by himself. There's one scene when he and his wife are driving home and she complains that some old guys of the party told her to quit her job. She's afraid that they won't have any money left if Yamauchi-san fails to win the seat in the city council.
There seems to big a huge difference in how both political systems of elections work in Germany and Japan. the Japanese way looked rather loud and colourful when the German way of campaigning relies mostly on speeched and arguments. Perhaps that's because there is proportional representation in Germany. Well, I've never seen a candidate standing in front of the train station wishing each passenger who enters the station a good morning and a safe travel. This was very interesting.
The original title is "Campaign" and the film was done by Soda Kazuhiro, a filmmaker born Japan who is now living in New York.