Its leader is the wife of a reincarnated god with a spiritual hotline to Kim Jong-il. It plans to rearm Japan, make it the world's No 1 economy and attack Korea. Welcome to the Happiness Realisation Party.
As a historic general election looms on August 31, Japan's long-suffering electorate face a clear choice: the conservative party that has virtually monopolised power since 1955, or its more liberal but untested rival that promises long-awaited reform. For those with a taste for the apocalyptic, however, there is always the Happiness Realisation Party.
Offering what it calls a 'third choice', the party has an eye-catching manifesto: more than double Japan's population to 300 million, overtake America to become the planet's leading power, pre-emptively strike North Korea and rearm for war with China. If elected, the party's lawmakers will inject religion into all areas of life and fight to overcome Japan's 'colonial' mentality, which has 'fettered' the nation's true claim to global leadership.
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.
