Tokyo - The Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Yoshiro Mori, may face a humiliating backlash at the polls on June 25th - all because of his remark to a gathering of parliamentarians promoting the indigenous Shinto belief that Japan was a "country of gods with the emperor at its core".
Critics say those words, repeated daily by every newspaper and television station in the country, are a throwback to the pre-war era of religious nationalism.
Mr Mori's popularity is in now free fall, after hitting a high two months ago when he took over from the dying Keizo Obuchi as prime minister.
