The rise of the two hard-liners has already contributed to hand-wringing among liberals who are anxious that the foreboding sense that Japan is fast becoming an international has-been has left the Japanese vulnerable to long-suppressed nationalism. Even those who call those fears overblown acknowledge that anti-China feelings, which could be easily exploited, are rising as that country eclipses Japan, builds a formidable military and makes its territorial ambitions clear.

From Mr. Ishihara’s vantage point, those geopolitical realities make now the perfect time for Japan to put him in charge.

“Here I am, the old man who has run amok!” he bellowed to a wave of applause at a recent campaign appearance in front of Shinjuku train station in Tokyo. “I am 80 years old, and I am standing here because I want to break through the indecisive and barren politics that is stifling Japan!”

A tall, bespectacled figure, Mr. Ishihara spent most of his short speech emphasizing what has become the central campaign message of his Japan Restoration Party: offering forceful leadership to end Japan’s long political drift by breaking the grip of bureaucrats and vested interests.

Much of the party’s message, however, has become vintage Ishihara. He goes further than Mr. Abe, calling for an outright scrapping of Japan’s antiwar constitution, written by its postwar American occupiers. He still speaks about ending what he sees as political and cultural subservience to the United States and pledges to resist Chinese territorial appetites, promising to build permanent structures on the disputed islands in a move likely to further antagonize China.

“I cannot allow myself to die until my Japan, which has been made a fool of by China, and seduced as a mistress by the United States, is able to stand up again as a stronger, more beautiful nation,” Mr. Ishihara said last month to reporters, explaining why he resigned after 13 years as Tokyo’s governor to return to national politics. He did so after being asked to lead the fledgling Restoration Party’s slate in this month’s parliamentary election by its founder, the popular mayor of Osaka who did not yet want to run for national office.

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So far, polls show that Mr. Ishihara has only limited appeal. His party’s approval ratings are in the low teens, about the same as the unpopular incumbent Democratic Party, but below Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democrats, who poll only slightly better, at around 20 percent. Polls also show that more than half of voters disapprove of Mr. Ishihara and of scrapping the antiwar clause of Japan’s constitution.

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Still, there is a slight chance the Liberal Democrats will not garner enough support to win a majority in the lower house. If that happens, Mr. Ishihara stands a chance of becoming a kingmaker who can name his price for joining a coalition government: the prime ministership.

Mr. Ishihara seems to be betting that his undeniable star power will give him an edge in an election crowded by unknown new parties and established parties that many people view as too indecisive or inept to move Japan past its financial paralysis.

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Part of that celebrity was inherited from his younger brother, Yujiro, a movie star whose bad-boy persona won him comparisons to James Dean until he died in 1987. The elder Mr. Ishihara also developed his own name recognition, first as an author and screenwriter (for some of his brother’s movies) and later as a lawmaker. His fame gave him a special status in Japanese politics as a radical who was tolerated by the mainstream, though not taken seriously — until now.

As governor of Tokyo since 1999, he proved popular by projecting an image of a decisive, hands-on leader, making the point by wearing the gray jumpsuit of a city employee to the office. Although vested interests often get their way in Japan, he brushed aside objections by businesses to make Tokyo one of the first places in the world to adopt a cap-and-trade system for limiting diesel truck emissions.

But he also offended non-Japanese residents by blaming violent crime on foreigners, adding to fears that his nationalism is grounded in the same type of xenophobia that some suspect underlies his continual references to China by the name that imperial Japan used during its brutal occupation of that country in the 1930s.

And while Mr. Ishihara’s message seems to appeal to male voters anxious about their country’s future and angry over China’s claims to the disputed islands, he can also seem out of touch. Last year, he was forced to issue a rare public apology after calling the deadly tsunami in northeast Japan “punishment from heaven” for what he perceived as Japan’s moral decline.

Reservations about Mr. Ishihara’s strong views were shared even by some who attended his recent Tokyo rally and were considering supporting him.

“Ishihara is running as fast he can to the right,” said Jiro Ogata, a 22-year-old university student, “but I don’t think the country is going to follow him.”

During the current campaign, Mr. Ishihara has appeared to temper some of his past stands, notably on his country’s relationship with the United States. He has not repeated his calls to close American bases in Japan, and has said that he would maintain Japan’s security alliance. But he can still appear resentful of a country he feels has belittled his own nation and himself. In one of his dozens of books, he recounted how some American soldiers who occupied Japan after its wartime defeat hit him in the face with an ice cream stick when he refused to step out of their way.

He was a junior high school student at the time, but politicians who know him say the years since have not diminished his sense that Japan needs to reclaim its honor.

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“Ishihara sees this as his last chance to win a place in the history books,” said Masakuni Murakami, a former Liberal Democratic Party heavyweight who has known Mr. Ishihara for more than three decades. “He wants to go down as the man who gave Japan its pride and self-confidence back.”