By JAMES BROOKE
 
TOKYO, Feb. 23 — The austere hotel office has a white table, white chairs and a scattering of books in French, a language he does not read. His energy is focused, though, on a thin laptop computer, with a freestanding microphone and a Web camera perched like a Cyclops eye. A blue data cable serves as a high-speed umbilical cord to Peru, 9,000 miles away.

Alberto Fujimori is a political exile in the age of the Internet.

Wielding what he calls this "powerful instrument" over the last year, Mr. Fujimori, former president of Peru, has parried an Interpol arrest request, started a political movement in Peru, maintained his "From Tokyo" Web site, and transmitted programs for his new hourlong weekly radio show, which is broadcast on 60 stations in Peru.

"I live as if I were in Peru, but without the physical contact with the people," said Mr. Fujimori, who took up residence in Japan, the land of his ancestors, in November 2000 as his administration fell apart during a corruption scandal. "Five years ago, this would have been unthinkable."

Last week, Peruvian officials once again flew across the Pacific to make the case here that the former president should be extradited to Lima on charges ranging from corruption to murder. He is accused of organizing an antiterrorist death squad.

"They repeated the same basic position, that Fujimori is a criminal charged with murder and other cases and that he was not Japanese at all, but a Peruvian, and had to be extradited, and so forth," Hatsuhisa Takashima, the Foreign Ministry's spokesman, said on Monday. Noting there is no extradition treaty between Japan and Peru, he added, "The Japanese government Ministry of Justice is conducting a study."

For Luis Quesada, a Peruvian diplomat here, a 700-page extradition request contains all the necessary justification. "For us, our case is clear," he said. "It is not a political decision, but a judicial one."

Taking a less diplomatic tack, Nelly Calderón, Peru's chief prosecutor, complained recently to a Kyodo News Agency reporter, "We have gotten almost no cooperation from Japan on the investigations."

Given the politics of Japan, it is highly unlikely that Mr. Fujimori will go home involuntarily. His conservative supporters include senior government officials, most notably Shintaro Ishihara, governor of Tokyo.

Given the politics of Peru, though, it is also highly likely that he will go home voluntarily.

Alejandro Toledo, Peru's current president, is bumping along at the bottom of polls, most recently winning a 7 percent approval rating among voters polled in the Lima area. The cabinet shuffle last week might allow the government to survive through July, completing its third year, Mr. Fujimori predicted.

But whether Mr. Toledo's mandate is shortened or whether presidential elections take place on schedule, in the spring of 2006, Mr. Fujimori made it clear that he intended to return home as a candidate. He predicted a political solution to the charges against him, which he also contends are political.

"I have succeeded in recuperating a good part of my popular support," Mr. Fujimori said, attributing much of his recovery to his ability to put out his message through the Internet. Estimating his base support at 5 million of Peru's electorate of 14 million, he said: "I am not exaggerating when I speak of one-third."

In polls about voters' intentions for the next presidential election, Peruvians generally place Mr. Fujimori second, behind Alan García, a liberal populist whose presidency in the late 1980's was blighted by hyperinflation and soaring guerrilla violence. In a nationwide survey of 2,300 voters in August, Mr. Fujimori was selected as the "best" former president by the largest group of respondents, 38 percent. In rural areas, the percentage jumped to 50 percent.

To translate such sentiments into political power, this 65-year-old exile with jet black hair started a political movement, Si Cumple, which translates roughly as, He Keeps His Word.

"President Toledo comes and promises, but doesn't keep his word," Mr. Fujimori said, pausing as he traced a highway he wanted to extend through the jungle on a map of Peru.

"During our 10 years, we promised to build 3,000 schools, and we built them," he said, speaking in his native Spanish, seemingly trying out campaign rhetoric in a Tokyo hotel room. "We promised one million land titles — and one million titles were delivered. We promised to pave 1,000 kilometers of the Pan American Highway with asphalt — and they were paved."

In six months, his party has become one of the top four parties in Peru, according to a CPI poll released Monday. Si Cumple came in third, in a narrow field where support for the four parties ranged from 14.5 to 18.6 percent.

Mr. Fujimori, who appears content to build his political movement from afar, did not tip his hand about when he intended to return. He did say, however, that his companion here, Satomi Kataoka — who added the French books to his decor — is about to start private Spanish lessons.

In her recent debut on Mr. Fujimori's Web site, Ms. Kataoka, a 37-year-old hotel owner, stood alongside Mr. Fujimori and vowed in heavily accented Spanish: "Very soon, we will be with the Peruvian people."