Conservative Gov. Koike Yuriko of Tokyo, Japan, won a third term in office on Sunday in a high-turnout election where her top rival was expected to be the candidate backed by the Japanese Communist Party — but instead came in third to a YouTube celebrity politician who moved to Tokyo a week before campaigning began.
This year’s gubernatorial race may be more remembered for the chaos of campaigning than the result of an incumbent winner, which occurs often in local Japanese politics. The race invited dozens of unusual candidates, ranging from one-issue political activists to bizarre performance artists to a man promising to replace all politicians with artificial intelligence.
For the price of an official candidacy, Tokyo offers candidates reserved billboard space and several blocks of television on the public broadcaster NHK that they can use however they want. Many candidates took advantage of that for publicity, littering Tokyo with bizarre posters of cartoons and nude women and using their airtime for cosplay and general shouting.
Tokyo residents complained that the race was “distasteful” this year, lamenting that it had attracted confused attention from foreigners.
Koike has been governor of Tokyo since 2016 and was once a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has also controlled the federal government of Japan with little opposition for most of the post-World War II era. Koike ran as an independent but with the support of the LDP, among several other conservative groups.
The largest left-wing party in Japan, the Constitutional Democratic Party, backed Saito Renho, a popular former lawmaker who campaigned aggressively against the LDP, attempting to harness growing national disillusion with the party. Renho, who is commonly referred to by her first name, also received the support of the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party, establishing her left-wing credentials.
Early reports indicated that Renho’s high profile and backing from major opposition groups in the country would make her the most promising challenger in a race that boasted an unprecedented 56 candidates. Japanese media buzzed with the development of a political race dominated by female politicians, a rarity in the male-dominated society.
On Sunday, however, Renho came in third place. Ishimaru Shinji, the former mayor of the small town of Akitakata in Hiroshima prefecture, took second place. Ishimaru moved to Tokyo in June and resigned from the mayorship shortly before the gubernatorial race began in May.
According to the major Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, Koike won the election with 43 percent of the vote, far above second-place finisher Ishimaru, who obtained 24.3 percent of the vote. Renho came in third with 18.8 percent.
Asahi attributed Koike’s victory to “strong support from women and elderly voters,” while younger voters who may be more inclined to vote against establishment-linked conservatives split their vote among several candidates. Ishimaru appeared to surpass Renho by tapping into independent voters, who greatly increased their turnout from the 2020 election.
Ishimaru, local media noted, attracted voters by regularly uploading video screeds onto YouTube, where he developed a loyal following rapidly despite not being from Tokyo or apparently acquainted with local problems. Ishimaru promised to bring a fresh perspective to Tokyo politics independent of growing accusations against the LDP of mismanagement of party funding and focused on problems that residents grapple with more directly.
Some experts suggested that condemning the LDP, which Koike is no longer a member of, did not appear to unify the LDP vote as it became a campaign strategy for several other alternatives.
“It’s a reason not to vote for Koike, but it’s also a reason to vote for any of the 50-odd challengers,” Kenneth McElwain, a political scientist at the University of Tokyo, told the left-wing New York Times.
The Yomiuri Shimbun described Koike’s victory as a reprieve for the LDP from an otherwise lamentable performance in other local elections on Sunday. The LDP lost six Tokyo by-election races on Sunday despite keeping the governor’s office.
“There are concerns within the LDP that Koike’s victory was the result of the party’s efforts to avoid having her being tarred by the party’s brush, and that the party tough situation has not changed,” Yomiuri reported.
The LDP has for years benefitted from Japan not being home to an efficient left-wing political party or a coherent political left more generally. This was in some ways highlighted by the fact that, out of 56 candidates, 24 appeared on the ballot as part of the Party to Protect the People from NHK, a party founded to call for an end to NHK’s licensing fees for television broadcasts. The NHK party is the source of much of this year’s election chaos as its candidate registrations have “allowed photos of corgis, babies and influencers with QR codes linked to their social media accounts to be shown next to those of official candidates.”
The use of billboards became the first of several bizarre disputes in the election as the government prepared only 48 spaces for posters to be used by 56 candidates. The election commission handled the situation by asking candidates to tape their billboards to the side of the main billboard, expanding the spaces.
The spaces rapidly became filled up by strange promotions that had little to do with traditional politics. Some candidates published photos of cartoons, cute animals, or dogs. The competition for space resulted in widespread vandalism as campaign workers destroyed or replaced their rivals’ posters.
One candidate — a perennial political fixture named Yusuke Kawai who appears in his political capacity dressed as either the Joker from the Batman comic books or the comic villain The Mask — displayed posters featuring a nearly nude woman, an alleged “free speech” measure. Police issued him a warning and took the posters down.
Kawai sucked up much of the public attention that may have gone to Renho or other candidates due to his outlandish style and his campaign platform. Most top candidates focused on Japan’s growing birth rate crisis as a major campaign issue. All promised more financial support for parents and those considering having children, though they disagreed on the form that support would take. Kawai’s solution to the problem is polygamy, which he promoted with posters in which he is featured surrounded by models. He also published promotional music videos on his YouTube page in which he appears at bars partying with women. These proved to be less popular than Ishimaru’s political diatribes.
Kawai’s list of issues on his official social media profile include “freedom of expression,” “abolition of welfare for foreigners,” outlawing euthanasia for animals, and lower taxes. During most his allotted official NHK time, he appeared in costume and screamed or laughed hysterically.
Kawai got into a political feud with Matsuda Michihito, a candidate who ran under the title “AI Mayor” and called for eradicating all human governance. Like Kawai, AI Mayor is not a new project and appears to have first run in 2018.
Matsuda Michihito, que concorria com a alcunha "O Prefeito IA", prometia usar inteligência artificial para decisões políticas, mas enfrentava críticas por suas associações com figuras controversas e propostas questionáveis. pic.twitter.com/FSJTdMsuqZ
— Japonizando (@Japonizandobr) July 7, 2024
Another candidate, the NHK Party-affiliated small business owner Uchino Airi, used her allotted television time to strip on camera and ask viewers to add her on social media.
Uchino defeated Kawai but did not overcome the zero percent vote threshold.
“They are distasteful. As a Japanese citizen I feel embarrassed,” one voter, identified as Mayumi Noda, told the Associated Press last week, lamenting that “many foreign visitors pass by those billboards and they must wonder what’s going on.”
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