The election of Tokyo’s Governor was held on July 7th and incumbent Yuriko Koike has landed reelection, giving her third mandate as Governor. One of the peculiar features of the election that attracted our attention was that a former mayor of a minor city, Mr. Ishimaru, who had been seen as a minor candidate, spurted out, placing second in the election, followed by Ms. Ren-ho, who had been regarded to be the main contender against Ms. Koike. Ishimaru put supporters of Ren-ho off to show that he is brilliant at tripping off the end of TV critics’ tongues.
One intriguing fact in this election is that Ishimaru, who finished 2nd, was exuberantly supported by younger generations in their teens and 20s, while Ren-ho, who ended up 3rd, was backed by older generations, 60s through 80s. And Koike, who won the election, has established her support from across all generations.
Having seen these stark contrasts, each camp couldn’t help but fault each other. The supporters of Ishimaru ripped into older generations, calling out them for having elderly rule, ‘gerontocracy’, while the supporters of Ren-ho excoriated the younger generation, saying that they’re too benighted to pick up the right candidate.
According to a couple of preceding polls, Koike always ranked atop and was best likely to be reelected.But one issue had been mutilating her reputation with academic embellishment. On official election flyers, it read that she graduated from Cairo University in Egypt, but some people had identified that she had introduced herself to have graduated from the American Cairo University, a different private university, when she had been a news anchor. Koike kept ducking answering questions from the media on this issue during the election campaign.
People found some of the candidates to be outlandish since the last by-elections for the House of Representatives. During the last by-elections, people across Japan were all staggered by candidates who obstructed other candidates’ campaigns, making a lot of noise very close to them and beating drums while they were delivering speeches on the street, and chasing around them in every spot they arrived at. They ended up being arrested, but they claimed that what they did was within freedom of speech; of course nobody believed that.
Everybody was also dumbfounded at the NHK party, which sold the rights to put up original posters of those who did NOT run for the election on the election campaign boards across Tokyo. The NHK party was originally founded in 2013 to protest the de-facto mandatory viewership levy for the national broadcasting station NHK, but now nobody knows where this party is going, with their party’s name having changed five times in a decade.
Then, why did they commit such actions even though they paid deposit money? One convincing answer is revenue from YouTube. Even they paid as much as 3 million yen, they can be affluent by posting videos on YouTube, which amassed a bunch of viewers.
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