18:04 JST, June 21, 2024
The Tokyo gubernatorial race officially began Thursday, kicking off a war of words that will last 17 days until the July 7 election.
The main issues in the previous 2020 gubernatorial election were how to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and whether to hold the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo. The various candidates in the current race focused on various issues in their first campaign speeches, reflecting the reality that Tokyo now faces a wide variety of challenges.
Incumbent Governor Yuriko Koike, 71, spent half of her speech looking back on her two terms and eight years of rule so far. Citing the 1,200 days she spent frantically dealing with the pandemic, Koike emphasized, โI have worked closely with experts to protect people’s lives.โ Regarding parenting policy, she emphasized that she had made an important decision to abolish the income limit for parenting allowances.
She devoted much of her speech to the administrative and fiscal reforms she implemented as governor. She boasted that over the course of her eight years, she had secured 810 billion yen in resources through sweeping administrative reforms.
As a sitting governor, her campaign promises covered a wide range of issues facing the Tokyo metropolitan government. She discussed nine areas including: disaster preparedness and prevention; making society more pleasant as lifespan increases; active participation of women in society; digitalization; and promotion of the rural Tama area and remote islands. โThere are a lot of problems ahead of us, but I will face them head on,โ Koike emphasized.
Koike is good at creating simple and easy to understand sentences. For the last election, she chose โThe Defense of the Capitalโ to express her goal of protecting Tokyo’s economy and the lives of its citizens.
‘My specialty’
โHere in Tokyo, where I was born and raised, I challenge the incumbent to a fight.โ
โI, Renho the Challenger, will continue to run until the Tanabata Festival [on July 7].โ
Former House of Councilors member Renho, 56, used the word โchallengeโ twice in her speech to give the impression that she would be taking on the incumbent governor.
Her first campaign speech lasted about nine minutes. โPolitics has deteriorated. I want to become a leader and make a change, starting here, in Tokyo,โ Renho said at the start of her speech, with the recent political funds scandal involving factions of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in mind.
Unlike Koike, Renho made only two policy commitments. One of these was the fight against the declining birth rate, a topic to which she devoted almost half of her speech. She said she would increase the income of young people so they could get married and have children. โRemoving the burdens and concerns of young people is the job of the governor of Tokyo,โ Renho said.
As for the other promise, namely implementing administrative and fiscal reforms, she emphasized that this was her specialty, saying: โAs for whether taxpayers’ money is being used properly, I will put everything into perspective to take.”
‘Age doesn’t matter’
Shinji Ishimaru, 41, former mayor of Akitakata, Hiroshima Prefecture, put his personality and political stance at the forefront of his speech. After making the usual greetings, he began by declaring: โI am 41 years old and have only been a politician for four years.โ He cited the example of Napoleon, who became Emperor of France at the age of 30, and used his youth to appeal to the audience, saying, โThis age is not too young to start something or change something.โ
Former Air Self Defense Force Chief of Staff Toshio Tamogami, 75, said at the start of his speech: โI am much younger than US President Joe Biden and former US President Donald Trump. So there’s no reason I can’t do this job,โ drawing laughter from the audience.
He then took about a minute each to introduce the measures he wanted to take in the areas of disaster preparedness, education and tax cuts. He tactfully concluded his speech by saying: โI am able to get things done thanks to my experience in the Self-Defense Forces.โ
Hiroshi Shiratori, professor of contemporary political analysis at Hosei University, said: โTheir first campaign speeches well reflected the differences in the candidates’ election strategies.โ
However, he added: โThey just said what they wanted to say and did not clearly describe the future state of Tokyo they envisioned. I would like them to explain their positions in concrete terms, so that voters can choose between them.โ