Shintaro Ishihara, famous for his often provocative nationalistic remarks, won a fourth term as Tokyo governor yesterday in local elections dominated by last month’s massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Exit polls and media projections showed the novelist-turned-politician beat 10 other candidates in Tokyo’s election, as workers at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant continued their battle to cool overheating reactors.
Ishihara, who has a penchant for controversy, easily overcame challenges from comedian-turned-provincial governor Hideo Higashikokubaru and 51-year-old restaurant chain founder Miki Watanabe, public broadcaster NHK said.
In an election dominated by the disaster campaigning was muted and analysts said Ishihara’s win never looked in doubt.
“If Tokyo comes to a halt, Japan comes to a halt,” the 78-year-old had told a crowd in the Ginza shopping district on the eve of the vote.
“We can’t leave it to people who don’t seem to know much. I have stood up despite my advanced age,” he said.
“It’s about time to give up luxuries. Let’s save a little and give it to the country’s reconstruction. Otherwise, we will become a subject nation of China,” Ishihara added.
The mayor came under fire last month for describing the March 11 double catastrophe as “divine punishment,” claiming the tsunami had washed away the “greedy mindset” of Japanese people.
He later -retracted the comment and publicly apologized.
Tokyo was one of 12 prefectures where the post of governor was contested yesterday.
Elections were also held for mayors in four major cities, members of 41 prefectural legislatures and 15 legislatures in major municipalities.
Before the natural disasters ravaged Japan’s Pacific coast and battered the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, the elections were seen as an important gauge of public support for Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
Kan, whose approval rating slipped below 20 percent before the disaster, faced a resurgent Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and revolt within his own Democratic Party of Japan.
His center-left party, which ended half a century of almost unbroken conservative rule by the LDP with an electoral landslide in 2009, did not field its own gubernatorial candidates in Tokyo and three other prefectures because of the likelihood of defeat.
The usual confrontational campaigning of a Japanese election was markedly absent, with politicians and media focused on efforts to cool the reactors at Fukushima and on recovery efforts in the northeast.
Ishihara served in the national parliament as an LDP member before taking the helm of the capital city of 13 million people in 1999 as an independent. He was backed at yesterday’s polls by the LDP.
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