Record 6 Women Secure City Mayoralty in Japan Unified Local Polls

Tokyo, April 21 (Jiji Press)--A record six women have secured city mayoralty in quadrennial unified local elections in Japan. On Sunday, the second and final round of 2019 unified polls took place, They were mayoral elections in 59 cities, including Mito, Nagasaki and Oita, all prefectural capitals, elections to pick mayors of 11 of the 23 special wards in Tokyo, mayoral elections in 66 towns and villages, and municipal assembly elections in 283 cities, 20 Tokyo wards, and 282 towns and villages. Of the six women, two incumbents--Yukari Kaneko, 60, mayor of the city of Suwa in the central prefecture of Nagano, and Noriko Suematsu, 48, mayor of the city of Suzuka in Mie Prefecture, also central Japan--secured their second and third term, respectively, without vote on April 14, when the elections were announced, as no other candidates ran in the races. The other four women won mayoralty in elections on Sunday. Of them, Akemi Fujita, 48, won her first term in the poll in the city of Kamo in the central prefecture of Niigata. Ritsuko Fujii, 65, also secured her first term, as mayor of the city of Shunan in Yamaguchi Prefecture, western Japan. Noriko Kawai, 63, mayor of the city of Kizugawa in the western prefecture of Kyoto, won her fourth term. Two women competed in the election in the city of Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture, western Japan. The winner was Mai Ito, 49, who secured her first term. In the previous unified local elections in 2015, four women, then a record high, won city mayoralty. In the elections in the three prefectural capitals, Kiichiro Sato, 61, mayor of Oita, southwestern Japan, Yasushi Takahashi, 53, mayor of Mito, eastern Japan, and Tomihisa Taue, 62, mayor of Nagasaki, southwestern Japan, won their second, third and fourth term, respectively. Taue beat three rivals. He drew broad-based support for his campaign pledge to promote the construction of facilities for international conferences and exhibitions in Nagasaki. Sato and Takahashi both defeated Japanese Communist Party-linked candidates. Voter turnout came to 45.10 pct in the Mito election, 47.33 pct in the Nagasaki poll and 27.72 pct in the Oita election. Osaka Ishin no Kai, a regional political party in the western prefecture of Osaka, fielded candidates in the mayoral elections in three cities in the prefecture, and won two of them, in the cities of Ikeda and Yao. Of the mayoral elections in Tokyo, Kita Ward Mayor Yosota Hanakawa, 84, won his fifth term. He is the oldest of all incumbent city and ward mayors in Japan. Toshima Ward Mayor Yukio Takano, 81, secured his sixth term. Vote counting will be conducted on Monday for some mayoral and assembly elections in Tokyo. In the second round, mayors of 27 cities, including Tsu and Takamatsu, both prefectural capitals, and 55 towns and villages, and members of the municipal assemblies in 104 cities, towns and villages were elected uncontested. In the first round on April 7, gubernatorial elections were held in 11 prefectures, mayoral elections in six ordinance-designated major cities, and assembly elections in 41 prefectures and 17 ordinance-designated cities. Osaka Ishin won the Osaka gubernatorial election and the mayoral election in the city of Osaka. END