The race to become Tokyo’s next governor has kicked off, with two women in the lead to run the world’s most populous city – a rarity in a country where comparatively few women occupy high political office.
Millions of voters in Tokyo will elect their governor early next month. The successful candidate’s most urgent job has a more familiar ring, however: to address the capital’s accelerating demographic crisis.
The contest between incumbent Yuriko Koike and Renho Murata – who is commonly known by her given name – is being seen as a proxy war between the governing Liberal Democratic party [LDP], which is backing Koike, and the main opposition Constitutional Democratic party [CDP], which is supporting Renho.
Koike, a conservative who guided the city through the Covid-19 pandemic and the summer Olympics in 2021, is seeking a third term with promises to focus on family-friendly measures. The former defence and environment minister became Tokyo’s first female governor in 2016.
Her main challenger is the centre-left Renho, a 56-year-old former swimsuit model who became the first female leader of Japan’s largest opposition party in 2016. She left the CDP to run as an independent, but has the support of her former party and, controversially, the Japanese Communist party [JCP].
Koike, 71, was a TV news anchor before she entered politics, winning a seat in the lower house of parliament for the first time in 1993. Renho, too, was a familiar face on TV news programmes before she entered politics as a member of the upper house in 2004.
Japan’s low birthrate has quickly emerged as the key issue in the 7 July vote, which will see almost 50 candidates from across the political spectrum competing to lead a megalopolis of 14.1 million people and a GDP that rivals that of the Netherlands.
Nationwide, the fertility rate – or the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime – stands at 1.2, well below the 2.07 needed to keep the population stable. The situation in Tokyo is even more urgent: at 0.99, its birthrate is the lowest among Japan’s 47 prefectures.
“Candidates must offer a blueprint for managing the unprecedented demographic challenges of an ageing and shrinking population in this megacity,” the Asahi Shimbun said in an editorial.
The frontrunners have clashed over their plans to lift the birthrate, with Koike promising lower rents for families and free daycare for married couples’ first children.
Renho said she would pressure companies to improve their employees’ work-life balance. “I want to make Tokyo a city where young people, regardless of their circumstances, can study, work, get married and have children, and have all these life choices” she said during a recent campaign speech, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.
Both candidates have battled minor scandals. Koike has again been forced to deny allegations, first levelled at her four years ago, that she falsely claimed she had graduated from Cairo University in 1976 with a degree in sociology. The popularity of her backers, the LDP, has also been badly damaged by a funding scandal.
Renho – who was born to a Japanese mother and Taiwanese father – sparked a minor controversy when she became opposition leader in 2016 by revealing she still held dual Japanese and Taiwanese nationality, despite insisting earlier that she had become a naturalised Japanese citizen in her teens.
Japanese law requires people with dual nationality to choose one or the other before they turn 22. Renho later renounced her Taiwanese citizenship.
