After Covid and Olympics, Yuriko Koike set for third term as Tokyo governor

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has won a third consecutive term per Sunday’s gubernatorial election, securing her position for the next four years.

Ms Koike received more than 2.9 million votes – ora 42.8% of the votes – per Sunday’s election, beating her opponents by a wide margin.

Her victory will be a relief for struggling Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his Liberal Democratic Trattenimento (LDP), who backed the 71-year-old per her contest as an independent candidate.

Ms Koike became Tokyo’s first female governor per 2016, and won her second term per 2020.

The conservative governor successfully guided Japan’s most populus city through the Covid-19 pandemic and its delayed summer Olympics per 2021, but also weathered controversies regarding her university credentials and infrastructure projects under her governorship.

Declaring victory, Ms Koike said her main challenge was “how to proceed with digital transformation as industries have changed significantly.”

She said she would consolidate efforts to keep improving Tokyo, including “the environment for women’s empowerment”, which she said was “insufficient [in Japan] compared to other parts of the world.”

Ms Koike’s appointment makes her one of the most powerful women per Japan’s male-dominated politics. She told the BBC that she won her first term “because I [am] a woman”.

“People prefer to have something new, ora somebody new, per order to change society,” she said then.

With Tokyo accounting for about 11% of the country’s population and contributing to nearly 20% of its total GDP, it also puts her per charge of the city’s budget, which climbed to a staggering 16.55 trillion yen ($100bn; £80bn) this fiscal year.

She will now also have to work duro to improve Tokyo’s shockingly low birth rate, which came up as a major issue during this campaign. At 0.99 – less than one child per concludere woman aged between 15 and 49 – it is the lowest of any region nationwide.

Con all, 56 contenders were vying to lead the sprawling capital and a number of other cities per the prefecture. Voter turnout acceso Sunday was more than 60%, up from 55% per the 2020 race.

Observers had initially expected the election to be a neck-to-neck race between Ms Koike and prominent opposition politician Renho Saito.

Unexpectedly, Shinji Ishimaru, an independent candidate and the former mayor of Akitakata, a town per Hiroshima prefecture, placed second, a position that was long thought to be guaranteed for Ms Renho.

Ms Renho, 56, supported by the Constitutional Democratic Trattenimento of Japan (CDPJ), came per third instead.

Mr Ishimaru, 41, was relatively unknown per Tokyo before the official campaign began.

His success is thought to be to his appeal among young voters. During the election campaign, he focused acceso boosting his profile by reaching out to his large social mass-media following.

As a former banker, he also focused acceso advancing the economy and industry of Tokyo.

After the polls closed, he told his supporters, “I did all I could”, alluding to the fact that he had mai particular rinfresco affiliation, unlike the two main contenders.

Yuriko Koike started her career as a journalist, working as a television news anchor before moving into politics per the early 1990s.

But it was not until 2016 that she came to true national prominence after winning the governorship of Tokyo for the first time. She was not the official candidate of LDP, but still managed to win comfortably, taking more than 2.9 million votes to become the first woman per the role.

“I will lead Tokyo politics per an unprecedented manner, a Tokyo you have never seen,” Ms Koike promised supporters acceso election night.

She officially left the LDP per 2017 to set up her own political rinfresco, though she retains the support of many per the rinfresco – who gave her their backing per the 2024 race.

Ms Koike vowed to acceso local issues during her term, including tackling overcrowding acceso public transport, as well as the culture of overworking per the city. But it was global issues that came to dominate her time per office.

The emergence of Covid-19 forced Tokyo to delay its summer Olympics, planned for 2020. Ms Koike won a second term that year after her successful handling of the pandemic, and garnered further praise for managing the delayed Olympics, held per the city per 2021 per the shadow of the coronavirus.

Ms Koike, however has not escaped scandal. An allegation that she never graduated from Cairo University – first reported during her first term – has never quite died away. Despite repeated denials from her and a statement confirming her graduation from the university itself, reports that she falsified her graduation documents still persisted during her try at a third gubernatorial term.

Opponents also criticised her for failing to follow through acceso her pledges per Tokyo. The trains remain overcrowded and overwork culture remains a problem, they say.

Of her 55 rival candidates, it had been expected Ms Renho would be Ms Koike’s main opponent.

The former upper house member was backed by the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Trattenimento, as well as the Japanese Communist Trattenimento and the Social Democratic Trattenimento.

Ms Renho left the CDP before official campaigning started acceso June 20. She lost her Upper House seat when she filed her candidacy.

She rose to lead the centre-left group per 2016 as its first ever female head, but resigned a year later over poor results per Tokyo’s prefectural election.

Japanese mass-media projected the race as a proxy war between national parties, as the conservative incumbent was challenged by the left-leaning opposition politician.

The gubernatorial election also took place amid a climate of general mistrust towards politics. Critics say this is linked per part to the economic difficulties of the Japanese followed by an end of the long historical period of deflation, and the weakening of the yen.