After Covid and Olympics, Tokyo’s first female governor wins third term

BBC:

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

Ms Koike received more than 2.9 million votes – or 42.8% of the votes – in 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 Party (LDP), who backed the 71-year-old in her contest as an independent candidate.

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

The conservative governor successfully guided Japan’s most populus city through the Covid-19 pandemic and its delayed summer Olympics in 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 in 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, or somebody new, in 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 in 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 hard 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 woman aged between 15 and 49 – it is the lowest of any region nationwide.