An Improvised Candidate for the Tokyo Gubernatorial Election
The Tokyo gubernatorial election was over on April
13, 2003. The writer supported
Keiko Higuchi, who was a candidate against
Shintaro Ishihara, in order to stop his past
administration of Tokyo.
Frankly speaking, there was no candidate to choose except her
as the
governor of Tokyo. Keiko Higuchi entered the race for the election just eight
days
before it, although Yoshiharu Wakabayashi, an executive of the Tokyo
Communist Party,
had already entered the race for governor. In the election,
there were just two choices
except Ishihara. Although electors did not know
the minute details, both Higuchi and
Wakabayashi were only improvised
candidates. In particular, talking of Higuchi, she was
too confused to
become aware that her resident registration was in Saitama Prefecture.
As a
result, she could cast no vote for herself in Tokyo. The fact that very few
choices
of the election were improvised was unfortunate to the electors who
seriously considered
this gubernatorial election.
There seem to be many causes of Higuchifs defeat.
Letfs try to verify them in order
to summarize the election. One of the
causes was that the period when she stood as a
candidate was too short to be
fully prepared. Higuchi said in a newspaper interview after
the election, gI
am not sorry for the election because I predicted a bad result.h How
unhappy
it was that the electors should support a candidate who had already expected her
defeat before a fight against Ishihara. Higuchi is seventy years old, and
Ishihara is the same
age as Higuchi. If it were possible, much younger
candidates should have been put up for
the election. For example, a
candidate such as Shigefumi Matsuzawa, who is a 45-year-old
member of the
Diet belonging to the Democratic Party of Japan and who won the
Kanagawa
gubernatorial election, should have appeared in the Tokyo gubernatorial
election.
However, DPJ had a problem; that is, Naoto Kan, the DPJ president,
declared himself in
favor of Keiko Higuchi, but members of the Metropolitan
Assembly of DPJ opposed him,
and got out of step. Besides, Higuchifs appeal
to the public had two problems. One of them
was that Higuchifs camp, most of
whom were volunteers, were unable to build up a closer
connection with
political parties: the DPL and the SDP (the Social Democratic Party).
Anyway, Higuchifs camp could not make use of the mass media successfully,
although
Ishihara made most use of it.
Furthermore, another cause of Higuchifs defeat was her way to dispute with
Ishihara
about policies. Higuchi should have been set for a head-on
confrontation about it. A copy,
gGunjin Jisan to Heiwa Boke Basanh
(Ishihara, a military old man and Higuchi, an old
woman who has become
feebleminded with peace), was not enough to appeal her policy
to the
citizens of Tokyo. As Ishiharafs opinions were usually simple, Higuchi should
have
adopted a choice-system between two things. Which do you prefer, peace
or war, welfare
or rounding off fractions, Tokyo administration or a
national one, bottom-up or top-down,
steady politics or unstable ones,
womanly meticulous attention or manly rough handling, the
stop of the
bank-tax suit or its continuation, etc? If these methods of arguments succeed in
convincing voters, the result of victory or defeat will be self-evident.
Then, a different cause of her defeat was
that Higuchi did not notice citizens of Tokyo
seeking gstrong political
leadership.h She should have criticized Ishihara in plain words
saying that
his leadership was very dangerous, judging from his correspondence to North
Korea, the Self-Defense Forces and non-Japanese people. The more detailed
Higuchifs
dispute against Ishihara becomes, the larger his political tears
would be.
However, Ishihara won an
overwhelming victory over Higuchi by winning 3,087,190
votes. Many citizens
of Tokyo had no interest in this gubernatorial election. The voting rate
was
44.9%, the second worst record. The writer has some misgivings about peoplefs
political indifference as well as Higuchifs failure. American people made
their way to the
war in Iraq by choosing U. S. President George W. Bush
instead of Mr. Al Gore. The
voting was extremely close, just 300 votes. The
writer hopes that the result of this Tokyo
gubernatorial election will not
carry dark clouds to Tokyo like to the U.S.A.