Photo/Illutration A campaign billboard shows the only candidate in the mayoral election in Tokyo’s Chuo Ward on April 17. (Yuka Honda)

The second half of unified local elections kicked off on April 16, and the races for nearly 30 percent of mayoral posts and around 5 percent of city assemblies have already been decided.

Ballots will be cast and counted on April 23, but in some elections, the votes will be tallied on April 24.

In 25, or 28.4 percent, of the 88 mayoral elections and 14, or 4.8 percent, of the 294 city assembly elections, the winners have been decided because they ran unopposed.

The uncontested ratio for the previous mayoral races in these cities was 31.4 percent in 2019 and 30.3 percent in 2015.

The latest figure may be lower, but it still shows that many places around Japan lack people who want to lead their municipalities.

In the mayoral elections in five prefectural capitals, only Oita saw one candidate for the first time in 72 years.

Shinya Adachi, 65, an independent, was elected Oita mayor for the first time.

He was backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Democratic Party for the People.

Adachi was an Upper House member of the DPP, but he left the party after losing his Diet seat in July election.

Analysts said Adachi obviously benefited from the support of both ruling and opposition parties after they failed to field their own candidates.

The parties had been busy with other elections in Oita Prefecture, including the races for governor and the prefectural assembly, as well as an Upper House by-election.

Other cities where mayors were elected unopposed included Hokkaido’s Chitose, Gunma Prefecture’s Takasaki, Aichi Prefecture’s Nisshin, and Osaka Prefecture’s Tondabayashi.

For the city assembly elections, 237 members were elected unopposed in 14 cities.

Five of the cities--Muroran, Yubari, Nayoro, Noboribetsu, and Hokuto--are in Hokkaido. The number of assembly seats in the five cities is 20, 8, 16, 19 and 20, respectively.

The other nine cities are: Nagai in Yamagata Prefecture (with 16 city assembly seats); Katsuura in Chiba Prefecture (15); Kamo in Niigata Prefecture (15); Obama in Fukui Prefecture (17); Tsuru in Yamanashi Prefecture (16); Okaya in Nagano Prefecture (18); Nakatsugawa in Gifu Prefecture (21); Kitsuki in Oita Prefecture (18); and Nichinan in Miyazaki Prefecture (19).

Also on April 16, campaigns officially started for 11 mayoral elections and 21 assembly elections in eastern Tokyo’s 23 “special wards.”

Taito Yamamoto, 74, an incumbent independent backed by the LDP and Komeito, won the Chuo Ward mayoral race unchallenged.

It was the ward’s first uncontested mayoral race in 44 years, and the first for any Tokyo ward in 29 years. The last time that happened was in Nakano Ward in 1994.

In Okaya in Nagano Prefecture, all candidates for city assembly seats were elected unopposed on April 16.

The number of available assembly seats, 18, exceeded the number of candidates, 17, for the first time since the city was created in 1936.

According to the internal affairs ministry, in the previous unified local elections in 2019, no city had fewer candidates than assembly seats up for grabs.

However, the number of candidates was lower than the number of assembly seats in eight towns and villages in the 2019 elections, according to the ministry.

The 17 Okaya city assembly members elected on April 16 were nine incumbents, seven new faces, and one former city assembly member.

Three of them are from the Japanese Communist Party, two from Komeito, one from Sanseito (Political participation party), and the rest are independents.

Another election to fill the vacant seat is expected to coincide with the city’s mayoral election in September.

(This article was written by Yuki Nikaido, Masao Hayashi and Takashi Takizawa.)

Related News