By SATOSHI JUYANAGI/ Staff Writer
December 8, 2023 at 08:00 JST
Nagasaki Governor Kengo Oishi at the prefectural government’s office on Nov. 20 (Photo by Satoshi Juyanagi)
NAGASAKI--Nagasaki Governor Kengo Oishi skipped a national conference of his peers to watch an international soccer match in Osaka and meet Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo.
The National Governors’ Association said the leaders of Gunma Prefecture and Nagasaki Prefecture were absent from its July 25-26 meeting in Yamanashi Prefecture.
Nagasaki Prefecture sent Deputy Governor Yuko Baba to the conference in Oishi’s place.
The Nagasaki prefectural government’s secretarial section said Oishi attended a run-up event in Yamanashi Prefecture on July 24 but could not attend the actual event because of “official duties.”
Those duties apparently stem from a trip to Portugal in June by Oishi and prefectural assembly speaker Tatsuya Tokunaga. While in the European country, they exchanged a memorandum with the Portuguese government to bolster cooperation and friendship in various fields, including culture, sports, tourism and industry.
At the July conference, the National Governors’ Association addressed wider issues. It adopted a “Yamanashi statement” to promote the mobilization of local power to tackle such problems as Japan’s dwindling birthrate, the shrinking population and global warming.
On July 25, the first day of the governors’ conference, Oishi was in Tokyo visiting the Finance Ministry and the land ministry to request road maintenance budget allocations.
That afternoon, he traveled to Osaka and watched a soccer friendly at Yanmar Stadium Nagai between Saudi Arabia’s Al Nassr FC, for which Ronaldo plays, and Paris Saint-Germain.
The following day, Oishi toured businesses in Osaka Prefecture for promotional purposes. In the evening, he attended an event organized by a private company that has partnered with Ronaldo.
The company arranged talks between Oishi and Ronaldo at the event. The governor reportedly asked the Portuguese forward to “extend a helping hand to the publicity of Nagasaki Prefecture.”
The prefectural government will cover all of the governor’s traveling and lodging expenses related to his official duties.
The governor bought the ticket for the soccer match with his own money because he wanted to check Ronaldo’s “performance firsthand before seeing and talking with him,” the secretarial section said.
Ronaldo has yet to respond to Oishi’s publicity request, according to the section.
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