In the Yamaguchi gubernatorial election held Sunday, Mr. Shigetaro Yamamoto, a former bureaucrat of the infrastructure and transport ministry supported by the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, was elected the new governor, beating three other candidates.
Still, attention should be paid to the fact that Mr. Tetsunari Iida, a former nuclear engineer known as "Mr. Green Energy," put up a good fight. Although he failed to grab the governorship, the election results will make the established major parties realize that they will not be able to ignore the will of the many people calling for an end to Japan's reliance on nuclear power generation.
Mr. Iida, head of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, a nongovernmental organization, announced his candidacy slightly more than a month before the election. He called for a complete revocation of Chugoku Electric Power Co.'s plan to construct a nuclear power plant on Nagashima Island in Kaminoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, a town comprising a peninsula and islands in the western part of the Inland Sea. Until June, he had been special adviser for the Osaka prefectural and city governments, the political turf of Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto.