The Tokyo gubernatorial election, held July 31 amid significant public attention, ended in a landslide victory for Yuriko Koike, making her the first female governor of Japan's capital. The result clearly demonstrated a desire for someone clean and fresh to lead the capital of 13.6 million people with an annual budget of ¥13 trillion, bigger than those of medium-size countries. Koike's two immediate predecessors had resigned in disgrace over money-related scandals.
Reflecting the strong public interest in the election, voter turnout was 59.7 percent, the second-highest among all gubernatorial elections held in the Heisei Era (since 1989).
The result was also a crushing defeat for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which refused to endorse Koike, a member of the LDP since 2002, and instead backed Hiroya Masuda, a former internal affairs minister and governor of Iwate Prefecture. Koike had no choice but to run as an independent, and with the 2.9 million votes she received handsomely defeated the LDP's candidate as well as another leading contender Shuntaro Torigoe, who was backed by a coalition of opposition parties.