OSAKA –

On June 7, the day after the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly election saw voters give opponents of the bilateral relocation plan for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma a bigger majority, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet posted a video online.

The 30-second clip shows Abe and his execs, including minister in charge of Okinawa affairs Aiko Shimajiri, wearing colorful traditional Okinawan shirts and mugging it up for the cameras while sanshin (Okinawan banjo) music plays in the background.

Shimajiri, a Liberal Democratic Party member of the Upper House representing Okinawa, is up for re-election next month.

"These shirts are quite cool and lighten your feelings," Abe said in the video.

The video said the idea to wear the shirts was originally Shimajiri's. It was their public response to the previous day's results, in which the Okinawa chapter of the LDP, which Shimajiri heads, failed to overcome Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga's allies and their opposition to the base relocation plan, which would see the facility moved northward from Ginowan to Nago.

As the July 10 Upper House election approaches, Shimajiri finds herself in an emotional campaign that could go down to the wire.

The murder last month of 20-year-old Rina Shimabukuro, allegedly by Kenneth Franklin Shinzato, an American civilian worker at U.S. Kadena Air Base, reignited anger and anti-base sentiment that gave Onaga's allies a larger margin in the prefectural assembly.

A June 19 rally that organizers claimed drew around 65,000 people called for the marines to leave Okinawa and for the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement to be revised to give Japan more authority over crimes allegedly committed by U.S. military-related personnel.

Shimajiri herself called for revising the SOFA after Shimabukuro's murder. But neither she nor the LDP's coalition partner, Komeito, attended the rally.

Now Shimajiri, 51, finds herself seeking re-election against former Ginowan Mayor Yoichi Iha, 64, and dark horse candidate Tatsuro Kinjo, 52, who is backed by the Happiness Realization Party. The unpopular Futenma base is in crowded Ginowan.

But the contest is effectively just another proxy battle between Abe and Onaga. Shimajiri has the support of the ruling LDP and Komeito, while Iha is backed by Onaga and his "all Okinawa" movement, a mixture of traditional opposition parties, LDP supporters who oppose construction of the Futenma replacement airstrip in Henoko, and independent voters.

"This election is the start toward the day when we can walk around a peaceful Okinawa with no bases," Iha told supporters at the campaign's kickoff.

"Anger in Okinawa over the murder of Shimabukuro is huge and Shimajiri is quite vulnerable, despite Shimajiri's call to revise SOFA, which is something most Okinawans, regardless of their political leanings, support," said Satoshi Taira, a major Onaga supporter.

One of the keys to the election will be the turnout rate for 18- and 19-year-old Okinawans, who will be eligible to vote for the first time. According to the prefecture, the lowering of the voting age from 20 to 18 has added another 33,000 potential voters to this election.

Shimajiri and Iha supporters are both hopeful their candidates will attract a good portion of the young voters.

LDP officials in Okinawa, however, admit that Shimajiri faces a tough campaign. In the 2010 Upper House election, she was backed by a more united local LDP chapter that, at the time, included Gov. Onaga.

She won with 259,000 votes — roughly 44,000 more than her closest rival. But the anti-base opposition was fragmented by three candidates, including Kinjo. Together, however, they collected nearly 24,000 votes more than Shimajiri with a turnout rate of just over 52 percent.

Shimajiri's strategy this time appears to be to remind voters that she's trying to get the Futenma base closed as quickly as possible, and to emphasize her efforts as Okinawa minister to strengthen the prefecture's economy.

"I'll press down on the accelerator and strengthen Okinawa's economy. I want you to leave it to me to create a bright future for Okinawa," she said Wednesday, when the campaign kicked off.

Shimajiri actually called for Futenma's operations to be removed from Okinawa during the 2010 campaign. But in late 2013, just before then-Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima reversed his own opposition to the Henoko plan and gave the green light to its construction, she and other Okinawa LDP members met with then-LDP Secretary-General Shigeru Ishiba.

Afterward, they announced they were no longer going to oppose the Henoko airstrip's construction, and Shimajiri now strongly backs building the facility, despite local Okinawan media polls showing strong opposition to the plan.