After incumbent Yuriko Koike cruised to victory in the Tokyo gubernatorial election on July 5, the mainstream media concluded that hers was a passive campaign. Thanks to Koike's frequent emergency news conferences related to the COVID-19 crisis in the weeks leading up to the election, she didn't need to do much. The press events not only provided her with visibility, but showed her performing her duties proactively. The one development that might have capsized this plan — an unflattering biography of Koike published just as the campaign was gearing up — turned out to be a nonstarter because the mainstream press, at least, rarely mentioned it, which means Koike, despite saying she was "prepared to be a punching bag,” was never directly confronted with some of the issues brought up by the book’s author, Taeko Ishii.

Asked her opinion of the results during a July 10 TBS radio interview, Ishii said she had expected Koike to win but, unlike the mainstream media, didn't find the victory to be "overwhelming." Maybe it was in terms of numbers, but not in terms of passion.

When public broadcaster NHK surveyed voters about why they chose Koike, the most cited reason was that they preferred her to the other candidates. Although news outlets made much about the candidates' feelings regarding the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics — several pledged to cancel it — the issue seemed to figure low on the public's priorities, with only 6 percent telling NHK they voted for Koike because of her approach to the games. In an article posted June 30 on Harbor Business Online, the writer analyzed Koike's performance during a candidates’ forum carried out online, and concluded that 48 percent of the governor's responses were irrelevant to the question asked, while another 25 percent were either repetitious or just statements of already well-known information.