Tokyo held a gubernatorial election on April 10, 2011 as part of the 17th unified local elections. There were eleven candidates. The election occurred in the wake of the

2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami Eleven or 11 may refer to: *11 (number), the natural number following 10 and preceding 12 * one of the years 11 BC, AD 11, 1911, 2011, or any year ending in 11 Literature * ''Eleven'' (novel), a 2006 novel by British author David Llewellyn *''El ...

and

Fukushima nuclear disaster The was a nuclear accident in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan. The proximate cause of the disaster was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which occurred on the afternoon of 11 March 2011 and ...

, which occurred on the first day of the campaign. Incumbent governor

Shintaro Ishihara was a Japanese politician and writer who was Governor of Tokyo from 1999 to 2012. Being the former leader of the radical right Japan Restoration Party, he was one of the most prominent ultranationalists in modern Japanese politics. An ultranat ...

entered the race after initially indicating that he would retire, with a platform of supporting the tsunami disaster areas and bidding for the

2020 Summer Olympics The , officially the and also known as , was an international multi-sport event held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some preliminary events that began on 21 July. Tokyo was selected as the host city during the ...

Kanagawa is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the List of Japanese prefectures by population, second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-dens ...

governor

Shigefumi Matsuzawa is a Japanese politician and a current member of the House of Councillors for the Kanagawa at-large district in the Diet of Japan. A native of Kawasaki, Kanagawa and graduate of Keio University with a bachelor's degree in Political Science, h ...

, who had been a prominent candidate at the start of the campaign, left the race on March 15 and threw his support behind Ishihara, arguing that both men needed to stay with their governments through the wake of the disasters. Ishihara remained in the lead in polls through voting day, despite a prominent gaffe in which he characterized the disasters as "divine punishment" for "egoism" in Japanese society. His victory was owed in large part to his crisis management presence following the disasters, such as drinking Tokyo tap water on camera in order to demonstrate that it was safe from radiation.

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External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tokyo Gubernatorial Election, 2011 2011 elections in Japan Shintaro Ishihara

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

April 2011 events in Japan 2011 in Tokyo