Koike vs. Renho, but also Hezuma, Kurokawa, NHK party… The Tokyo gubernatorial election is turning into an entertainment event.

I am ashamed to be a resident of Tokyo. ……

A woman in her thirties living in Tokyo said so.

The Tokyo gubernatorial election (to be held on June 20, with the election to be held on July 7) is a crucial election that will affect Japan.

According to preliminary polls, it appears to be a runoff between Governor Yuriko Koike, who finally announced her candidacy on June 12, and Renho, who left the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to run for governor. Other celebrities who have announced their candidacies include Shinji Ishimaru, former mayor of Aki Takata City in Hiroshima Prefecture, TV personality Kuniaki Shimizu, and Toshio Tamogami, former chief of staff of the Air Self-Defense Force, but they are considered runners-up.

The problem is with the other so-called “bubble candidates. At this point, more than 40 people have announced their candidacies, making for a chaotic situation.

Atsuhiko Kurokawa, the leader of the “Tsubasa Party” who was arrested for obstructing other parties in the last by-election, was arrested again on July 7 on a different charge, making it impossible for him to breathe the “open air” during the gubernatorial election, but he still plans to run.

Hezumaryu, the original “annoying YouTuber,” also announced his candidacy early on.

He held a press conference at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building on April 6, and even had a “Downtown” Matsumoto Hitoshi look-alike in attendance, turning the event into a theater. In response to a question about his evaluation of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government

I’m sorry, I haven’t studied enough. I don’t understand.

I don’t know,” he said.

Not only in the Tokyo gubernatorial election, elections are becoming more and more entertaining in districts where there is a high level of interest. Anyone who pays a deposit of 3 million yen has the right to run for office. Since the media is required to be impartial, it is necessary to cover even such bubbly candidates, even if only for a short time. I have the impression that more and more candidates are coming out to make their mark,” said a reporter from the society section of a national newspaper.

The best example of this is the recent Tokyo gubernatorial election. The woman in the opening paragraph was told by a friend from another prefecture

Tokyo is in trouble.

She is embarrassed that her friends in other prefectures are making fun of her.

TV station employees are also fed up with the current situation.

Candidates may be allowed to make political interview broadcasts or, with a record number of candidates, may be required to do so for a longer period of time.

The rule for political interview broadcasts is that they must be no longer than 5 minutes and 30 seconds per candidate, and there is a limit of 30 seconds for the candidate’s biography broadcast, which introduces the candidate’s background. This means a total of 500 minutes for 40 candidates, or a total of 8 hours and 20 minutes.

If all 28 candidates who have received their candidacy documents but have not yet completed the preliminary screening were to run, the total running time would be more than 10 hours, according to an NHK official.

A NHK official said, “Up to now, we have been using the rerun slot for the political interview broadcasts, but that will not be enough. We are now struggling to figure out how to organize them.

In addition to NHK, TOKYO MX broadcasts political opinion broadcasts. TBS Radio will broadcast it. It is truly a “poor pick.

Some are promoting the commercialization of the Tokyo gubernatorial election.

At a press conference in April, Takashi Tachibana of the political group “Party to Protect the People from NHK” declared that they would field a large number of candidates for the Tokyo gubernatorial election and hijack election poster boards. Not only that, he also proposed a “business” in which those who donate to the organization could select one of the 14,000 election poster boards in Tokyo and put up a poster of their own creation.

The donation amount is 5,000 yen or more per unit, and after June, 10,000 yen or more per unit.

Even if we pay the deposit (3 million yen) for 24 candidates from the NHK party, the profit will be close to 70 million yen. I was amazed that they came up with this method of considering the bulletin board as an advertising space.

Although party leader Tachibana insists that it is not buying and selling and that he is doing it in accordance with democracy, there is no doubt that it will be controversial in the future,” said a source in the political world.

On the Internet, some people are saying that “some kind of new rules need to be made” as the old-style legislation cannot keep up with the new-style elections.

The Tokyo gubernatorial election is not likely to end with just “Yuriko Koike vs. Renho. What kind of chaotic developments await us?