What is your actual residence in Osaka? Yuki Ebisawa, Ishin’s candidate for beauty queen, “Alleged career history

Each party is preparing high-profile candidates for the Tokyo electoral district in the summer Upper House election (scheduled to be held on July 10). The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has put up former volleyball player Kentaro Asahi (46) and actress Akiko Ikuina (53), while the First Association has its representative, Chiho Araki (40). In the meantime, on April 13, the Japan Restoration Association decided to nominate Osaka City Councilor Yuki Ebisawa, 48, as its official candidate. A reporter from a national newspaper tells the story.

She is a “former professional snowboarder and was a finalist in the ‘National Beauty Witch Contest’ in ’11.'” She joined the Restoration Politics Academy in 2012 and ran for Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly and other offices, but was unsuccessful.” In April 2007, she ran for the Osaka City Council and was elected for the first time, which she had longed for.”

But she is now under suspicion. It is alleged that she did not actually reside in her constituency when she ran for the Osaka City Council. An official of the Restoration Association of Japan said, “She ran for the Osaka City Council.

At Ebisawa’s runoff press conference on April 13, Nobuyuki Baba, 57, co-chairman of the Osaka Restoration Association, said, ‘Three years ago, when she ran for the Osaka City Council, she told us that she had not lived in Osaka City until two or three days before the announcement date. Three years ago, she decided to run for Osaka City Council two or three days before the election was to be announced,’ Baba said. It may have been an unintentional slip of the tongue, but it revealed the reality of her residence. Even after she was elected, she lived mostly in Tokyo,” she said, “and the cost of the bullet train (to Osaka) runs into the hundreds of thousands of yen a month.

The Public Office Election Law stipulates that a person must “reside in the electoral district for at least three months” in order to be eligible for elective office. In a similar case, former Toda City Councilor Super Crazy, 35, was invalidated for failing to meet this requirement. When we spoke to Ebisawa about this allegation, he responded as follows.

“As of the end of ’18, when it was decided to hold the Osaka City Council election in April ’19, I had moved to my parents’ house in Osaka City by myself, just in case. Therefore, as explained by a party official, she has been living there for about four months, although she made the final decision to run for the city council only a few days ago.”

However, when we spoke to residents around her parents’ house, she said, “This is only my parents’ house. She once came back when she got divorced, but she has been living in Tokyo since she remarried and had a child,” they said.

When we approached Ebisawa’s mother in front of her parents’ house and told her our business, her expression changed and she hurriedly entered the house, repeating, “I have [Ebisawa’s] certificate of residence over here,” “I am busy,” and “I am sorry.

There are other doubts about her background. In her profile on her website, she states that she was the “1997 Japan Snowboard Cross Champion. Snowboard cross” is a competition in which multiple riders ski down the same course at the same time and compete to place first. However, a representative of the Japan Snowboard Association said, “She is indeed registered as a professional.

Although she is registered as a professional, the record she holds as the Japanese champion is not an official record of the association. At that time, only the halfpipe was recognized in snowboarding, and the boardercross (the name of snowboardcross at that time) was not recognized until the ’99-’00 season.

Ebisawa responded, “At the time, (the competition she won) was the only competition for boardercross, so I was working with the understanding that ‘if you win there, you are the Japanese champion,'” he said.

Hiroyuki Kamiwaki, professor of law at Kobe Gakuin University’s Faculty of Law, spoke about the case.

It is not enough to simply transfer the certificate of residence; there must be actual proof of residence. If there was no actual residence, then the election would be ‘null and void,’ just as in the case of Super Crazy-kun.
Regarding the Snowboard Champion, her published career record shows that she wrote ‘professional certification’ and in the next line she wrote ‘Japanese Champion’. This is misleading, as if it were an official record, and may violate Article 235 of the Public Offices Election Law.

Ebisawa later explained the matter on his website, but I wonder if the voters were convinced.

From the May 6-13, 2022 issue of FRIDAY