Using the 2017 Sendai mayoral election and Ibaraki gubernatorial race as examples, this essay criticizes biased polling by Asahi Shimbun and the influence of media-dependent middle-aged voters, arguing for a broader national perspective in Japanese political decision-making.

It was an article from which one could even infer that the questions had been framed in a way designed to lead respondents toward a predetermined conclusion.
2017-08-25
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Moreover, the Asahi Shimbun ran a major feature spanning its front and second pages the day before yesterday.
It was for the purpose of bringing down the Abe administration.
In order to support the ruling party’s opposing candidate, it suddenly agitated with large headlines proclaiming polling results opposing the restart of nuclear power plants.
This was an extremely arbitrary opinion poll conducted by the Asahi Shimbun.
It was an article from which one could even read that the questions had been framed to lead toward the desired conclusion.
I spent the Sendai mayoral election entirely unrelated to it.
Although I no longer live there, I have paid an amount of taxes that ordinary people cannot.
For the first time in my life, I felt disillusioned with the citizens of Sendai over that election result.
However, upon careful investigation, I learned that at the candidate selection stage, the ruling party had already effectively lost.
In comparison with the candidates of the Democratic Party and others, it was in fact equivalent to a victory for the ruling party.
Considering the backgrounds of both candidates, a defeat by a small margin of votes was, in reality, a victory.
I further analyzed the voting results.
Young people had overwhelmingly voted for the ruling party’s candidate.
Those who enabled the Democratic Party candidate to win were the middle-aged and elderly who subscribe to the Asahi Shimbun and watch only their television networks’ news programs and NHK.
It was the middle-aged and elderly who do not read the monthly magazines that every Japanese citizen should read and who are completely unaware that the internet is the greatest library in human history who voted for the winner.
Therefore, I want readers in Ibaraki Prefecture to spread this chapter to as many people as possible.
I especially want them to tell the middle-aged and elderly.
In the Ibaraki gubernatorial election this time, fortunately, in candidate selection the ruling party has not made the same mistake as in the Sendai mayoral election.
The incumbent governor Masaru Hashimoto (71), aiming for a seventh term and effectively turning anti-Abe, and Kazuhiko Oigawa (53) are, so to speak, senior and junior.
Both are graduates of Mito First High School and the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law.
If so, then it comes down to this.
Voting for Masaru Hashimoto, who seeks a seventh term and to shake the foundation of the Abe administration, is no different from casting a vote for China or the Korean Peninsula.
It is entirely equivalent to showing China an opening for landing on the Senkaku Islands and saying, “Please, go ahead and land.”
It is to participate in the “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies” by which Moon Jae-in, a fundamentally South-Korean-style leftist, seeks once again to tarnish the honor and credibility of Japan and the Japanese people in the international community through fabrications such as forced labor conscription following the comfort women issue.
In other words, it is to tarnish in the international community the honor and credibility of the soldiers who fought and died for Japan in the century of war, or barely survived, and of the Japanese people of that time and of us today.
It is nothing other than lending a hand to the “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies” that once again seek to extort large sums of our tax money.
That is the realistic meaning of voting for Mr. Hashimoto, who seeks a seventh term.
There is no difference at all in the abilities of the two.
Given the youth of 53, practical experience, and experience in real society, it is only natural that one should vote for Kazuhiko Oigawa.