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  3. Spring in Japan this year heralds a rash of more than 1,000 local elections across the country: on April 8th some 13 out of Japa

Spring in Japan this year heralds a rash of more than 1,000 local elections across the country: on April 8th some 13 out of Japa

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问题     Spring in Japan this year heralds a rash of more than 1,000 local elections across the country: on April 8th some 13 out of Japan’s 47 prefectures hold gubernatorial elections, including Tokyo, Hokkaido in the north and Fukuoka in the south. Nearly every prefecture elects a new assembly on the same day. On April 22nd mayoral and municipal-assembly elections take place, along with two closely watched by-elections for the House of Councilors, the upper house of the Diet (national parliament). The results will give a clue about the prospects for the country’s governing coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and New Komeito when they attempt to keep their majority in crucial upper-house elections in July. A strengthened majority then would be a welcome boost for Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister who has seen his popularity slump since he came to office six months ago. Defeat would put Mr. Abe’s future in question.
    The governor’s race in Tokyo has a motley collection of candidates that include an inventor who has photographed and analysed every meal he has eaten for the past 35 years. It is seen as the bellwether election. Officially, the LDP does not endorse the two-term incumbent, Shintaro Ishihara. Nor does the opposition Democratic Party of Japan openly back his main challenger, Shiro Asano, a former governor of Miyagi prefecture. Tokyo has many independent-minded voters, and the candidates think that party ties put them off. Yet both parties are putting their organisations behind their respective men. Defeat for Mr. Ishihara would be a blow for Mr. Abe.
    Mr. Ishihara, at 74, has offended plenty of constituencies in his long political career. The affronted include: foreigners of every stripe; women beyond child-bearing age, who he says are a drain on the country; schoolteachers who resent his insistence on flag-raising ceremonies each morning; and urban crows whose extermination he ordered after being pecked by one. Yet plenty of Tokyo folk take his straight-talking style as a mark of integrity, even if his clean reputation has recently been tainted by an expenses scandal and whiffs of nepotism.
    The governor’s latest obsession is perhaps his most divisive. He passionately wants to bring the Olympic games back to Tokyo in 2016, arguing that they will do wonders for the city’s infrastructure, prosperity and international reputation. Opponents say that Tokyo, whose 1964 Olympics represented a coming-out party for Japan after the devastation of war, no longer has anything to prove with such a costly proposition. Health care, pensions and schooling are the pressing issues. Most contenders for the governorship, including Mr. Asano, oppose the Olympics bid.
    Caught up in this debate is the future of the Tsukiji fish market, the world’s biggest, with 2,000 tonnes of seafood passing through each day. It is hugely popular with overseas and Japanese visitors, and its gritty verve stands in contrast to many of the capital’s sanitised routines. But Mr. Ishihara wants to move the market to Toyosu wharf, on reclaimed land three kilometres (two miles) further out in Tokyo bay. Tsukiji will then become the site for a giant Olympics media centre.
    Tsukiji was built as the replacement for the fish market that had stood at central Nihonbashi for over 300 years until a huge earthquake in 1923. Hideji Otsuki, the market’s city-appointed boss, says that it is now outdated, having been built for rail freight. Today’s giant refrigerated lorries have difficulty squeezing in. Meanwhile, the three-wheeled motorised carts used to move boxes of fish about the narrow alleys are forever bumping into each other.
    Many market traders oppose the move. Katsuji Takeda, the owner of a sushi business, says that at a stroke the "Tsukiji brand" will be destroyed. City managers proposing the move, he says, are bureaucrats who confuse a sterile distribution centre with the social and commercial vitality of a true market.
    Opposition has recently grown further over the toxic benzene that contaminates the soil at the new site. Tokyo Gas, the utility whose land it was, is removing 2m (6.6 feet) of topsoil, and 2.5m of fresh soil is going on top, but environmentalists say that an earthquake or a tidal surge would bring the benzene straight back up to the surface again. Even Mr. Ishihara has agreed to put off a decision about the move until experts have been heard.
    Still Mr. Ishihara—backed by construction companies drooling over the Tsukiji site, so close to the fashionable heart of Tokyo—seems to be ahead in the election race. Few doubt what will happen to the fish market if he wins. An irony for visiting journalists looking for good stories in 2016: the last visible link with an earlier Tokyo might have made a good story, and they will find themselves literally sitting on it.
What is the Tsukiji fish market like?
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答案It is the world’s biggest, with 2,000 tonnes of seafood passing through each day. It is hugely popular with overseas and Japanese visitors, and its gritty verve stands in contrast to many capital’s sanitised routines. Tsukiji was built as the replacement for the fish market that had stood at central Nihonbashi for over 300 years until a huge earthquake in 1923.
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