Genta Koja collected 423,124 votes on September 13, more than any candidate for Okinawa governor has won since the prefecture returned to Japanese control in 1972. Incumbent Denny Tamaki got 276,060. In percentages, 59% to 38%, and it ended twelve years of prefectural leadership built around opposition to the US military bases.
Koja is 42, a former vice mayor of Naha, and backed by Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. He takes office September 30. Turnout was 61%, about four points above the 2022 governor’s race, according to Stars and Stripes.
The economy came first
Tamaki spent two terms fighting the relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from crowded Ginowan to a replacement airfield being built at Camp Schwab in Henoko. He took Tokyo to court to slow the work and argued Futenma should close without a move inside the prefecture. That fight defined his time in office. It did not decide this election.
A Kyodo News exit poll of 2,909 voters at 60 polling places shows why. Nearly half, 49.5%, named economic revitalization as their top issue, and 78.7% of them chose Koja. Only 20.9% put the bases first. Tamaki won 72.9% of that smaller group, but there were not enough of them. Koja also took more than 70% of voters in their teens, twenties and thirties, led every age group through the sixties and picked up 30.8% of people who had backed Tamaki in 2022. On Henoko itself, 50.2% supported the relocation and 43.8% opposed it.
Robert D. Eldridge, a former political adviser to Marines in Japan who now heads the Eldridge Think Tank, called the result no single-issue referendum on American forces. Koja, he wrote, ran the campaign Okinawans wanted in 2026, about income, prices and children. Eldridge also pointed to fatigue after twelve years of confrontation with Tokyo, younger voters getting their politics on social media, and a united center-right. Before election day, he noted, 29 of Okinawa’s 41 mayors reportedly backed Koja and six backed Tamaki.
Tamaki conceded, did not rule out running again in four years, and told supporters he was not wrong to argue against Henoko, the Okinawa Times reported.
What Koja has promised
He is the first governor born after the 1972 reversion and the youngest since. He has not offered the Marines a blank check. In a September 3 post on X, he pledged to finish construction on the Oura Bay side of Henoko within 12 years and to lock in “a definite date for the base’s return.” He also supports returning land south of Kadena Air Base.
The election does not clear the legal path. Earlier this year Japan’s Supreme Court ruled that three residents have standing to keep challenging the landfill approval, which leaves a live case in the lower courts.
The new governor’s first test came quickly. The Diplomat reported that his administration scrapped the office that handled the legal, environmental and political fight over Henoko and created an Early Return Countermeasures Office in its place. Then on October 3, police arrested a US Marine on suspicion of murdering Okinawan woman Anna Yagi. Koja lodged a written protest with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on October 7 and expressed his “outrage.” Protests followed in Naha and Tokyo.
Sources
- Okinawa Election: Denny Tamaki Loses to Genta Koja
- New Governor, Old Problem: Koja Confronts US Base-Related Crimes in Okinawa – The Diplomat
