Today is the second election day in 2 weeks in Hirakata. The first election was for governor of Osaka prefecture and this one that is happening today is for Mayor of Hirakata city. There are a few interesting things to note about the electoral process here.
First, there are rarely debates during electoral campaigns and the main aspect of campaigning for politicians is to go around in cars with speakers and yell out their names. The concept of democracy here is quite different and a large majority of Japanese don't really care. Some people think that the elections are decided before the elections between companies. I read that some companies encourage their employees to vote for a certain candidate.
In the case of the mayor elections, there are no limits to the number of candidates there can be.. for example, for the city of Hirakata there are nearly 60 candidates. (see picture) one of my friends was telling me of all the candidates for the mayor of Tokyo, only a handful are serious and the other contenders, mostly business owners, use the opportunity of the campaigning to promote their business more than their political platform. The reality is that promoting oneself in the context of a campaign (on posters, in the streets and on the radio) is much cheaper than advertising specifically for a product.
I was happy to hear that today was election day because the small streets of Hirakata have been noisy lately with all the trucks running around yelling slogans and candidates names over and over again with speakers that can be heard kilometres around.
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