Genta Koja, a 42-year-old former deputy mayor of Naha, has been elected governor of Okinawa — Japan's southernmost prefecture, a chain of subtropical islands stretching toward Taiwan — defeating two-term incumbent Denny Tamaki in a decisive victory on Sunday. Koja, backed by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's Liberal Democratic Party, won 423,124 votes against Tamaki's 276,060, a margin of roughly 59 percent, making him the first Okinawa governor in 12 years to support rather than oppose the continued presence of US military forces in the region.

The central dispute has long been the future of the Futenma air base, a sprawling US Marine Corps installation — including a 2,740-metre runway, barracks, and aircraft facilities — located in the densely populated city of Ginowan. Japan and the United States agreed in 1996, following the rape of a 12-year-old girl by US servicemen that triggered mass protests across the prefecture, to relocate the base to a less populated site at Henoko on Okinawa's northern coast. That plan was approved by a previous governor in 2013, but reversed the following year when an anti-relocation candidate won office. Tamaki continued to resist it, demanding the base leave Okinawa altogether. Koja, by contrast, accepts the Henoko relocation plan, a position that could effectively end the prefecture's prolonged legal battle to block construction there.

Koja's campaign largely sidestepped the base issue in favour of economic pledges, promising to double Okinawa's average income, increase the childcare budget, and attract greater tourist spending to a prefecture that has historically lagged behind the rest of Japan in prosperity. On Monday, he said he would