Mainstream and deviating ideologies in Japanese gubernatorial elections

Abstract The ideological conflicts of Japan's subnational politics have tended to be interpreted as either being largely muted or contained within national dimensions. Following two decades of substantial decentralization and growing local autonomy, however, a diversity of new ideological responses to local issues have appeared. These include neo-liberal parties and executives in wealthier regions such as Tokyo and Osaka or a rising regionalist identity politics such as that found in Okinawa. Nativist right and populist left along with single-issue parties are also now fielding candidates for subnational elections. Despite this increasingly crowded field, there is still no systematic understanding of the divergent ideological worldviews and dimensions of conflict operating at the subnational level. Nor do we know how these worldviews “deviate” from the traditional “norm” of a progressive vs. conservative conflict dimension assumed to characterize Japanese subnational politics. This paper begins to fill this gap by investigating the campaign discourse of gubernatorial candidates both before and after the pandemic outbreak. We find that the language, and underlying ideological orientation, of these candidates can be separated into four clusters: “mainstream”, “old left”, “neo-liberal”, and “fringe”. In addition, “regionalist” and “new left” populism can also be identified in select elections.