Takeshi Onaga won a landslide in 2014 on a platform of firm opposition to US bases in the Japanese prefecture, and has been the subject of a smear campaign ever since
There is little love lost between Takeshi Onaga, the governor of Okinawa, and the Japanese government over the issue of US military facilities in his prefecture. But at least the discussions are largely civil and the law is adhered to.
Not so the unbridled and unregulated accusations on the internet.
Onaga ran in the November 2014 election on a platform of firm opposition to US bases in Okinawa, earning him a landslide victory.
Ever since, he has sought to frustrate efforts by Tokyo and Washington to transfer thousands of US marines and their hardware from Futenma Air Station to Camp Schwab, a base on Okinawa’s northeast coast.
Onaga and his supporters say the island prefecture bears too much of the burden of US military forces in Japan and the Futenma troops should be moved out of Okinawa entirely.
While discussions between the prefecture and national government drag on and appear to be heading to the Supreme Court, the sniping and the slandering of Onaga and others who support his campaign has become increasingly vicious.
The first attacks on the governor’s personal life can be traced to before the 2014 election, in a series of Twitter messages.
One claimed Onaga’s daughter was married to a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party. Inevitably, the tweet was picked up by like-minded social media users and repeated.
Around the same time, the Mainichi newspaper reported, a virulently nationalist satellite television station called Japanese Culture Channel Sakura aired a programme in which the presenter claimed Onaga’s other daughter was studying in Beijing.
The programme triggered another bout of online accusations which became increasingly detailed. One wweet claimed Onaga had “sent his daughter to study at Peking University” and she was being “shown favouritism” by the Chinese authorities.
