The Okinawa Policy Council, convened for the first time in 13 years, met at the prime minister's office on Friday, marking a shift from confrontation to cooperation between the government and Okinawa Prefecture over US bases. Governor Genta Kojya, who took office on September 30, has accepted the relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko in Nago and the deployment of Osprey aircraft, positions that set him apart from more than a decade of prefectural policy.
"It is extremely significant that the top of the government accepted our requests," Kojya told reporters after the meeting. He said he had asked the prime minister to reduce the base burden "in a visible form."
Kojya won the September 13 gubernatorial election with the most votes ever recorded, campaigning on the slogan "Okinawa, forward." He has said the high vote reflected expectations for economic policy, including raising prefectural income, which is the lowest in the country. A prefectural official said seeds had to be planted now: "We cannot be seen to have harvested nothing in four years."
Convening the council was one of his campaign pledges and, according to people around him, an important venue for projecting a sense of renewal. He pressed the government with requests from shortly after taking office and secured the meeting in a little over a month.
A break with a decade of confrontation
The government and the prefecture had been at odds since Takeshi Onaga became governor in 2014, chiefly over the plan to move Futenma from Ginowan to Henoko. His successor, Denny Tamaki, kept up his opposition to the relocation with public opinion behind him and resisted through court cases. The state pushed the work forward, including carrying out for the first time a "substitute execution" in which it approved a design change in the prefecture's place.
The new governor's acceptance of the Osprey deployment drew a blunt explanation from him: withdrawing it is not realistic. He has also moved on the prefecture's own machinery, abolishing the Henoko measures division and setting up an office for the early return of US facilities.
The meeting follows a US Department of Defense position that Futenma will not be returned without a runway longer than the one at Henoko.