Niigata Governor Yoneyama resigns over affairs with women

April 19, 2018

Niigata- Niigata Governor Ryuichi Yoneyama announced his resignation on Wednesday to take responsibility for causing confusion in prefectural administration due to his affairs with women.

His departure is expected to have a large impact on discussions on whether to allow the restarts of reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in the central Japan prefecture. Yoneyama was elected in October 2016 for the first time thanks to voter support for his cautious stance toward the reactor restarts.

The Shukan Bunshun weekly magazine is set to publish a report in its edition on Thursday about Yoneyama's compensated dating of women, including a college student.

At a news conference after submitting his resignation to the speaker of the prefectural assembly on Wednesday, Yoneyama said, "I sincerely apologize for betraying the trust of the residents of the prefecture."

Yoneyama, a 50-year-old bachelor, admitted having had affairs with women and paid them for three to four years. With the college woman, he continued such a relation for some two months even after taking office, he said.

Yoneyama also confessed that he knew his acts would be taken as prostitute-buying, although they were aimed at getting liked.

"I needed to have more self-awareness as a person holding public office," he said.

"Now that it has become impossible for me to tackle squarely the nuclear plant safety issue, I feel terrible," Yoneyama added.

Under the public offices election law, a gubernatorial election is held within 50 days after the assembly speaker notifies the prefecture's election board of the governor's resignation. At the moment, a major candidate date for the election is seen as June 10 with the official campaign period starting from May 24.

In the 2016 governor race, Yoneyama, qualified as a lawyer and medical doctor, defeated a candidate backed by the Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito national ruling coalition, with support from the Japanese Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party.

During the campaign, he pledged that he would not accept talks on the restarts of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa reactors of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. unless the March 2011 nuclear accident at the company's Fukushima No. 1 plant was thoroughly reviewed. Jiji Press