OSAKA — In a race with national implications, campaigning for the Jan. 27 Osaka gubernatorial election will kick off Thursday with three candidates.
Toru Hashimoto, 38, a lawyer and TV celebrity; Sadatoshi Kumagai, 63, a former electric power engineering professor at Osaka University; and Shoji Umeda, 57, a local attorney, are vying to replace Fusae Ohta.
Japan's first female governor when she was elected in 2000, Ohta got tangled up in a series of financial scandals and announced late last year she would not run for a third term.