As the top elected official on Japan’s tiny “front-line” island of Yonaguni — just 110 kilometers from Taiwan — Kenichi Itokazu isn’t your typical small-town mayor.
Elected head of the Okinawan island’s local government in 2021, he’s been charged with ensuring the livelihood and security of its residents amid rising fears over the possibility of a war between communist China and democratic Taiwan, a conflict that some say would inevitably draw in Japan and the United States.
These responsibilities, he says, have at times left him as the odd man out in a prefecture long wary of both the heavy U.S. military and Self-Defense Forces presence there.
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