Woman in Belgium becomes mayor in Japan

Jun 22 (UNI) - A Japanese woman living in Belgium has become the mayor of Suginami, a district in Tokyo after she gained prominence through her online campaigning during the pandemic.

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According to The Guardian, Satoko Kishimoto, 47, who has lived in the Belgian city of Leuven with her husband and children for a decade, is now mayor of Suginami city, a ward of 500,000 people, more than 5,800 miles away from her home.

She is a project coordinator working for not-for-profit Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. While she had travelled to Japan to campaign in recent weeks, her husband has said that the election result was a "huge surprise" and they were not yet planning to move to Japan as their youngest son is still in secondary school.

On Monday, he said, "During the Covid-19 crisis, when everything happened online, Satoko participated a lot in online public debates in Japan from Leuven.

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