Japan's Okinawa ousts anti-US base governor

A candidate backed by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's ruling party won a gubernatorial election in Okinawa, bringing to power a leader who approves of a contentious US military base relocation plan for the first time in 12 years.

In a landslide victory following Sunday's vote, Genta Koja beat incumbent Denny Tamaki, who has long pushed for a major US military base to be moved out of Okinawa, Japan's southernmost prefecture.

Koja, 42, accepts a central government plan to keep the US Marine Corps' Futenma air base on Okinawa's main island, but move it to a less populated location.

The United States has around 54,000 military personnel stationed in Japan, mostly on Okinawa, but a string of incidents over the years, including sexual assault cases, have angered residents.

A litany of other base-related woes, from pollution to noise and helicopter crashes, has led to complaints that they bear the brunt of hosting troops.

Japan and the United States agreed to move the base from the town of Ginowan to another location within Okinawa in 1996 after a rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by US military servicemen that triggered strong anti-US military protests across the prefecture.

The relocation plan was approved in 2013 by then Okinawa governor Hirokazu Nakaima, but the next year he lost to an opponent who opposed the move.

Tamaki, 66, was seeking his third term Sunday.

Koja won 423,124 votes, while Tamaki received 276,060 votes, according to the Okinawa prefectural government.