A pedestrian looks at a campaign poster of Shintaro Ishihara

JAPAN - MARCH 23: A pedestrian looks at a campaign poster of Shintaro Ishihara, bottom right, governor of Tokyo and Shiro Asano, former governor of Miyagi prefecture, both candidates in the regional elections in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, March 23, 2007. Japan starts 17 days of regional election campaigning today and the contest getting the most attention is the one to determine who will govern the capital of Tokyo, which has an economy bigger than Australia's. (Photo by Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg via Getty Images)