Tokyo teams up with bathhouses to boost voter turnout for assembly election

Local authorities in Tokyo are ramping up efforts to raise voter turnout ahead of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election on Sunday, rolling out a series of public awareness campaigns aimed particularly at younger voters.
Initiatives include partnering with public bathhouses amid Japan's ongoing sauna boom and collaborating with high school students to create promotional materials.
According to the Tokyo's election commission, voter turnout in the previous election in 2021 stood at 42.39%. While over 50% of voters in their 60s and older turned out, rates were much lower among younger demographics, with only 25.8% of voters in their 20s and 34.22% in their 30s casting ballots — highlighting a persistent gap in political engagement between age groups.
In an attempt to reach younger voters, the commission is collaborating with the hot spring website Nifty Onsen and the Tokyo Sento Association to raise voter awareness at 61 bathhouses across the capital.
Posters are being displayed during the campaign period, and several bathhouses are naming one of their baths 'election bath' to make people more aware of the upcoming election.
'With the sauna trend, we can appeal to a wider, younger audience,' a Tokyo metropolitan government official said. 'We hope people will take a moment of relaxation to reflect on politics and the upcoming election.'
In Tokyo's Nerima Ward, local high school students helped design election-themed pocket tissue packs to be handed out at train stations and other public locations.
The Nerima municipality is the only one of Tokyo's 23 wards with a dedicated election outreach team. Its official X social media account is updated frequently. 'We aim to post at least once a day,' a Nerima government official said.
In the city of Machida in western Tokyo, officials have redesigned the birthday cards that the local government sends to residents turning 18 to inform them of their eligibility to vote as Japanese citizens. The new designs were developed with input from young people and aim to make the cards feel less stiff and formal and more accessible.
'We hope their first voting experience will lead them to vote again,' a city official said.
Translated by The Japan Times

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