Maebashi’s female mayor denies affair with married male subordinate

Maebashi is a small city in Gunma, a short distance north from Tokyo and rarely in the news. That all changed this week, however, with the intense media response to reports that the female mayor has been allegedly conducting an affair with a male staffer.

Society seems to respond more strongly to adultery claims when it involves a woman. A male politician having an affair would result in nary an eyebrow raised (opposition party leader Yuichiro Tamaki quickly recovered from his scandal), but it’s a very different situation for women in her early forties.

It should be noted from the start, though, that Akira Ogawa denies the allegation, triangulating a series of reasons she was photographed visiting a love hotel with her married subordinate this month by News Post Seven.

It is claimed that the unmarried 42-year-old visited a love hotel with the staffer at least nine further times between July and September, using her official car. Six of the visits were to roadside hotels and one was on September 10, when Gunma was experiencing very high rainfall and the mayor might be expected to be on alert in case of landslides. (Given the obvious importance Japan places on disaster prevention and public safety, that Ogawa spent the time during potentially dangerous rainfall in a love hotel is probably the most damaging allegation.)

The rendezvouses took place both during the daytime and night, and included Saturdays. It is not clear how News Post Seven first heard about the meetings and decided to send a photographer up to Gunma, but possibly it received a tip-off from someone else on Ogawa’s team.

Ogawa was elected mayor of Maebashi in 2024, the first female leader of the city of around 320,000. Her election followed four terms in the Gunma Prefectural Assembly, to which she was first elected in 2011 at the age of 28. She is a lawyer by profession.

“We do not have a physical relationship,” Ogawa claimed, but conceded at a hastily convened press conference on September 24 that “my reckless actions have led to misunderstandings.”

“He has been listening to my work-related consultations and meetings in my private life. Until around February, we would talk at restaurants and karaoke booths, but we couldn’t have specific work-related conversations because we were surrounded by people, so he suggested a hotel, where we could talk without worrying about being seen,” she said.

She admits that she knew he is married, and that they had been meeting this way since February.

Reaction from Maebashi citizens has been negative, with media reports quoting several residents as saying they couldn’t accept the mayor’s explanations for her actions, though there seemed no consensus on whether she should resign over the matter. The city has already received around 200 complaints.

Regarding her future, Ogawa has said that she wishes to consult with a lawyer and other third parties.