Kenji Utsunomiya

Kenji Utsunomiya
Native name	宇都宮 健児
Born	December 1, 1946 (1946-12) (age 70) Higashiuwa District, Ehime, now Seiyo, Ehime
Residence	Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Occupation	lawyer

Kenji Utsunomiya (宇都宮 健児, Utsunomiya Kenji, born December 1, 1946) is a Japanese lawyer. He spent much of his career helping debtors overcome the burden of multiple loans. He was the head of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations from 2010 to 2012, and ran for Governor of Tokyo in the 2012 and 2014 gubernatorial elections.

Utsunomiya was born in Higashiuwa District, Ehime, which is now Seiyo, Ehime and grew up in Ehime Prefecture and Oita Prefecture. His father was a disabled Second World War veteran who took up farming after the war, who worked extremely long hours to support his family. Utsunomiya was accepted into Tokyo University in 1968 but quit after he passed his bar exam, for which he studied about 100 hours a week.

Utsunomiya served as the honorary mayor of a tent village of laid-off temp workers in Tokyo's Hibiya Park who were let go due to the global financial crisis. The number of people living there rapidly expanded from around 130 on New Year's Eve 2008, to over 300 on January 2, 2009.

Utsunomiya was elected as the president of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations in April 2010. An outsider to the politics of the legal profession, he wanted to ensure young lawyers could find jobs, and was elected to a two-year term after he promised to cut the number of new lawyers in half.

Utsunomiya was a candidate in the Tokyo gubernatorial election, 2012. He announced his candidacy on November 9, 2012, after long-term Governor Shintaro Ishihara suddenly resigned to return to national politics ahead of the then-looming next general election. A field of nine candidates emerged, with the front-runner being Naoki Inose, who had been vice-governor under Ishihara from 2007 to 2012, and then acting governor after Ishihara's abrupt resignation. Inose vowed to follow Ishihara's policies.

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