Departures of note

Tokushin Yamauchi was a Japanese politician from Yomitan, Okinawa. Born in 1935, he worked as a high school teacher before entering public life, and in 1974 he was first elected mayor of Yomitan, a post he held for six terms spanning 24 years. During his mayoralty he led the village's movement for the return of US military bases, famously building the village office inside the US military airfield as a "wedge of culture" and appealing directly to US President Jimmy Carter against a planned antenna base. In 2007 he was elected to the House of Councillors on the Social Democratic Party's proportional representation list, serving one term, and he continued to advocate for peace and against the relocation of bases within Okinawa before retiring from politics in 2012. He died on 26 September 2026 at the age of 91.