The way some stories start reveals nothing about where they will wind up. Like mine. How did a small-town boy from Saskatchewan end up as a Japanese citizen and the first foreign-born member of a prefectural legislature? This takes some explaining… but here’s the short version.

I’m from Wymark, 20km south of Swift Current, a hamlet so small that my immediate family were nearly 10% of the local populace. That’s because there are 13 of us. You see, my father was a Mennonite pastor. And my parents took God’s command to be fruitful and multiply very seriously. So seriously that siring six biological offspring wasn’t enough. That’s why, with charity in their hearts, they adopted five Indigenous children.

I didn’t know where I’d end up, but I wasn’t going to stay put in Wymark. So, soon as I finished high school in 1982 I set out for Europe. I worked on a German dairy farm, an Israeli kibbutz and a French goat farm. Returning home, I entered a Music Education program at the University of Regina. But I still managed to scratch my travel itch studying for a term in Moscow.

I finally managed to graduate in the spring of 1991. At the time, young Canadians were seized by tales like those that fueled the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush. Instead of gold though it was endaka, the Japanese yen that doubled in value in a single year. And the rumor that any idiot with a white face could pay off his student loan in a year of teaching English. Each week, 50 aspiring eikaiwa sensei were landing at Narita. In October 1991, working-holiday visa in hand, I joined them.

To cut a long story short, having survived the ups & downs of the English-teaching life back then, in 1997 I found myself in Tsukuba, northeast of Tokyo in Ibaraki Prefecture, a city then with about 200,000 people. Although there were a fair few foreign residents, especially connected to Tsukuba University (and 100+ research centers) there were few places for the ‘gaijin’ community to gather.

By then, I was sick and tired of teaching English. So, recommended by a mentor, owner of my regular watering hole, I opened the first of two ‘gaijin bars,’ first The Gold Rush then two years later, Frontier.

For seven years I was a publican. We did a booming business, attracting both foreign and Japanese patrons. I amassed a huge stack of meishi and a long mailing list. And I became recognized around town, something of a colorful local character. 

Then it all went down the drain. Tsukuba is quite car-oriented for a Japanese city. So when strict new drunk driving laws came into effect in 2002, people just stayed home. My sales fell off a cliff: down 70% in the first year, sliding further till the end of 2004 when we finally closed.

This left me, as Zorba the Greek put it, with “wife, children, house – the full catastrophe.” We spent four years struggling to feed three kids and pay off our debts, until my wife finally landed a decently paying job in Tokyo. 

Meanwhile, I’d set my sights on a hugely ambitious goal. First step was to boost my Japanese ability to a much higher level. Second was to acquire Japanese citizenship, which I did in 2007.

The secrets of electoral success in Japan

It all started one night with my ranting to my bar-owner mentor about how stupid the government was for killing the nightlife of our once active city. I said something like, “If I had half a brain, I’d run for city council.” He replied with words to the effect that it wasn’t an entirely stupid idea. If I became a citizen I could probably do it. Then he explained why.

In Canada, we have a “first-past-the-post” system where one candidate wins each seat. But in Japan, local elections, municipal and prefectural, are like musical chairs. Tsukuba has 28 city councillors, and elections typically attract around 45 candidates. Every citizen can vote for one of them. Since the top 28 vote-getters win seats, you don’t need to be #1, you just need to avoid being #29 or worse. Usually, to win you need only about 2,000 votes.

Ranking among the winners is a matter of name recognition. That’s a handicap if you’re one of six guys named Sato or five named Tanaka. But a blond gaijin named Heese is bound to stand out. What’s more, by then I knew scads of Tsukuba folks: hundreds of former bar patrons and many English students before that.

Once I got my citizenship I began making the rounds on the political circuit. My mentor took me to meet one of the city’s political movers & shakers. After listening to my city council ambitions, he quipped that I’d either get 300 or 3,000 votes, he wasn’t sure which. I wasn’t sure either. Nor was my wife thrilled that I wanted to run. Still, she supported me by making flyers and posters. 

Tricks of the trade

If you want to run for election in Japan, there’s a lot to learn. Campaign regulations are long, detailed and sometimes silly. Plus, new lessons that Japanese campaigners have yet to master, like that new-fangled internet thing. And there are aspects of traditional campaign culture that need to be unlearned. Like who-the-hell is motivated to vote when a campaign car passes their house at the crack of dawn on Sunday? Over its loudspeakers a high-pitched female voice screeching, “Sato de gozaimasu. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.”

Effective campaigning is face-to-face. You put on your campaign sash and stand in front of the station or the factory gate. You give everyone a warm smile, a wave, a bow and a friendly word or two if they stop to ask what you’re doing. Make no mistake, done right it’s physically and emotionally demanding.

People are likely to think you’re some kind of nut. And let’s face it: you are completely nuts to be doing this. But in my case, after word got around that some crazy gaijin was running people began stopping by to wish me luck. Passing cars honked.

On the advice of my wife, every morning I stood in front of day cares and kindergartens. Women have a lot of clout in the household, and they tend to be more up on local affairs than husbands who commute to Tokyo.

During that first election in October 2008 I learned a lot. Still, no one was more surprised than me when I got 4,000 votes. That made me Tsukuba’s first, and so far only, foreign-born councillor. Even more shocking, I came second only to the guy who is now our mayor. And when he levelled up, so did I, placing first in every election thereafter.

“No one was more surprised than me when I got 4,000 votes. That made me Tsukuba’s first, and so far only, foreign-born councillor.”

Going prefectural

Placing first a few times at the city level puts you in a good position to run for the prefectural assembly. But I must admit I was a bit over-ambitious and when I tried to jump to the prefecture level in 2014, While I did very well, I came up short, getting 13,000 votes when I needed 13,600. But if you’re a real politician you’ve got to be prepared to lose sometimes. 

After cruising to two more terms at the city level, topping the polls both times, I tried again for the prefecture. In 2022, I became the first and only foreign-born politician to serve at the prefectural level in Japan. Finnish-born Tsurunen Martei did serve in the Upper House, but he jumped from local to national politics.

A Japanese prefectural assembly is in some ways analogous to a Canadian provincial legislature. But there are no stirring speeches and no vigorous debates. We listen to long presentations by bureaucrats and then ask them questions. If we are doing our job, the questions are ones that constituents want answered.

I enjoy meeting constituents and listening to their concerns. But I have to say that when I meet new people, they often treat me with an annoying degree of obsequiousness. Perhaps it’s a hangover from the days when feudal lords could behead a peasant for the slightest sign of disrespect. But, hey, we elect politicians to serve the people, not the other way round.

For what it’s worth though, the political class in Japan are all regular people. They are generally quite nice and treat everyone well. We recognize the limits of our position and don’t try to overstate our power. For the reality in Japan is that real power rests with the bureaucrats.

So, that’s my story. I like my unicorn status and I’ll try to keep it for a while. My next election is in December, 2026. Wish me luck.