On November 27th, the Oshu City ILC Promotion and Liaison Council (Chair: Oshu mayor Masaki Ozawa, members: 64 organizations) announced that they had reached their goal of signing up 60,000 people to become ILC Supporters, a grassroots campaign for the ILC. They collected signatures from more than half of the total population of Oshu (120,000 people), which will be a push towards the national government to make its decision on hosting the ILC.

According to Oshu City’s ILC Promotion Division, they surpassed 60,000 people on November 26th, and have 61,047 signups at the time of printing. In July, they had called on the promotional councils and commercial organizations that make up the ILC Council to collect signatures, and they reached their goal earlier than their deadline of the end of the year. Mayor Ozawa will submit the signatures to the Tohoku ILC Promotion Council in Sendai on November 29th, and they will then be sent to the national government.

Mayor Ozawa commented, “I will send our citizens’ strong hopes for the ILC to the national government, which I hope will be reflected in a quick decision on the ILC.”

The ILC Supporters campaign was started in April by famous figures in the movie business. They are trying to sign-up 300,000 ILC Supporters nationally.