In Japan, slow but steady progress
Becoming the first female prime minister may be a milestone in other countries, for Japanese, her qualifications are more important.
As I sat amid the larch forests of mountainous Nagano watching news coverage of the naming of Japan’s first female prime minister this past week, something seemed strange.
The milestone is big news here, to be sure, but unlike in Western media, one of the most striking elements of mainstream reporting here has been a relative lack of fanfare about this pioneering moment for women.
Instead, the focus is on the fact that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her new cabinet, named Tuesday, have broad approval and are seen as an all-star team at a pivotal time. The United States is stepping away from international engagement, nearby China is on the rise, and Japan—a regional beacon of liberal democracy in increasingly turbulent times—is being pushed to rethink its place in the world.
Polling immediately after the October 21 election showed the new government’s approval rating at just over 70 percent overall and significantly higher among people aged 18-39 and in western Japan, according to a survey conducted by the nation’s largest newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun.
Takaichi is from western Nara City, Japan’s capital in the 8th century before it moved to Kyoto and later Tokyo (which literally means “eastern capital”). She won by forming a coalition with the Osaka-based Japan Innovation Party, which hopes to make the city a sort of second capital.
Although some American observers have pegged her as hard-right, center-right seems more accurate to me given Japan’s wide spectrum of political parties and her leadership in the mainstream Liberal Democratic Party establishment. (There is a far-right fringe that has said it hopes to connect with extreme right-wing forces in Europe and the United States, but it’s small and not connected to Takaichi and her coalition partners.)
In my conversations about the relative lack of fanfare over Takaichi’s historic breakthrough, I’ve been repeatedly reminded that what’s most important here is that she’s a strong, nimble and capable leader. After all, female leadership has already figured prominently in the nation’s history. One of the chief deities of the Shinto pantheon is Amaterasu Omikami, Sun Goddess, from whom the imperial family claims decent, and the first leader of ancient Japan is said to have been Queen Himiko.
And more prosaically, since Takaichi has been in national politics for decades and has served in multiple cabinet minister positions, her visibility as a rare woman in leadership is nothing new. “Takaichi is very well-qualified and that is what matters, not her gender,” a former pharmaceutical industry executive from Yokohama told me.
“She won for a reason,” said a female top executive of a traditional Japanese company based in Tokyo. “It’s obvious that she studies the issues. She smiles and she’s charming, but she’s also smart and communicates clearly and gets things done.” The Hamano brand handbag favored by Takaichi is now sold out in every color, she added.
Takaichi was one of the first generation to graduate from the influential Matsushita Institute of Government and Management (“Matsushita Seikei-Juku”), an elite incubator established in 1980 by the founder of Panasonic to train future leaders. It has produced many prominent business leaders and politicians, including Yoshihiko Noda, the former prime minister and main opposition leader.
Takaichi has also written many books. And while much has been made about her awe of Margaret Thatcher, it’s possible that her admiration may be of the Iron Lady’s leadership skills in a male-dominated sphere as much as her conservative politics.
The response is similarly nonchalant when I ask about the unusual background of American-born biracial Kimi Onoda, a rising star in Japanese politics, who, in a quieter milestone for Japan this past week, was named Takaichi’s minister in charge of economic security, giving her the important portfolio of managing affairs related to foreigners. (Not only is Onoda female but possibly the country’s first “hafu”—half non-Japanese—cabinet member in this deeply homogenous country.)
Mired in enduring stereotypes about sexism and racism, Japan has come a huge distance in the almost 30 years I’ve been regularly visiting while raising two biracial, bicultural Japanese sons. And some traditions, common even in earlier times, seem almost breathtakingly progressive from an American standpoint.
Although men have traditionally been the breadwinners, women have typically held the purse-strings, thus the now old-fashioned expression “sen en teishu” (“ten-dollar husband”), reflecting the standard lunch allowance wives doled out as their husbands headed off to work each morning.
While I haven’t yet encountered a man in the United States who took his wife’s family name upon marriage, the practice is not unheard of in Japan. My 99-year-old mother-in-law’s family name is Kono, which my father-in-law adopted, forsaking his own, when they married. Similarly, Prime Minister Takaichi’s husband, former member of the House of Representatives Taku Yamamoto (whom she married, divorced and later remarried), took her family name on their remarriage, giving up his own.
While there’s clearly still a very long way to go, it feels at this moment as though, in small but steady steps, much of the Japanese population is quietly nearing an important inflection point at which Americans, with our long history of achievements in feminism and representation, seem to be backtracking—the point at which gender and race are broadly accepted as secondary to ability.
The going for Takaichi may be difficult. With her minority coalition, she and her cabinet face strong headwinds and Japan remains well behind other liberal democracies in embracing many civil rights, with women still underrepresented in the corporate and political worlds.
But things are clearly changing. While identity politics may be foreign here, deftly adapting to changing times is not.
During the current upheaval in Western Europe and the United States, Japan may offer an antidote to the increasingly divisive realities elsewhere. In this law-and-order liberal democracy—where political violence remains rare, the system is astoundingly efficient and smooth, trust is generally still a given, and impeccable politeness is the norm—might a slow and careful approach to change provide an example for ensuring stability and continued progress in the long term?
The daughter of a family of modest means in a country in which most politicians come from wealthy families or are second- or third-generation politicians, Takaichi, the daughter of a dad who worked for a car company and mom who served in the Nara Prefectural Police, represents economic diversity when a growing number of Japanese are struggling to make ends meet.
“People are tired of politicians who talk about prices but have never been to a grocery store,” one woman told me.
For some, Takaichi represents personal determination in the face of adversity, a deeply respected quality here. One illustration of her astounding level of personal determination, not yet reported elsewhere, is how she landed a coveted internship in the United States during late 1980s with Democratic Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, a superstar in those days who was one of the first women to run for president.
A former Japanese diplomat who knew Takaichi in those days recently told me he couldn’t resist asking her back then, at one of the many DC gatherings for young Japanese in town, how she’d nailed the spot. Then only in her mid-20s, she replied that she had been so deeply moved by Schroeder’s run for president and the sight of her tears as she ultimately withdrew her candidacy that she was prompted to write to her directly—a highly unusual move for a Japanese citizen—stating her determination to become prime minister of Japan one day, and expressing her desire to work for Schroeder and learn from her. Obviously impressed, the congresswoman invited her to join her office in Washington.
As Takaichi was named prime minister this past week, I kept thinking about her gutsy letter to Schroeder and the kind of fierce determination it must have taken to keep at her seemingly preposterous goal for 40 long years.
And the cherry on top, as her term in office gets underway, is that despite the undoubtedly tough challenges ahead, she has broad national support not because she’s female but because she’s good.
Katherine Roth Kono, formerly an Associated Press staff writer and editor based in New York, is now a contributing writer to the AP, dividing her time between New York and Japan while serving as a trustee of the Institute of Current World Affairs. She was a fellow of the institute from 1993 to 1995, studying the rise of Islamic movements in the Arab world through the lens of tradition and modernity. Kono has been visiting Japan regularly for almost 30 years. The opinions expressed here are her own.
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As a former Fellow to Japan in a far different era (late 1960s) I find this posting particularly significant, and beautifully managed. The changes Kono depicts in Japan would have astounded Tom and Frances Blakemore, the earliest ICWA-affiliated Americans to penetrate and contribute within Japanese society. Karen and I had the great pleasure of interacting with them while we were posted in Tokyo.