FEMINIST; patriot; opportunist: Yuriko Koike, who was elected governor of Tokyo on July 31st, has been dubbed many things, not all of them flattering. A career of cycling through political parties without committing to any earned her the moniker Madam Kaiten Sushi, after restaurants where plates of raw fish go around on a conveyor belt, waiting to be plucked off. Her defining characteristic, however, may be her ambition.
Like Margaret Thatcher, whom she admires, Ms Koike is self-made and has battled through the nearly all-male ranks of her profession. (In this she differs from Makiko Tanaka, Japan’s first female foreign minister in the early 2000s, whose dad was a former prime minister.) Just 9.3% of lawmakers in Japan’s lower house are female, putting it 155th in the world. A member of the Liberal Democratic Party, she was defence minister in 2007 but missed her chance a year later to become Japan’s first woman prime minister when Taro Aso beat her to become party leader. She infuriated partly bosses by running against their candidate, Hiroya Masuda, in the Tokyo election, trouncing him by more than 1m votes.
One reason Ms...Continue reading
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