IN HER first two months on the job Yuriko Koike, Tokyo’s governor, has ruffled many feathers. She began before she was even elected, by running without the endorsement of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), of which she is a member but which supported another candidate. Since taking office she has revealed that the site to which the city’s main fishmarket is supposed to move has not been properly decontaminated; she is banning her staff from working past 8pm in the name of “life-work balance” and she has declared war on financial waste and corruption—taking the lead by pledging to halve her own salary. The hallmark of her tenure, she says, will be “major change” to the way the city is run.
In fact, it is a major change simply having someone like her as governor—mayor, in effect, of Tokyo prefecture, with a population of 13.6m and an economy roughly the size of Canada’s. Not only is she a woman (unlike 87% of Japanese parliamentarians). She is also neither a political dynast (unlike five of the past seven prime ministers), nor a party stalwart. That played to her advantage in the election, but, alas, will limit her clout when taking on the old-boys’ network of...Continue reading
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