Female 'ninjas' steal Koizumi's
limelight By J Sean
Curtin
A special session of the Japanese
parliament on Wednesday overwhelmingly reelected
Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister following his
Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) landslide victory
in the September 11 general election. But while
the premier was the official focus of the
proceedings, media attention was firmly riveted on
the record number of newly elected women lawmakers
sitting in the lower chamber for the first time.
The newly convened 480-seat Lower House
now has an all-time high of 43 female members,
distinguishing it from its largely male-packed
predecessors. Most of the fresh female faces were
elected as part of Koizumi's drive to reform the
traditionally male-dominated LDP and boot out its
anti-reform old guard, a policy the
media dubbed the "female
ninja" strategy. To ensure the success of female
candidates Koizumi gave them priority treatment.
As a result, the LDP has almost trebled its number
of female lawmakers in the lower chamber to 26
from just nine. This has markedly altered its, as
well as the Lower House's, formerly rather dull,
male-dominated image.
While Japanese women
are still woefully underrepresented in Japanese
politics, there is now real hope that the new
session of parliament will finally set the country
on the road to becoming a slightly more
gender-equal democracy.
A jubilant-looking
Koizumi proudly presented his new-look, more
gender-balanced version of the LDP to the public.
Standing in front of his 83 first-time-elected
lawmakers, a third of whom were women, the prime
minister told them, "I hope you will bring new
life and new blood into the party."
Satsuki Katayama, a high-profile member of
the new female intake, told the media, "The LDP
has now been transformed forever." A majority of
the newly elected lawmakers are diehard Koizumi
loyalists and their arrival has greatly
strengthened the prime minister's power within the
LDP, making him the undisputed king of Japanese
politics. Yukari Sato, a former economist and
successful "ninja", summed up the newcomers' mood:
"It is thanks to Koizumi that we got elected."
Most of the new army of female lawmakers
owe strong allegiance to Koizumi because he
personally selected them to run against rebel,
anti-postal-privatization LDP lawmakers as so
called "assassin" candidates. (A relaxed-looking
Koizumi, still basking in the afterglow of his
thumping poll triumph, reaffirmed his strong
commitment to pushing forward postal privatization
and other reforms.)
Since Koizumi ensured
that they were all given preference on the LDP's
proportional representation list, all the party's
26 female candidates were elected. Thus even
"female ninja" who failed to liquidate their
targets in the directly elected districts gained
seats in the proportional block.
Koizumi
said he would keep his current cabinet lineup for
the duration of the 42-day session, which ends
November 1, then reshuffle both the cabinet and
the LDP leadership. He outlined his intention to
promote talented lawmakers who have the potential
to succeed him after his current term as prime
minister ends in September 2006. Koizumi also
hinted that he plans to promote some of the new
intake, and there is speculation that several of
the most prominent new women lawmakers will gain
high office.
While the ranks of women
lawmakers in the LDP increased, their numbers in
the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan
(DPJ) was more than halved to just seven from a
preelection strength of 15. Before the election
the DPJ had almost twice as many women lawmakers
as the LDP and was viewed as the more
gender-friendly party.
Koizumi's landslide
victory has completely rewritten the gender
dynamics between the two main political parties,
and it will now be far more difficult for the DPJ
to attract crucial female voters, even with its
new youthful-looking, 43-year-old leader Seiji
Maehara. He took over as DPJ president from
Katsuya Okada on Saturday, following the party's
crushing election defeat, which saw its Lower
House strength sharply reduced to 113 seats from
its preelection standing of 175. The LDP, which
has run Japan for nearly all the past 50 years,
boosted its standing to 296.
In the other,
smaller political parties the ratio of women
stayed about the same. The LDP's junior coalition
partner, New Komeito , retained its four female
lawmakers, and the Japanese Communist Party's
(JCP) two women also survived. The Social
Democratic Party (SPD) lost its former leader and
party matriarch, Takako Doi, ending up with two
female lawmakers, one fewer than in the 2003
election.
The 2005 election marks an
all-time high of 43 women elected to the powerful
Lower House, an advance on the 34 elected in 2003.
While female lawmakers still only represent about
9% of Lower House members, the new intake
represents a massive increase compared with the
dismal 1.4% representation in 1992 and a modest
advance on the 7.1% before this election.
The previous record for Lower House female
lawmakers was 39, achieved in 1946, when women
were first allowed into parliament. However, after
the euphoric 1946 surge, female numbers rapidly
declined and quickly politics became an almost
exclusively male preserve until the late 1990s.
Despite the dramatic increase, Japan still
has one of the lowest representations of female
politicians in the industrialized world. Even now
its 9% female representation in the Lower House
only ranks it 95th out of 132 parliaments
worldwide.
Sweden boasts a massive 45.3%
of female lower chamber lawmakers, while the UK
has 19.7% and the US just 15.2%. Tokyo's regional
neighbors China (20.2%) and South Korea (13%) also
fare better, while India only has 8.3% female
representation.
However, Tokyo is nearing
the global average - 16% - for women's
representation in the lower chamber. Still,
Koizumi's ninjas are blazing a trail toward a more
gender-equal Japan.
J Sean
Curtin is a GLOCOM fellow at the Tokyo-based
Japanese Institute of Global Communications.
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