Telling Women's Lives

Adam Dailey NYTimes Profile – Yuriko Koike

Yuriko Koike, Tokyo’s first female mayor, is a contradictory figure within Japanese politics. She rose through the ranks of the Japanese government, taking home a landslide victory over a rival democrat after a long career as a television anchor before assuming the role of Defense Minister. Despite her incredible resume and strong presence in a political field which is overwhelmingly male, Japanese feminists are unsure how they should feel about Mayor Koike. She follows a strict republican agenda, which has shown in her two months in office, and is backed by several ultraconservative groups who call for the reestablishment of Japan’s traditional gender roles, as well as the whitewashing of Japan’s war crimes.
However, the cause behind the Mayor’s decisive victory has a different reason entirely – according to Dan Sneider, faculty at Stanford’s Asia-Pacific Research Center, she was elected as a welcome change of pace from the abundantly scandalous zeitgeist of Japanese politics.