How women are banding together to change Japanese politics

On a sweltering day in July, Yoshii Aya, still reeling from her bitter election defeat a few months prior, arrived in Kyoto with a stack of leftover business cards tailored for that bygone race. During a three-day political training camp for women trying to break into Japan’s male-dominated politics, she coyly passed them out as a “memento of my candidacy.”

Had she won the April election, Ms. Yoshii would have become one of two women sitting on the 20-member city council in Miyoshi, Japan. Instead, she spent her summer reflecting on the loss, and learning campaign financing and social media strategy along with 15 other training camp participants.

Ms. Yoshii says she felt empowered by connecting with like-minded women at the camp, which was organized by Tokyo’s Academy for Gender Parity.

The event comes less than a year before the 2023 local elections, and as Japan continues to exhibit one of the lowest rates of female legislature representation in the world. During last month’s upper house race, a record 35 women gained seats in Japan’s parliament, raising the overall ratio of women in the chamber to 25.8% from 23.1%. It’s the kind of incremental progress that has Japanese women’s patience wearing thin. Many point out that the United States now has its first female vice president, and New Zealand and Taiwan both have female heads of state. 

Increasingly, women are channeling that frustration into cooperation, forming solidarity groups and campaigning for the advancement of fellow female politicians. Academy co-founders Miura Mari and Shin Ki-young say that not only are more women interested in entering politics, but their ambitions are growing as well.

In the beginning, “those who came to our program were mainly interested in such policy issues as sexual violence and legal reform to allow husband and wife to keep his and her separate surnames,” says Ms. Shin, who is a professor at the Institute for Gender Studies at Ochanomizu University. “But this time, participants discuss a broad range of policy issues. They are eager to address challenges to make society a better place.”

New momentum

While progress in local and upper house elections is slow, Japan’s powerful lower house is worse. Female lawmakers constitute only 9.9% of the lower house, compared with 8.4% in 1946, the year after U.S. occupation authorities granted suffrage to Japanese women. 

“What on earth has Japan been doing for the past 76 years?” asks Mitsui Mariko, a women’s policy researcher who founded the Alliance of Feminist Representatives 30 years ago. “It’s more than scandalous.” 

Japan has made some efforts to boost women’s participation in politics, but critics say these programs have been overly timid and fail to tackle the gender imbalance head-on. This includes the 2001 creation of a government office known in English as the Gender Equality Bureau, though it’s worth noting the phrase “gender equality” does not appear in the office’s Japanese name, which literally translates to Men and Women Joint Participation Bureau.

Former Suita city council member Nakamoto Michiko says “more women continue to work after marriage these days, and men see more female peers in the same position,” but politics is lagging behind. 

Budding enthusiasm for governance – and impatience with the pace of progress – could help change that, she adds. 

Ms. Nakamoto, who also attended the July camp, launched consulting group Colorful Women’s Half with a friend last year to help more women win seats in local legislatures.

“We’ve seen rising momentum, which did not exist a decade ago,” says Ms. Nakamoto. 

This momentum is visible in the uptick in media coverage of women’s political representation, Ms. Nakamoto says, as well as in growing public outrage over sexism. More women are taking their frustration to the streets, working together to raise awareness about patriarchal norms in Japanese politics and society. 

Across Japan, for instance, women have organized monthly “Flower Demo” rallies against sexual violence for the past three years. Last year, Tokyo Olympics President Mori Yoshiro, a former premier, was forced to quit after sparking anger at home and abroad with sexist remarks that women talk too much.

Finding success

Yamada Yuko is one of many women whose political careers and activism began after the 2011 Fukushima meltdown, which inspired mothers across the country to become more involved in education, health, and food safety due to concerns about the effects of radiation on their children. She says it’s been a career defined by cooperation.

In the wake of the meltdown, she and her friends teamed up with activists, parents, and local officials to deal with health and safety challenges. Then, in 2014, she attended a meeting of the Angry Women’s Club, where those who were fed up with male-dominated politics gathered to share their frustrations and turn that outrage into action.

A year later, she ran for office during nationwide local elections and clinched a city council seat in Koshigaya, a suburb of Tokyo. The mother of two was later reelected with the second largest vote tally in 2019. Both campaigns were backed by a powerful network of mothers. 

“I had never thought about becoming a politician,” says Ms. Yamada, who also serves as the co-leader of the Alliance of Feminist Representatives. “It was an extension of civic activities.” 

Koshigaya now has 10 female councilors, including Ms. Yamada, representing 31% of the 32-member assembly, a relatively high percentage in Japan. 

Advocates say having more women in politics helps strengthen the city’s democracy, and means Koshigaya is better poised to tackle issues including domestic violence and sexual assault.

Barriers to entry

More women are interested in running for elected office, but they still face many intractable problems such as sexism and harassment. A government survey last year found 57.6% of the female local assembly members polled said they had been sexually harassed or intimidated by voters, supporters, and/or fellow members.

Ms. Mitsui, the women’s policy researcher, says the biggest obstacle to female candidates in national elections is Japan’s single-seat constituency system that favors major parties. Many seats have long been held by older men in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Of the 262 LDP lawmakers in the lower house, there are only 20 women.

“Japan should adopt a proportional representation election system instead” to reflect views of women and minorities, Ms. Mitsui argues. Such a system would boost opportunities for candidates endorsed by smaller parties, and Ms. Mitsui says the countries ranking as most equal in the Global Gender Gap index have each adopted some kind of proportional representation system. 

There has also been a growing call to introduce a quota system in national elections. One of the major advocates is the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ).

The party lost six seats in the July upper house election. But of the 17 candidates elected, nine are women. 

“We believe there are more obstacles to women’s participation in politics than men’s. So we will remove them and provide support for female candidates,” CDPJ President Izumi Kenta told a news conference in late July. 

For Ms. Yoshii, the mother of two grown daughters who lost the Miyoshi council election, participating in the academy’s political training camp led to soul searching. 

Ms. Yoshii realized that, during her campaign, she was frequently worried her words could make her father lose face or cause trouble for her elder brother. 

“In retrospect, I still adopted a very reserved attitude even though I was running for office,” she recalls. “I should have trusted myself more. It’s OK to express myself more freely.”