Japan’s patriarchal politics gets a jolt as 2 women prepare to go toe-to-toe in Tokyo governor race

Incumbent Yuriko Koike is widely expected to seek a third term as governor. She has yet to state her intention to join the race, but was praised for successfully guiding Tokyo through the pandemic and the attendant economic slump.

If confirmed, the independent would face a challenge from Renho Saito, an upper-house member of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ) who is half-Taiwanese and widely known by her first name.

“I want to make a break with old politics and create a metropolitan government that allocates the budget to policies that are truly necessary,” Renho said on Monday at a press conference where she announced her candidacy.

“Tokyo is a big, cosmopolitan city where the voters are more comfortable with women candidates for mayor,” said Hiromi Murakami, a professor of political science at the Tokyo campus of Temple University.

“If you go into a rural area of the country, it would still be deeply conservative and it would be difficult for a woman to even stand as a candidate. That is just the reality we face now,” Murakami told This Week in Asia.

The governor race in Japan’s capital does appear to be an outlier, with a study by the Mainichi newspaper suggesting that women’s representation in politics might be regressing.

A survey by the centrist news outlet, published on May 28, indicated that women account for just 18.1 per cent of the prospective candidates being put forward by the nation’s six major political parties for election to the 289 single-seat constituencies in the lower house of Japan’s parliament, in an election that has to be held by October 31, 2025.

That figure is lower than the 35 per cent target set by the government when it enacted legislation in 2018 to encourage greater engagement