Yuriko Koike has been called the most powerful woman in Japan and a potential successor to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. For now she is concentrating on affirming her unquestioned position as the most powerful woman in Tokyo.
People of the Japanese capital go to the polls July 2 to choose members of the 127-seat Tokyo Assembly (Koike herself is not on the ballot). Tokyo assembly elections have been bellwethers for national politics.
When in 2009 the opposition Democratic Party of Japan swept the assembly polls, it presaged the major victory that ousted the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Its dramatic drubbing in 20013 confirmed the party’s steep fall from favor.
But it is not the familiar faces, but a host of newcomers who were personally recruited by Koike who will decide who runs Tokyo. She is fielding a new party called the ‘Tokyo First Party,” which she hopes to win as many as 60 seats in the Assembly.
She has also formed an alliance with the Komeito Party, which normally votes in alliance with the governing LDP in parliament but is supporting Koike in Tokyo. Its suburban supporters are attracted to her good-government persona.
Koike, who formally resigned from the LDP June 1 to head her new party, has been encouraged by the results of a recent by-election in Chiyoda Ward, in which the incumbent Mayor Masami Ishikawa handily defeated three challengers including one supported by Abe.
The governor has an unusual way of selecting candidates. She formed a private political school called Kibo no Juku (School of hope) that attracted a few thousand aspiring politicians.
She then had them write essays on such topics of political reform or good governance, and after winnowing the essayist list, she chose some 60 candidates to run for the assembly. If successful and with the support from Komeito she will have a majority.
Her public approval ratings are 67 percent favorable (some polls are even higher). They blow everyone away, including those of Shinzo Abe, whose ratings, though lower than Koike, are still strong, especially for a premier in office for five years.
Voters seem attracted to her modest life style and openness, especially coming after her predecessor was forced to resign in part for allegedly using government funds to pay for luxuries.
Koike lives in a middle-class house in a nondescript part of Tokyo with her cousin and his children (she has never married) and her pet fox terrier.
She is in favor of open government almost to a fault. Olympics Chief Thomas Bach no doubt had assumed he was flying into Tokyo for a private tête-à-tête with the governor over the spiraling costs of the Olympic Games, which Tokyo plans to sponsor in 2020. He found Koike had turned the meeting turned into a media event.
More at Japan Fields a Powerful New Woman Politician
