Women are still expected to stay at home and care for the house and children. They are expected to be modest and passive. And Japanese law still requires that married couples use one surname, which almost always means the man's. But as women work to move into the male world of politics, they are not merely imitating men. They speak as women whose concerns have not been adequately addressed by government.
Women are, in some cases, carrying their concerns into national politics.
Senator Tamako Nakanishi, for example, authored and fought for the nation's equal employment opportunity law to open up jobs to women. But it is in local politics that women are beginning to find real strength. Some women say they are tired of the intense focus on economic issues and want to give attention to other domestic concerns. While conventional wisdom holds that Japanese women lag behind American women in entering politics, note that these figures are not radically different. It is also notable that a woman, Takako Doi, served as speaker of Japan's House of Representatives for 3 years-an accomplishment Americans have yet to match.