Word: fukuda
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Fukuda is not so out of place anymore. The petite, soft-spoken activist from Nagasaki prefecture is one of more than two dozen rookie female politicians who three months ago swept into the legislature on a groundswell of antiestablishment public sentiment. During watershed national elections on Aug. 30, voters not only handed control of the government to the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) after more than five decades of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), they also elected a record number of women to high office. The Diet now includes 96 women among its 722 members...
...country with a low-hanging glass ceiling, the appearance of so many junior female politicians on the national stage has inevitably generated controversy. Besides Fukuda and Okamoto, members of a freshman class of 26 female DPJ lawmakers include Kayoko Isogai, a temp worker who was unemployed when she stood for election, and Mieko Tanaka, a former secretary and actress who had a small role in an erotic horror film, Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf. The group has been criticized for being little more than pretty faces unqualified to hold public office. During campaigning, some newspapers dubbed them "Ozawa's princesses...
...Regardless of the accusations, the tactics worked. Fukuda, for example, handily defeated LDP incumbent Fumio Kyuma, a former Defense Minister and nine-term parliamentarian. Yet, despite her lack of on-the-job experience, she and other Ozawa princesses are not political novices. A former psychology student who holds a black belt in karate, Fukuda at age 23 became a health care activist after discovering she was infected with the hepatitis virus by a contaminated blood transfusion she received as a newborn. She was just one of thousands of Japanese who received contaminated clotting agents in blood in the 1970s...
...early stages of the new Diet's first session, Fukuda says her focus as a lawmaker includes increasing access to Japan's health care system, including streamlining the drug-approval process so that life-saving medications can become available more quickly. "We need good social systems so people don't lose hope," she says. "There's so much uncertainty in society right now, so many suicides, so much worry and despair." This emphasis on issues of social justice leads some observers to hope that Ozawa's princesses can make a difference. By running for office, "These women weren't just...
...really a question of staying power. "There are more women learning about politics and networking and so [Fukuda] is not alone," Miura says. "We have to start from somewhere." During the election campaign, Fukuda says she was asked by several voters, "What can a young woman like you do?" Her response: "I understand the young part of what they were saying, but the woman part? That is irrelevant...