VOTE 2017: Record high ratio of women running, but still only 18% of total

Although the Oct. 22 Lower House election boasts a record percentage of female candidates, Japanese politics is still a man's world.

Women account for 17.7 percent of the total number of candidates, a far cry from the stated goal of political parties to achieve greater parity.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party is one of the worst offenders with plans to field just 25 female candidates, or 8 percent of the party's total.

Campaigning kicked off Oct. 10 before a bill drafted and sponsored on this issue by a nonpartisan group of lawmakers could be passed at the Diet.

“In Japan, genuine efforts haven’t been made (to bring parity to the number of candidates of both sexes)," said Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike as she stumped for a female candidate on behalf of her Kibo no To (Hope) in Nasu-Shiobara, Tochigi Prefecture, on Oct. 11.

Koike used her speech to point to the low ratio of female lawmakers in Japan.

“Half of our population are women. Let’s get serious about (tackling this issue),” she said.

In the Tokyo metropolitan assembly election held in July, women accounted for one-third of the approved candidates of Tomin First no Kai (Tokyo residents first association), a regional party led by Koike at the time.

The Hope party is fielding only 47 women out of 235 approved candidates in this election.

Forty-one of the women are newcomers to the party, as are 83 of the male candidates. The party's ratio of female candidates stood at only 20 percent at the official start of campaigning.

“We’ve tried, but the election was called so suddenly,” Koike explained to an Asahi Shimbun reporter.

“It takes time for candidates to leave their companies to run in an election,” she added.

The ratio of women in the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) was relatively high at 24 percent.

Yukio Edano, the former deputy president of the Democratic Party who recently set up the CDP, told reporters that the party leadership is “extremely conscious about the number of female candidates.”

“The figure is still low as a matter of fact. But I think it is permissible as a first step in this newly established party,” Edano said.

The LDP is fielding the largest number of candidates, 332, but women account for just 8 percent of the total, despite its pledge to bring greater parity to the number of candidates of both sexes running for national and local elections.

Toshihiro Nikai, the LDP's powerful secretary-general, briefly referred to the issue of female candidates in an Oct. 11 interview with media representatives.

“Just let things ride with the tide,” he said.

The low figure is due to the fact that male lawmakers are longtime holders of seats in many districts.

“It is difficult for us to find districts where women can run,” said a party insider. “We can field women only where veteran male lawmakers have retired.”

Nevertheless, of 44 newcomers to the party running under the LDP banner, only two are female.

That is because there is another factor that particularly applies to the LDP in that some seats have been in the same families for generations.

For example, the oldest son of Masahiko Komura, LDP vice president, is running for his seat. The same holds true for Okiharu Yasuoka, who heads the LDP’s Constitutional Reform Promotion Headquarters.

A study by the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) found that Japan ranked 165th among 193 nations in terms of female lawmakers as of Sept. 1.

For nations with a bicameral parliament, the ratio of female lawmakers in the lower chamber formed the basis of the IPU survey. Thus, Japan's ranking will not substantially improve after this election.

(This article was written by Keiko Nannichi, Shinichi Fujiwara and Azusa Ito.)