Ozawa’s Princesses

Young female politicians in the Democratic Party of Japan – many of whom were encouraged to stand for election by the party’s secretary-general Ichiro Ozawa.

There has been an influx of young female politicians into Japan’s National Diet – the country’s legislative body – according to Coco Masters in Time:

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 in the upper and lower houses. More than one-fourth of them are serving for the first time.

Of these debutants, 26 are DPJ members:

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” because most were recruited to run for parliament by Ichiro Ozawa, the DPJ’s 67-year-old secretary general and chief election strategist. By running a slate of female neophytes – many of them unknowns and outsiders – Ozawa drew fire from some pundits who accused him of offering up unfit candidates to capitalize on voters’ increasing concern over Japan’s worsening economic plight and their frustration with an ineffective political establishment.

However, Masters noted that while Ozawa’s “princesses” may lack “on-the-job experience,” they are not “political novices” – many have come from local politics, or are experienced activists, with proven track records.

Japan’s female lawmakers are generally seen by voters as kokumin no mesen – ordinary citizens – who have a better understanding of grass-roots issues.

(In Britain, the 101 female Labour Members of Parliament elected in Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide were nicknamed “Blair’s Babes.”)