Japan Leftist Mobilizes Women Against Regime

Takako Doi, a rare female in the male world of Japanese politics, is fighting mad, determined to deploy the cleansing influence of uncorrupted homemakers to sweep out corruption and avenge broken political promises.

In the rural conservative stronghold of Fukushima, voters Wednesday gave Doi, the Socialist Party chairwoman, reason to believe that she and her followers may in fact make an impact on Sunday’s crucial election for the upper house of Parliament.

Indeed, what appeared impossible only three years ago, when Doi became the first woman to lead a major political party in Japan, now shapes up as the likely outcome.

The Socialists, decimated in 1986 by their worst election showing ever--and who for years appeared content to be the gadfly of the opposition--stand to win, for the first time, more of the seats at stake in a national election than the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Not since the Socialists and the Liberal Democrats came into being in 1955 have the Liberal Democrats lost control of either house of Parliament.

Doi’s stumping in Fukushima shows that the former constitutional lawyer and college professor apparently has succeeded in shunting her party’s ideological hang-ups into the background while stirring up a rebellion of women and giving the Socialists the benefit of across-the-board anger against the ruling party.

About 3,000 voters lined the sidewalks and packed a balcony of a Fukushima department store to see and hear her. Shouts, cries, applause and waving hands greeted her as she appeared on the roof of her campaign van. The crowd paid rapt attention to her message that the time has come to retaliate against the Liberal Democratic Party, its broken promises, its corruption and its “arrogance.”

Doi preached the superiority of women, attributing to “ordinary housewives” a virtual monopoly on morality.

“Japanese women have persevered toward their fathers and their husbands, always walking several steps behind men,” she said. “But the time for an end of perseverance has arrived. It’s time for the women to stand up and tell the men to follow us.”

The gathering in Fukushima, and an even larger crowd of 5,000 later in Koriyama, contrasted vividly with one in Osaka, where beleaguered Prime Minister Sosuke Uno finally managed to give his first stump speech since the campaign began July 5.

Uno, besieged by unanswered sex-for-money charges, was heckled by several hundred women as he arrived to deliver an indoor speech to a crowd of Liberal Democratic supporters.

“Don’t mess around with women!” some shouted.

Uno was reduced to warning that if the Liberal Democrats lose a majority in the upper house--and as a result are forced to bargain with the opposition to enact any legislation except the budget and treaties--Japanese politics will fall into chaos.

When Doi mentioned this warning, someone in the crowd cried out: “They must be joking!”

Doi agreed. The idea that only the conservatives can rule Japan, she said, is another example of the “arrogance” that 34 years of unbroken control of Japanese politics has created in the ruling party.

Doi recalled that the Liberal Democrats had broken their 1986 election promise not to implement a highly unpopular 3% consumption tax and had reneged on a pledge to farmers not to open Japan’s market to beef and citrus imports.

Now, she said, the Liberal Democrats, despite their disclaimers, “are about to do the same for rice.”