Woman to Fill Key Japan Cabinet Post

Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu chose a woman Friday to replace a Cabinet minister who resigned in the second sex scandal of a disastrous year for the governing party.

The appointment of Mayumi Moriyama, 61, as chief Cabinet secretary was seen as an attempt to limit the damage caused by Friday’s resignation of Tokuo Yamashita from a government formed just 16 days earlier to cleanse the scandal-ridden image of the Liberal Democratic Party.

She is the first woman to be chief Cabinet secretary, and it is the highest government post ever held by a woman in this male-dominated society. Moriyama was director of the Environmental Agency, also a Cabinet position.

The chief secretary presides over twice-weekly Cabinet meetings, speaks for the government and coordinates policy discussions among ministries.

Acknowledged Affair

Yamashita, 69, stepped down after acknowledging a three-year affair with a bar hostess nearly 45 years his junior.

He became the sixth Cabinet member, including Prime Ministers Noboru Takeshita and Sosuke Uno, to resign in less than a year because of an influence-peddling scandal, publicity over illicit sexual liaisons and an election defeat.

A major factor in the election loss last month, which cost the Liberal Democrats their majority in Parliament’s upper house, was outrage by housewives at a 3% sales tax the party forced through Parliament last fall.

“Mrs. Moriyama has experience as a housewife as well as a bureaucrat, and can see things from a consumer’s standpoint,” Kaifu said in announcing the appointment. “She will be able to include the people’s perspective in policy discussions.”

Takako Doi, the popular woman leader of the newly vigorous Socialist Party, has been the main beneficiary of the public discontent with the governing party. The selection of Moriyama was seen as a way to counter Doi’s impact.

Elected to Parliament

Moriyama, a former bureaucrat in the Labor Ministry, was elected to the upper house of Parliament in 1980. Kaifu chose her for the Environmental Agency, her first Cabinet post, when he formed his government earlier this month.

Setsu Shiga, a man and former deputy to the chief Cabinet secretary, was named Friday to replace her in the environment post.

Asked whether she expects problems, Moriyama told reporters, “I was just appointed and I can’t really tell what it is going to be like. But as far as my nearly 40-year professional experience is concerned, I never felt any handicaps from being a woman.”

Moriyama was one of only two women in a class of 686 that graduated in 1950 from the Law Department of prestigious Tokyo University, the training ground for Japanese politicians. She entered the Labor Ministry as one of its first female career officers in 1950, and was director general of its Women’s and Young Workers’ Bureau from 1974-80.

In 1980, she was elected to the House of Councilors from Tochigi prefecture, and in 1985 was appointed parliamentary vice minister for foreign affairs, when her exclusion from an all-male golf club became a minor cause celebre. Moriyama, whose official golf handicap is 26, was never admitted to the club.

Moriyama has greater international skills than many Japanese politicians. She is fluent in English and served as head of the Japanese delegation to the U.N. World Conference on the Women’s Decade in Nairobi in 1985.

She has experience dealing in Japan-U.S. relations and other international problems as head of the party’s Foreign Affairs Division and of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the upper house.

Moriyama is the widow of Kinji Moriyama, a legislator and former transportation minister who died of a heart attack in 1987. She is said to have inherited some of his power base. She has two daughters.