Doi: In Japan’s Politics a Woman Finally Rises

For weeks before and after the late-July national election, Takako Doi’s wide smile and canny eyes--the “iguana face” some unkindly call it--stared out from every magazine, poster and television program in Japan.

Now the magazines and news shows have moved on to other celebrities; the posters have long since faded and fallen down. But Doi, 60, leader of the opposition Japan Socialist Party and Japan’s most powerful woman politician, is still a pivotal figure in the minds of voters and competing politicians.

In this island nation of 120 million people, where a woman’s place has traditionally been two steps behind, Doi is what the polls proved her to be in July: one of the most popular personalities ever to arrive in Japanese politics. If 1990 lower-house elections enable her to become prime minister, she would be the first opposition politician to reach the office in more than 40 years--and the first woman ever to fill the post.

Yet Doi is no longer the political juggernaut she threatened to become six weeks ago when she led the opposition that snatched away the ruling Liberal Democratic Party majority in the upper house of the Diet, Japan’s Parliament. She is not on her way to becoming Japan’s Margaret Thatcher.

The problem has nothing to do with the formidable charisma and ability of the former law professor turned politician. It has everything to do with her political affiliation.

Before the July election, as hordes of people streamed to Doi’s election rallies, it became clear that the popularity of Doi’s party had not caught up with her personal appeal.

In the conservative farming region of Fukushima Prefecture, long an LDP stronghold, half a dozen women said they came to see Doi for exactly the same reason. “She encourages women,” said a bank clerk in her 20s. A life-insurance saleswoman and a grandmother accompanied by a younger woman and a child used almost the same words. Would they vote for the JSP? No, they said, in almost exactly the same shy way.

High school girls who squealed every time Doi appeared underlined the message. Doi meant more to women as females than to women as voters.

When the election came, though, Doi’s popularity helped. The carefully built media image paid off: Doi was the honest, hard-working, beer-drinking earth woman lined up against a party of corrupt, lecherous old men. The Recruit financial shenanigans, an unpopular sales tax, agricultural market liberalization and former Prime Minister Sosuke Uno’s sex scandal convinced the public that the conservative LDP needed a good shaking.

Doi will not have it so easy next time. “People are supporting Takako Doi personally,” explained Yasuko Yamaguchi, sitting in a small restaurant. A woman nearby chimed in: “Next time the result will be different,” said Kazuko Yamanaka. “We are wondering how much we can rely on the JSP. Because once they get into power, they may change.”

Even JSP politicians are not optimistic that opposition parties, including Doi’s, will be able to duplicate their upper-house victory in the more powerful lower house. “At least we will gain seats,” ventured Manae Kubota, a JSP upper-house member who then launched into the more upbeat party line about overturning the LDP’s majority in the chamber.

The stakes are much higher in the lower house, which is why Japanese voters are likely to vote more cautiously next time. Loss of the overwhelming LDP majority would bring uncertainty, new policies--and possibly an end to the seemingly endless upward spiral of Japan’s postwar prosperity. All indications are that Japan’s voters are not ready for that much change.

A male-led Thatcherist government is probably closer to the Japanese political mood than a woman-led socialist or coalition government.

Voters still in love with Doi’s straight-arrow attitudes and respectful of her competence cannot help but look behind her at the JSP. There, they see a party still riddled by factions and still supporting unpopular stands on important issues. Although the JSP has backpedaled furiously on some of its old planks--such as opposition to the U.S.-Japan security treaty--few voters believe the party has really changed.

In a telling omission, the JSP has yet to abandon support for North Korea. A Western diplomat voiced the thought that crosses many minds: On foreign policy, he said, Doi “is extremely naive.”

Yet Doi has already left an indelible stamp on the Japanese political landscape. She has brought a whole new cadre of women into politics. Through her “Madonna strategy,” she recruited housewives, inexperienced in politics and untainted by political scandal, to fill out her thin electoral rolls. The LDP followed suit by running its own slate of female candidates. The successful candidates will be around for a six-year term.

Doi is a symbol of what women can achieve, although most women would not like to make the sacrifices--of home and family life--that Doi has made to reach a pinnacle of power.

After her July election victory, Doi often said, “the mountain has moved.”

In Ohmiya, at the dark restaurant where Yamaguchi and Yamanaka had been holding forth, the single man at the table of half a dozen women put Doi in another perspective: Doi is “a wave of a big tide,” said the elderly man, moving his hand like an ocean. “We don’t know if she is the only wave. But we know the tide’s direction,” and he brought his hands into shore.