Behind her handmade, printed face mask, seen as fashionable and kawaii (cute) by some, it is hard to imagine what incumbent Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko is actually thinking after her landslide win for her second term as the leader of the capital and megalopolis of Japan.
Avid Media Puppeteer
During one of Koike’s daily COVID-19 press conferences at the height of the public health emergency back in early April, the region experienced a dire shortage of disposable face masks. The Governor claimed a neighbor gave her her reusable cloth mask.
Some criticized Koike for her newfound enthusiasm for strict COVID-19 measures and daily press briefings after the postponement of the Olympics had been made official. By which time, the number of infections in Tokyo had already risen. But despite her questionable priorities, the media-savvy former news anchor’s eloquent presentations onscreen reassured the public. This stood in stark contrast to the fumbling, telepromptor-loving Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, whose COVID-19 measures drew international ridicule.
Weasel-Wording in English
Governor Koike’s evening COVID-19 press briefings were accentuated with her signature frivolous and psuedo-sophisticated use of English and Japanglish words. These included “stay home“, “オーバーシュート (“overshoot” – sudden rise in the number of infections)”, and later, “Tokyo Alert”, a region-specific emergency measure. (Some critics say she ripped this one off from Osaka prefecture.)
The alert was lifted and has not since been reinstated – in spite of the growing number of infections. Koike adopted the wag-the-dog tactic of revising the alert guideline later on to justify the lifting. She then caused further confusion among the public by dispensing with numerical targets altogether.
Koike’s pledge for her second term campaign were peppered with katakanafied slogans such as “greater Tokyo”, “frail policy (to lower the need for nursing care of the elderly by keeping them fit), and “wise spending.” She even proposed establishing a Tokyo version of the US Centers for Disease Control.
Of Koike’s “seven zeros” pledge for her first term campaign back in 2016, only one had been “accomplished” – zero cats and dogs put to sleep. But in reality, 150 cats and dogs were culled. Koike had discreetly changed the rules in counting the cullings after having taken office; she had exempted cats and dogs that pose danger to humans or were ill and unfit to be rescued. This inaction leaves Tokyo with a full slate of issues to tackle.
Koike’s manner of speech
Judging from Koike’s personality as depicted in non-fiction writer Ishii Taeko’s bestseller book, The Empress Koike Yuriko (女帝 小池百合子), one begins to doubt whether she was ever as friendly with her neighbors as she says. In fact, one starts to doubt whether anything she says is true at all.
Shady Dealings
Koike’s co-ownership of her two real estate properties in the past with former secretary Mizuta Masahiro and [perhaps dummy] co-habitant as depicted in Ishii’s book, casts doubt, since she had initially called Mizuta her ‘nephew’ and then later her ‘maternal cousin’. These real estate properties were later revealed to have been sold off to the CEO of Vector, a major PR firm, in 2016. The CEO, in turn, sold one of the properties to his wife a year and a half later, according to a Bunshun Online article.
Vector was supposedly the firm that made an effective campaign video for Koike’s first run for the Tokyo gubernatorial election back in 2016. In the video, a Koike-like messiah figure clad in a green suit arrives clanging her heels while being jeered by old, stale looking male politicians (suggestive of the old-and-moldy LDP). Fresh-faced young male politicians then surround the female figure.
Castle of Sand
In Ishii’s book, Koike is portrayed as being soulless and as cold as ice when the cameras aren’t rolling. Most disturbing of all, judging from Ishii’s book, she’s a pathological liar. Even her academic credentials from Cairo University, which feel about as real as unicorns, have been repeatedly called into question by journalists in Japan.
Ishii’s book is currently only in Japanese. I encourage Japanese fluent readers to check it out. It contains a litany of insensitive remarks and actions by Koike – such as:
- The remarks she made in front of victims who were abducted by North Korea and their estranged and desperate family members
- The betrayal she showed towards the wives of Tukiji Fish Market business owners (Tsukiji Okamisan Kai)
- Her cold response to asbestos victims during her tenure as Environment Minister
- And, last but not least, her rude and condescending behavior toward reporters.
(Affiliate link; Unseen Japan earns a commission if you make a purchase from Amazon.)
Soul-Wise One-Night-Stands with the ‘Boyz Club’
Both Ishii and other press reports draw a picture of Koike as a 政界渡り鳥 (seikai watari-dori; political migrant bird) for shamelessly freighthopping different political party trains. To date, Koike has been in seven different political parties including her current Tomin First no Kai, a regional party she founded in Tokyo. Along the way, she’s developed a reputation for using and spitting out her closest political allies when she no longer needs them.
Back in 1993, her first victim was Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro of the Japan New Party (1992-1994). During this time, the usually dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP; Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s party) lost its majority in the Diet for the first time in thirty-eight years. In 1996, she befriended Ozawa Ichiro and became an ally to the LDP, joining several other parties before officially joining the LDP in 2002. In 2003, she became the Environment Minister under the second cabinet reform by Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro of the LDP.
Righter than Rightists, Wronger than Wrong
Prior to the election, journalist Tsuda Daisuke held an online forum called ”Who Will Get My Vote? Ten Questions to Ask Tokyo Governor Candidates”. During the Q&A, Tsuda pushed Koike to talk about her refusal to specifically eulogize the Koreans murdered during the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. Some 6,000 Korean citizens were murdered during the chaos that ensued after the earthquake hit.
Koike answered evasively:
毎年、9月、3月、横網町の公園内の慰霊堂で開かれております大法要で、関東大震災、その先の大戦の犠牲となられた方々への哀悼の意を表しているところであります。大きな災害で犠牲になられた方々、それにつづいて、さまざまな事情で犠牲になられた方。これらのすべての方々へ対しての慰霊の気持ちに変わりはございません。そして、なんでしたかしら？
“Every year, in September and March, there are a grand memorial services held within the Earthquake Memorial Hall in Yokoami-chō park, at which I’ve extended my condolences toward all victims lost to the great disaster, as well as to those who lost their lives under various circumstances. My commemorative stance toward all of these people remain unchanged…. And what else was it that you said?”
This obviously rubbed some citizens the wrong way – those citizens who actually care about marginalization, discrimination, and xenophobia in general. (Newsflash: they exist.)
Strategically Iridescent
Perhaps one of the most disturbing element to Governor Koike is that she is a member of the Japan Conference or Nippon Kaigi (日本会議), Japan’s ultra-conservative, far-right organization that asserts traditional gender roles, distributes discriminatory xenophobia, pushes for revisionist textbooks at schools that sanitizes Japan’s wartime atrocities, and advocates revising Japan’s post war pacifist constitution in order to remove barriers to remilitarization. Nippon Kaigi is supported by multiple groups – including religious organizations – who all seem to have a vested interest in “making Japan great again”. It’s thought that a whopping 80% of Abe Shinzo’s cabinet ministers are members.
But according to an AERA.dot article, Koike’s sometimes hawkish yet flip-flopping attitude on Japan militarization may well be just a card to garner votes.
It’s worth noting that Koike’s father Yūjirō belonged to Tatenokai, a xenophobic, nationalistic organization founded by the ultra-rightist writer Mishima Yukio.
Yūjirō Koike is also rumored to have been a member of スメラ学塾 (sumera gakujuku) which is a nationalistic, anti-white, antisemitic organization based on the belief that the Pacific War (WW2) was a holy war to liberate Asia.
Only Koike knows whether her sporadic yet fiercely nationalistic gestures are merely a superficial pledge of allegiance to the “boyz club” that is Japan, or whether she actually believes in it. Her slogan since her run for her first term back in 2016 was 都民ファースト (Tomin First, meaning Tokyoites first), but some have been calling her 自分ファースト (me first).
What It Takes for a Woman to Rise to Power
Koike’s rise to power begs the question; does a woman have to be an absolute bitch in order to beat men at their sly and corrupt political game?
Ishii, the author of the revealing book about Koike, says in an online article;
小池さんは、日本人の西洋コンプレックスとか、縦社会の歪みとか、男性優位な社会構造のスキをついてうまくよじ登ってきて、あと一歩で総理というところにまで来た人だと思います。その責任は、私たち一人ひとりにある。私は小池さんを批判するというより、むしろそんな私たちの社会はどういう社会なのか、と。それを言いたかったんです。
Ms. Koike has been adept at crawling up through the cracks of the Japanese societal structure, such as the inferiority complex toward western culture harbored among citizens, the flaws of our vertically structured society, as well as male dominance, and is among the next in line to becoming Prime Minister. Each of us has to be held accountable for this. Instead of criticizing Ms. Koike, I wanted to raise the issue of what makes our society the way it is.
…to which Hayashi Mariko, a household name female writer and interviewer for this article, concludes, “Everybody says she’s like a monster, but even after reading your book, I couldn’t dislike her. Tracking her life from childhood, I think, ‘It’s understandable that she became who she is. Maybe such a life isn’t bad after all,’ and I might even cast a vote for her (laughter).”
Which sums up the attitude of a lot of Japanese people and their culture of 清濁併せ呑む which literally means “swallow both the pure and the impure” in turn, meaning having the capacity to tolerate “necessary evil”.
Japanese people embrace a die-hard notion that the establishment, no matter how evil, cannot be changed, and “going with the flow” is a justifiable survival tactic. As with Koike, a lot of Japanese people’s way of living is 寄らば大樹の陰（”Might as well look for a big tree to shelter”; as in serving the powerful for one’s own good). In other words: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. As you can see, this cultural underbelly of either apathy or sucking up to power is a breeding ground for bullying and marginalizing and stepping on top of the powerless. But few people seem to realize that such an attitude is like eating away at one’s own limbs. According to an exit poll, 61% of women voted for Koike.
Not to excuse a populist attitude lacking in moral fiber, cause, or ideals, but it would indeed be too easy to simply demonize Koike without considering the conditions that created her. Reading Ishii’s book, you realize that Koike’s utter lack of compassion toward marginalized people and her latent sell-out of women, in general, has a backstory.
Consider Koike’s love-hate relationship with her toxic father Yūjirō Koike, who was himself said to be a pathological liar and name-dropper. Yūjirō, an aspiring politician, was brown-nosing Ishihara Shintaro’s election campaign back in the 1960s, who did not reciprocate the favor, thereby Yuriko’s feud with Ishihara dates way back to this period.
Koike, still a high school girl back then, was supposedly seen weeping while cleaning up her father’s failed election campaign headquarters. It was the final nail in the coffin that spun the family into poverty and a lifetime of con-artistry. Consider growing up in one of the poor families in the affluent and “classy” Ashiya neighborhood of Hyōgo (the American movie The Slums of Beverly Hills comes to mind here). Koike’s life is like a real-life character out of Grotesque, a novel written by Kirio Natsuo, in which women are mercilessly judged by the male gaze, pitted against each other, and have to crawl over each other to survive.
The Pain of the Human Stain
With a prominent red birthmark upon her face that she had concealed throughout her puberty and career with heavy foundation, Koike, as a little girl, was brought up pitied and deemed a ‘defective product’ as a girl and woman so to speak. Her mother had tried everything in her power to get rid of her birthmark but in vain. Her father had felt a strong rivalry against his niece and Yuriko’s cousin, Sakiko, who was beautiful – one of the purported reasons why Koike was sent over to Cairo instead of Europe (England) where her beautiful cousin studied.
Imagine a lifetime in which ‘stigma’ is not figurative but literal – as well as “facade”. Imagine living a life in which society trampled over and spat on your authenticity; where every corner of society only saw your mark on your face and nothing else. Young Koike had charmed all the men around her, but never revealed her birthmark.
Imagine a life in which you were judged from 360 degrees: for your looks, your power (money), and brains (culture) – all yardsticks being used to scrutinize you. That is exactly what a woman feels, even today.
Ironically, it was the birthmark on Koike’s face that changed the tide in her favor back in her first run for the Tokyo governor seat in 2016. Ishihara Shintaro slammed her during a speech supporting LDP candidate Masuda Hiroya, calling Koike “a thickly made-up old hag 大年増の厚化粧.” The diss sparked fury among female voters. Koike had replied that this was to conceal her birthmark and that she uses foundation for medical use, painting herself as victim of patriarchy. It was perhaps a Schadenfreude moment for her – sweet revenge in a feud dating back decades.
Who Are We to Single Koike Out?
The most disturbing element in all of this is the realization that no woman has ever been purely non-complicit in patriarchy – especially Japanese women of older generations.
Women have long been held hostage to such rigid system of patriarchy that we are having to spend a lifetime of battling with internalized misogyny.
As compared to our male counterparts – Have we not smiled when told to smile? To get that contract? To get that job? To get a date? To keep our husbands happy? To keep food on our table? To meet societal expectations? To survive, and to protect our children? To avoid getting beaten up or raped in retaliation? To avoid being seen as some cold, expressionless, android-bitch by fellow women also?
One could label these everyday knee jerk reactions by women as a “micro-whoredom of the soul”. Something that has been subconsciously gnawing away at our self-esteem and our energy, little by little, day after day after day, while fueling men’s male sense of privilege, reinforcing the notion that men know best.
To survive in a man-made world, what if some of us women had turned that up several notches and had shamelessly beat men at their power game, as Koike does? The average woman suffers from imposter syndrome. But not Koike – she has no qualms about lying. Society had probably been cold and ruthless to her; she’s just reflecting that back. Some pay it forward, while others “payback forward” to get ahead.
Koike’s rise to power is a twisted, sinister version of “The soft and fair goes far; willows are weak, yet they bind other wood,” so to speak.
In this context, observing Koike is like observing an amplified, ugly nightmare version of oneself in the mirror.
Faster, higher, stronger, is the Olympics’ motto.
Colder, bolder, hungrier, is the power thirsty rule of the boyz club, apparently.
Is this the sort of game that we really want to play, just to be taken seriously?
Is Koike a female role model that Japanese girls should aspire to?
How much longer are we willing to remaining complicit in this structure?
Our silence is speaking volumes.
