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Paper short abstract

Drawing on parliamentary committee membership and official post allocation records, this study investigates how engagement in the legislative representation of policy areas associated with women shapes the career trajectories of Japanese legislators within the government.

Paper long abstract

This study investigates how sustained engagement in feminine policy areas intersects with political career trajectories of legislators in Japan. On the one hand, policy domains associated with women and feminine qualities, such as child- and elderly care, women’s safety, and gender equality, are frequently embedded in institutional hierarchies that assign them lower prestige, fewer resources, and limited access to valuable networks and posts. Moreover, certain policies related to women challenge entrenched gender norms, exposing their proponents to potential backlash from conservative voters and party gatekeepers. Female legislators, as the key representatives of women’s interests, may be disproportionately disadvantaged in this respect. On the other hand, Japan’s demographic decline, labour shortages, and changing family structures have increased the relevance of feminine policy areas. Some studies further suggest that gender role-congruent behaviour, aligning with normative expectations about appropriate political roles for women, may be seen favourably by voters, enhancing perceived expertise of female politicians and opening inroads for them in politics.

Engaging with these competing perspectives, this study enquires whether ruling parties’ lawmakers who specialise in feminine policy areas experience different patterns of career advancement than those who do not, and whether female politicians face distinct incentives or constraints. To explore these questions systematically, the study draws on the Diet committee membership data between the 2012 and 2026 elections to evaluate policy specialisation of legislators. These data are combined with official records on cabinet portfolio assignments to trace politicians’ career development over time, based on their gender and policy focus. By examining legislators’ career outcomes, this study explicates how gendered political institutions and norms shape the incentives for representing issues related to women in Japan, offering additional insights into the persistent gap between social demands and slow political reform.

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Paper short abstract

Female mayors in Japan occupy highly visible yet exceptional positions. This paper examines how they navigate gendered expectations in local executive office and manage visibility as both a constraint and a strategic resource in campaigning and governing.

Paper long abstract

Women remain significantly underrepresented in Japanese politics, particularly in executive leadership positions. As of 2025, only 4.1 percent of municipalities are headed by a female mayor. While this figure has increased slowly over the past two decades, female mayors continue to occupy highly exceptional and therefore highly visible positions within local political contexts. This paper examines how female mayors in Japan navigate this heightened visibility and how it shapes their representative practices.

Building on debates on descriptive, substantive, and performative representation, the paper examines how female mayors frame their political roles and negotiate gendered expectations in both campaigning and governing. Rather than evaluating whether female mayors pursue distinct policy agendas or claim to represent women as a specific constituency, the analysis focuses on how they articulate a universalistic representative role while simultaneously navigating their heightened visibility as women in executive office. It further explores how female mayors relate to so-called “women’s issues” and how gender operates as a symbolic resource, a constraint, or something to be strategically downplayed.

The paper draws on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Japan between 2023 and 2024, including semi-structured interviews with seven incumbent female mayors, participant observation of election campaigns, and analysis of campaign materials, local media coverage, and official communications. The paper highlights variation in how mayors manage visibility depending on career background, local political environment, and media attention. While some emphasize gender explicitly to signal change and mobilize support, others deliberately try to avoid gendered stereotyping. By analyzing visibility as both a burden and a strategic resource, the paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of political representation beyond the parliamentary arena. It demonstrates how gendered representation is actively negotiated in local executive offices and how institutional contexts shape women’s political agency beyond the central government.

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Paper short abstract

This paper analyzes Diet debates and party proposals on Japan’s surname system in the 2020s, focusing on the selective separate surname system. Applying the WPR approach, it traces competing problem representations and examines whether and how they invoke and constitute women’s rights and interests.

Paper long abstract

Debates over allowing married couples to retain separate surnames (fūfu bessei) remain a recurrent issue in Japanese politics. This study analyzes how the “problem” of Japan’s current surname system, which requires married couples to share a single surname, is represented in Diet deliberations and in party policy proposals and discussions, with a primary focus on the 2020s. It pays particular attention to whether and how women and women’s rights and interests are invoked—or not—within these texts. At the same time, the study examines how “women’s rights and interests” are constituted within competing representations of the policy problem. Rejecting the assumption of fixed or homogeneous “women’s interests,” it treats interests and rights-claims as objects of political contestation. What comes to count as “women’s interests,” and which rights are framed as requiring protection or advancement, can vary across actors and may reflect competing priorities.

Building on Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach, I analyze selected Diet debates and party proposals related to surname policy from the 2020s. The analysis asks: (1) What is the “problem” represented to be in these policy texts? (2) What presuppositions or assumptions underlie these representations? (3) What is left unproblematic or taken for granted? and (4) What effects are produced by these problem representations? In addressing these questions, the study specifically interrogates whether and how women’s interests and rights are invoked and constituted within each analytical stage—from the initial framing of the “problem” to the underlying assumptions, the silences, and their effects.

By unpacking these representations, the paper aims to clarify the gendered dynamics of contemporary policy debate over surname policy in Japan and to contribute to political science research on how gender equality is articulated, constrained, or marginalized within policy debates. The analysis may also shed light on why the introduction of a selective dual-surname system has remained stalled since the early 1990s, despite international pressure and shifting domestic public opinion