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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.