Going into battle

IN HER first two months on the job Yuriko Koike, Tokyo’s governor, has ruffled many feathers. She began before she was even elected, by running without the endorsement of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), of which she is a member but which supported another candidate. Since taking office she has revealed that the site to which the city’s main fishmarket is supposed to move has not been properly decontaminated; she is banning her staff from working past 8pm in the name of “life-work balance” and she has declared war on financial waste and corruption—taking the lead by pledging to halve her own salary. The hallmark of her tenure, she says, will be “major change” to the way the city is run.

In fact, it is a major change simply having someone like her as governor—mayor, in effect, of Tokyo prefecture, with a population of 13.6m and an economy roughly the size of Canada’s. Not only is she a woman (unlike 87% of Japanese parliamentarians). She is also neither a political dynast (unlike five of the past seven prime ministers), nor a party stalwart. That played to her advantage in the election, but, alas, will limit her clout when taking on the old-boys’ network of city politics, as she has promised to do.

Pledges to take on vested interests tend to be popular in Japan. Fully 85% of Tokyo-ites approve of Ms Koike’s handling of the fishmarket issue, for instance. But changing her pay and her staff’s working hours is one thing; shaking things up outside her austere, cavernous offices in north-western Tokyo is quite another.

Ms Koike may well be able to rein in the rapidly rising budget for the 2020 Olympics, which Tokyo will host. And she seems likely to triumph in the row about the fishmarket, although it has infuriated developers and brought her into conflict with Shintaro Ishihara, a former governor who is being blamed for the failure to decontaminate. But she will struggle to eliminate incestuous practices, such as amakudari, or “descent from heaven”, the system by which senior bureaucrats glide into cushy jobs in one of the many public or private bodies affiliated with the city government after retirement, earning as much as 10m yen ($100,000) a year. “She is in a bind,” says Koichi Nakano of Sophia University. “She needs popular support and that means looking unafraid of vested interests, but if she continues like this she will face a nasty counter-attack.” As it is, the tabloid press has begun to publish unfavourable stories.

Ms Koike, who has changed party several times, has a knack for political survival. But her record is not quite as iconoclastic as she suggests. Although she was Japan’s first female defence minister, she resigned after less than two months in office, over a minor scandal. She is best known for promoting “cool biz” dress during a stint as minister of environment, an effort to get businessmen to doff jackets and ties in summer to save electricity.

Some observers speculate that Ms Koike will take her battle against corruption only so far, and focus on other priorities instead. One pledge she highlights is a plan to provide more nurseries, making it easier for mothers to work—something needed to ease Japan’s labour shortage and stubborn sexism. That is an indication of her pragmatism: as a conservative and member of Nippon Kaigi, a nationalist group which champions traditional values, this is not natural ground for her. She is also likely to reach an accommodation of some kind with the LDP, on similar grounds. She does not rule out setting up a party of her own, boasting, “I could create a party in three days.” But she would probably prefer to have the LDP’s imprimatur as she confronts many of the party’s members and allies in Tokyo. Just how far the confrontation will go, however, remains an open question.