Table of Contents
Artificial Intelligence and Medicine
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
AI in clinical care, hospitals, education, and research
AI in medical imaging, risk prediction, treatment planning, hospital operations, education, and research, with patient safety, privacy, and accountability.
[AI Library] Chapter 6: Returning Home, Standing at the Podium
Beyond the Glass Ceiling
Part 1: Roots — From Nara to Washington
Chapter 6: Returning Home, Standing at the Podium
Kim Kyung-jin
Spring 1989. Narita Airport. The moment Sanae Takaichi descended the aircraft stairs and stepped onto Japanese soil, she felt the disparity between Washington and Tokyo acutely. To someone who had walked the corridors of the U.S. Congress for nearly two years, the country she returned to seemed dazzling on the surface. The Nikkei stock average remained at a high altitude. Land prices in Tokyo's Ginza were the most expensive in the world. It was an era when Japanese companies were buying up Rockefeller Center in New York and resorts in Hawaii. The noise of construction was heard everywhere, and young office workers consumed as if the bubble economy would last forever.
However, on January 7 of that year, Emperor Showa (昭和) passed away at the age of 87. Showa. An era name that began in 1926 and ended in 1989. War, defeat, economic miracles, and high growth were all under that name. Upon the Emperor's passing, a new era name was proclaimed the next day: Heisei (平成). A new age. Yet, the weight of Showa would not lift so easily. She had returned at the very moment a historical chapter was turning.
The first reality Takaichi faced upon her return was employment. Her period of study as a fifth-term student of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management had essentially come to an end. The Institute does not arrange jobs for its graduates. The principle of "Self-study, Self-attainment" applies even after graduation. One must find their own path. Takaichi secured a position as an assistant (助手) at the Japan Junior College of Economics (日本経済短期大学). A twenty-eight-year-old faculty member. Her subjects were American politics and international relations. It was a role where she could unpack the things she had seen and learned in Washington in the classroom. Her formal appointment as a full-time faculty member took place in April 1989.
The podium was not unfamiliar to her. She was accustomed to speaking. The countless oral presentations and debates she had conducted at the Matsushita Institute served as training. Lecturing in front of students was not technically difficult. However, she also knew that this was not her destination. The reason she spent five years at the Institute and two years in Washington was not to become a professor. The goal was to be a politician—the ambition she had disclosed in her letter to Schroeder: the Prime Minister of Japan.
Not long after she began lecturing, she received a phone call. It was TV Asahi (テレビ朝日). They requested her to appear on a current affairs program. The program's name was "Kodawari TV PRE★STAGE," a show dealing with lifestyle information and current events. Her background as an expert who had directly experienced American politics had caught their eye. Takaichi accepted. It began in April 1989.
Among those who appeared on the program with her was a name that would later become a politician: Renho (蓮舫). She was a young woman born to parents from Taiwan. She later became a member of the Diet for the Democratic Party and even served as its leader. Her political stance would become the polar opposite of Takaichi's. However, in 1989, the two of them hosted the same program in the same studio. It was an era when television served as a stage to introduce the faces of aspiring politicians.
Broadcasting trained Takaichi in two specific skills. The first was the art of communication: explaining complex political issues so that viewers could understand them in a short amount of time, and conveying the core message without using technical jargon. This is different from lecturing to students. In a lecture, the audience listens with focus. On television, viewers can change the channel. If the speech is not clear, they move to the next channel. That tension sharpened her power of expression. Later, when she would answer sharp questions from opposition members on the floor of the Diet without hesitation, the reflexes honed in broadcasting were at work.
The second was the ability to make immediate judgments on current affairs. In live programs, unexpected topics arise. One must state an opinion immediately on an event that has just broken. It is the training of making judgments in real-time while accepting the risk of being wrong. This, too, is a necessary ability for a politician. When she had to respond instantly to sharp questions from the opposition in the Diet, the reflexes tempered in broadcasting went into action.
In October 1990, a greater opportunity arrived. She became the main anchor for the Fuji TV (フジテレビ) network's morning program, "It's Morning! What Happens?" (朝だ！どうなる). A morning broadcast. It was a program viewers watched as they started their day. It summarized the news, delivered the weather, covered social issues, and featured conversations with guests. It was a nationwide broadcast.
This position was more than just a television appearance. It was a matter of showing her face to viewers across the country every morning. For an aspiring politician preparing to run for office, there was no more effective way to build name recognition. Of course, the viewers did not need to know that the anchor was an aspiring politician. It was enough for her to be recognized as the young, clear-headed woman appearing on the screen every morning. "Ah, that person is running," they would think when she finally entered an election, and she would no longer be a stranger.
A life holding two titles—broadcaster and educator—simultaneously followed. In the mornings, she stood in the classroom; in the afternoons, she headed to the broadcasting station. She took neither role lightly. When explaining American politics to students, she spoke of what she had actually seen in Washington. When providing commentary on current affairs on television, she maintained the logic of a scholar. The two roles reinforced each other.
The reality of Japanese politics was also changing rapidly. Throughout 1988 and 1989, the Recruit Scandal broke. It was a case where the Recruit Cosmos company distributed unlisted shares to influential politicians as a form of bribery. The names of former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone (中曽根康弘), former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita (竹下登), and dozens of other politicians and bureaucrats were implicated. Prime Minister Takeshita resigned. His successor, Prime Minister Sosuke Uno (宇野宗佑), was short-lived due to a sex scandal. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) suffered an unprecedented defeat in the 1989 House of Councillors election.
Voter dissatisfaction was mounting. There was anger over political corruption and a sense that the "38-year rule of the LDP" was rotting away. It was not yet clear where that anger would be directed. New political parties began to emerge. Members who had left the LDP were banding together. The phrase "political reform" was on the lips of every politician.
Takaichi was reading this trend accurately—while hosting her morning show, lecturing, and traveling to various regions. And in 1992, she judged that this trend could become an opportunity for her.
That year, she published two books. One was "Everything about the Power of the American President" (『アメリカ大統領の権力のすべて』). It was a book that analyzed how the U.S. presidential system works, based on her experiences in Washington. It was a rarity in the Japanese market at the time, being a book written by someone who had actually worked in Congress. She recorded how a president persuades Congress, conducts budget negotiations, and implements policy through executive orders, all from the perspective of one who had watched from across the corridors.
The other was "Rejecting the Myth of America as a 'Great Nation for Women'" (『アメリカの「女性大国」神話を斥ける』). It was a book that analyzed the prejudice and structural discrimination she had experienced as an Asian woman in Washington. At the time, there was a widespread perception in Japan that the United States was a country far ahead in women's rights. Takaichi questioned that myth. During her time as a congressional intern, she experienced blatant discrimination because she was Asian and because she was a woman. It was a record from someone who had directly witnessed the glass ceilings and racial prejudices that actually exist behind America's superficial discourse on diversity.
These two books were more significant than mere publications. They enhanced her credibility as a scholar while simultaneously clarifying her stance as an aspiring politician. A conservative female politician who is wary of uncritically importing American-style feminism—this image was formed during this period.
In the same year the two books were released, she applied for the official nomination from the Nara Prefectural Federation of the LDP. And she was rejected. The reasons were complex. She had no local base. She had no ties to the local LDP organization. She had no hereditary foundation. From the party's perspective, issuing a nomination to a candidate who seemed unlikely to win was a waste of resources.
After receiving the rejection, there were two options: give up or run as an independent. Takaichi chose the latter. She decided to run as an independent in Nara for the 1993 House of Representatives general election. Without an organization, without party support, all on her own.
She began election preparations. She opened an election office and gathered campaign workers. However, there were not many volunteers at first. Few people thought it was efficient to spend their time on the campaign of a newcomer female independent. She started with a few core campaign workers.
On days she had lectures, she lectured; on days she had broadcast recordings, she recorded; and she spent the rest of her time touring her constituency. Village halls, markets, and voters' homes in Nara Prefecture. She shook hands, made eye contact, and remembered names. She literally carried out the advice her father had written in a letter: "Do not forget to shake hands and bow." The basics of sales, which the branch manager of a machinery company had taught his daughter, became the basics of a political campaign.
Her name as a broadcaster was helpful. The time she had spent showing her face every day on the morning program had accumulated. The voters' recognition—"Ah, that person has come out." She was not a complete unknown. However, compared to organized elections, the gap was large. Incumbent LDP members had dense local organizations called "Koenkai" (後援会). Chambers of Commerce, agricultural cooperatives, medical associations, and various groups. These organizations systematically funneled votes in every election. She had to fight without that mechanism.
However, 1993 was a time in Japan when that very mechanism was shaking. Disappointment with the LDP was high due to corruption scandals. An increasing number of voters felt skeptical about casting votes as directed by organizations. There was an atmosphere desiring change. Within that atmosphere, a newcomer independent unrelated to party logic could instead appear as a symbol of "new politics."
The LDP's long-term dominance itself was also wavering. Formed in 1955 through the merger of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party, the LDP had been in power continuously for 38 years since that year. Scholars called that system the "1955 System." A structure where the LDP and the Socialist Party divided Japanese politics from the right and left. However, as the bubble economy burst, that structure also creaked. Voices calling for political reform emerged even within the LDP. In 1992, a group led by Ichiro Ozawa (小沢一郎) clashed with the leadership over political reform bills within the LDP.
Moving between the broadcasting station and the classroom, Takaichi covered and analyzed this flow of change every day. Her title as a current affairs anchor placed her right next to the political scene. She had opportunities to meet politicians. She observed how they spoke, what they worried about, and where they faltered. That observation became her preparation as a politician.
In the summer of 1993, four years after returning home, Sanae Takaichi staked everything she had built on the election field in Nara. The teachings of Matsushita, the experience in Washington, the face of broadcasting, the language of the classroom. She could not guarantee herself how well these would work in an election without an organization.
The results of the election will be revealed in the next chapter. However, let us point out the significance of these four years after her return. The time she spent lecturing, broadcasting, writing, and preparing for the election was not a mere period of waiting. It was a process through which an aspiring politician with no hereditary foundation, no organization, and no funds created her own competitiveness. Professional knowledge and public communication skills. She refined the content she gained from Matsushita and Washington through television and the classroom. Addressing the voters with the language created in this way—that was the only weapon she could possess in an election without an organization.
In Japanese political history, there are several broadcaster-turned-politicians who have left their mark. However, most of them took the path of receiving a party nomination using their broadcasting fame as a springboard. Takaichi was different. She went ahead even after being refused a nomination. In that respect, her entry into politics left a unique trace from the beginning. She started not with power pushed from the outside, but with power she created herself. That was the prototype of her political style that would continue for decades to come.