Japan’s Defence Minister is Ms Tomomi Inada. The Governor of Tokyo is Ms Yuriko Koike, herself the Defence Minister in 2007. And the leader of Japan’s opposition Democratic Party is Ms Renho Murata, who prefers to be known mononymously as Ms Renho.

Women are popping up in powerful public roles in Japan, in the wake of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s much-ballyhooed “womenomics” drive to boost Japan’s ageing workforce and put more women in leadership positions. But these high-level examples are usually more the exception than the norm, and not much has changed for the majority of Japanese women, say experts interviewed by TODAY.

Despite a slew of regulations introduced by Mr Abe since 2013 to move women up the corporate ladder, the country’s culture of long working hours, coupled with a dearth of support for childcare, continues to put women at a disadvantage when it comes to promotions, even if their participation rate in the workforce has increased steadily.

… Professor Naoko Kumada, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, said Mr Abe’s push to promote women was driven by economics, rather than a “serious reflection on the necessity to improve women’s cultural and social status”.