Japan

Japan's parliament will look radically different when it formally elects Hatoyama as prime minister at a special session in the middle of next month. The lower house will contain 158 first-time MPs, just over 90% of them from the DPJ, and a record 54 women, 40 of them from Hatoyama's party. The chamber's 480 MPs have an average age of 52, with the youngest aged 27.

There was only one problem. Her Democratic Party had never been in power. In fact, only one party has really been in charge of Japan since the end of World War II. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) helped build the world's No. 2 economy, but it has also imposed a stifling consensus that discouraged public debate and suppressed civil society initiatives.

Japan, according to the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union, citing a November 2009 survey, ranks 106th among 189 countries in terms of the proportion of female parliamentarians in the House of Representatives.
Japan just has 45 women parliamentarians in the powerful lower chamber, occupying just 9.4 percent of the total 480 seats. The corresponding proportion in the 242-member Upper House is 18.2 percent.

Since the horrific Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated her coastal town of Minato, in Ishinomaki city, Masami Endo’s three-year-old daughter has been crying and clinging to her every night. Endo is very worried about her child. The two of watched the tsunami swarm into their town and through the first floor of their house, destroying the structure badly. Ishinomaki is located in Miyagi- prefecture, about 330 kilometres north of Tokyo.