Inspiration from Takarazuka
Mayor Tomoko Nakagawa was elected in 2009 and has since been representing Takarazuka, a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture in the south of Japan. The city is well known for its hot springs and a Japanese all-female musical threatre troupe called the Takarazuka Revue. Mayor Nakagawa is committed to enhance the quality of life of people in her city and encourages them to contribute to the government work, including through town hall meetings, engagements in public discussions on radio shows, and expansion of frameworks for civil participation in a fiscal reform. Moreover, Mayor Nakagawa has worked to maintain fiscal health of the local government through an introduction of policies to promote transparency and prevent corruption. These include staff presence at all individual meetings with the mayor as well as documentation of such meetings. Another area of Mayor Nakagawa’s focus is to invest in future generations. This has been done through programs such as child welfare allowance in order to enable households and parents to provide adequate care to their children. Mayor Nakagawa has also worked on expanding nursery schools and child welfare facilities for those in need. Furthermore, she has sought to improve children’s education through increases in financial aid for low-income households, allocation of more teachers for middles schools and creation of school support teams. Apart from her contribution to Takarazuka city, Mayor Nakagawa has been prominent in campaigning for gender equality in Japan. The issue was brought to both national and international attentions in April this year after Mayor Nakagawa’s request to open a sumo wrestling match was turned down because of her gender.
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This is in contrast to the treatment of her male colleague; Mayor Ryozo Tatami  from Maizuru, who made remarks from a sumo ring at a similar event in the Kyoto Prefecture city. That event also drew gender spotlights. Mayor Tatami collapses while delivering his speech from inside the ring and when women, including a nurse, tried to enter the ring to help him, the referee asked them to leave. Mayor Nakagawa expressed her determination to campaign against gender discrimination. Her fellow female heads of local governments across Japan have also come together in this effort, calling for a change in this long-standing tradition that prohibits women from entering inside dohyĹ? or sumo ring. Despite her leadership of a small city of merely more than 225,000 populations, Mayor Nakagawa has made a remarkable contribution to the broader debates and consideration to ensure equal opportunities and treatments of all genders.