‘I decided I could do better than them’: the women taking on Japan’s male-dominated politics

Tokyo’s skyline. Female participation in Japanese politics is among the lowest in the world. Photograph: Yuichi Yamazaki/AFP/Getty Images

Ai Ishimori was teaching Japanese cookery classes in France when she was gripped by an urge to return to her home country.

“Shinzo Abe was prime minister at the time, and a group of older men were doing a bad job of running the country,” she says. “But I was unable to do anything about it. I was really worried about the direction my country was going in.”