Sanae Takaichi - Japan's First Woman Prime Minister

Sixty-five years after Sri Lanka elected its first woman prime minister, Japan finally has its first, Sanae Takaichi. The last time a woman led Japan was in 1771, when the imperial throne was occupied by Empress Go Sakuramachi.

- BY GEORGE BRAINE

Other than being the first woman prime ministers of their respective countries, Ms. Takaichi and Sirima Bandaranaike have nothing in common. Mrs. Bandaranaike, who was from an aristocratic lineage, entered politics when her husband, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, was assassinated and she was nominated to lead his political party. She campaigned on the sympathy vote, addressing political meetings dressed in white, weeping profusely, earning the nickname "weeping widow".

Sanae Takaichi, from a working-class family, had to rise through the ranks to reach the top.

Slim and diminutive with an easy smile, Ms. Takaichi represents the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which she also leads, the first woman to hold that position. A member of the House of Representatives since 1993 (with a 2-year break), she has held several ministerial positions and is a protégé of the former prime minister Shinzo Abe. A self-made politician (she does not come from a political dynasty), she is well known for her right-wing views.

Ms. Takaichi was born in 1961 in Nara Prefecture in central Japan, to an office worker father and a mother who was a police officer. Despite qualifying to enter two prestigious private universities in Tokyo, she commuted six hours a day to attend Kobe University. The reason: her parents refused to pay tuition fees if she left home or chose a private university because she was a woman. Even at Kobe University, she paid her way through part-time work.