Ota Fusae, 48, a former official at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, defeated two major rivals in a gubernatorial election in Osaka Prefecture to become the country's first female prefectural governor, and one of the youngest, too.
An engineer by training, the 51-year-old got his start in politics by managing the 1974 Upper House campaign of the late Fusae Ichikawa, Japan's leading feminist politician who championed equality of the sexes, shunned political parties and aided the fight against corruption.