TOKYO — The victorious candidates leading the traditional "banzai" cheer following Japan's election included more women than at any time since 1946. After the applause died down, some seemed pessimistic about the obstacles they still face in a male-dominated political system.
"Women are handicapped as candidates and remain at a disadvantage even after getting into office," said Tomoko Nakagawa, a second-term lawmaker from the opposition Social Democratic Party.
Nakagawa was one of 35 women who won seats in the powerful lower house of Parliament on Sunday in an election that returned the three-party conservative coalition to power.
That's the largest female contingent to be voted into the lower house since 39 were elected 44 years ago under the postwar democratic constitution drafted by the U.S. occupiers.
And the 202 women who stood for office set an all-time record, up 32 percent from 153 in the 1996 election.
The trend is an encouraging one for women in Japan, where politics remains a bastion of male domination even as opportunities in the workplace are increasing. But the election results represent only a small breach in that bastion — which is why some Japanese women say it's too early to be optimistic.
Women still only occupy 7 percent of the country's 480 lower-house seats, among the lowest representation of any industrialized country.
Nakagawa says it all starts in the family, where many Japanese men remain reluctant to support their wives' career aspirations, political or otherwise.
"If you're a male politician, your wife attends supporters' funerals and weddings for you," she said in an interview. "But it doesn't work the other way around."
Japan passed a landmark law guaranteeing equal employment opportunities for women in 1985, but the idea that a woman's place is in the home remains pervasive in a seniority-based political system. That has a lot to do with why parties don't take women seriously as candidates or voters, analysts say.
"The attitude persists in Japanese politics that even if women get angry it's OK because they'll just go back to the kitchen," said Yasunobu Iwai, a professor of political science at Tokiwa University.
Few female politicians reach senior positions in their parties, and Cabinets typically include just one or two women who are given token portfolios with little influence.
The Cabinet that current Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori inherited from his late predecessor included a single woman — Kayoko Shimizu, a member of Mori's Liberal Democratic Party who was given the job of running the Environment Ministry.
"More women are being asked to run as an electoral strategy," said Teiko Kihira, president of the League of Women Voters of Japan and a former member of the upper house. "That's not the same thing as asking them to participate in politics on the same terms as men."
One of the few influential women in Japanese politics is Takako Doi, longtime leader of the small Social Democratic Party, which increased its seats from 14 to 19, including 10 women.
But the woman who got the most coverage was Yuko Obuchi, the 26-year-old daughter of former Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, who died of stroke last month. Pledging to carry out her father's unfinished business, she ran a winning campaign in his old constituency, despite her self-avowed lack of political experience.
Obuchi's success story, though common enough in a country known for its political dynasties, was one that some Japanese women would have preferred to hear less about.
"I didn't like the way she took advantage of the sympathy vote," said Yuko Hirana, a 25-year-old woman who works for a dot-com startup. "We need more women in politics who seem to know what they're doing."