In Japan, as in our country, there are a few holidays that are celebrated throughout the country, and there are also a much larger number of little-known professional days. Such "small" holidays are celebrated by narrow groups of people - from plumbers to women ministers. The latter celebrated their professional day in Japan in the middle of summer.
Day of Women Ministers in Japan is not a day off, but a professional holiday for an extremely narrow circle of people. Throughout the history of this country, there have never been a dozen female ministers in the government. Record in this regard was the cabinet of the government, headed by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi from 2001 to 2006. Then eight Japanese women had reasons to celebrate this day in a special way. Therefore, no special celebrations, folk festivals and official events on this occasion are held in the land of the rising sun. Rather, it is more correct to consider this holiday a new tradition designed to preserve a memorable date in the history of the country - the day of the appointment of the very first woman minister in the Japanese government.
This is not to say that in the earlier history of the island state, women were not at all among the highest government officials. At least seven empresses are known, some of whom have left a memory that has survived several millennia to the present day. However, the first representative of the fairer sex to take an official position in the government of the modern structure of state power in Japan appeared only in 1960. It was a period of rapid development of the country and its re-integration into the world community after the defeat in the Second World War. It was this process that significantly influenced the recruitment of Nakayama Masa, the daughter of an American entrepreneur, educated in Japan and the United States, to work in the government, who by that time had become a member of the lower house of the Japanese parliament. On July 19, 1960, she was appointed Minister of Health and Welfare in the government of Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda. It was in memory of this event that the Day of Women Ministers was later established.
Since then, on average, two Japanese women have been on the payroll of ministers in each government of the country. And in 2007, an event no less significant than in 1960 happened - a woman, Yuriko Koike, became the Minister of Defense in the country of the samurai.
