By Dawn Stover -高辅卿选译

　　When Junichiro Koizumi was sworn in as Japan's prime minister in April last year, one of his most daring acts was to name MakikoTanaka as his foreign minister—Japan's first woman to hold the post. The daughter of former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka. Makiko is known for her casual dress and blunt manner. In the past, she has been voted Japan's most popular politician, and her support for Koizumi was a key factor in his victory.

　　But Tanaka has critics too, who question whether she's up to the job of foreign minister. In the past, her outspokenness has brought her censure as well as praise. She was ever disciplined after referring to the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi as a "dead duck"and "the king of debt." Other political colleagues have received put-downs: One party loyalist was described as "a bean-jam-filled wafer"; another as "a glasses-wearing cherry."

　　Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tanaka began her new job by addressing a recent controversy: the publication of a new textbook that drew criticism from China and South Korea for the way it glossed over Japan's wartime history. Her statement that "some people were trying to distort historical facts" won widespread approval—raising hopes that this unconventional politician will provide an effective new voice for Japan.

　　According to a recent public-opinion poll, the support rate for Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet marked an amazing record, 87%. After Koizumi took office , the record popularity rating has been rising. It is very unusual because most popular Cabinets lose their support one month after their inauguration. "Koizumi's high popularity is largely based on Tanaka's," says one political analyst.

　　Ms. Tanaka is a 57-year-old politician from Niigata prefecture. In 1993, the year her father passed away, Makiko Tanaka ran for the first time for the House of Representatives from the third constituency of Niigata. She was elected with the highest number of votes. In June 1994, at the age of 50, she joined the Murayama cabinet as Minister of Science and Technology.

　　Ms. Tanaka has won popularity by openly criticizing not only politicians with the Opposition party, but also political leaders within LDP, even though she is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). She inherited Kakuei's brightness and eloquence and her raspy voice and her way of speaking are exactly like her father's.

　　Since she camesintosoffice, everyone knew that Makiko Tanaka would not be an average foreign minister. Now she is trying to reform the traditional bureaucratic system used by Foreign Ministry. By the appearance of Tanaka, state politics greatly draws the attention of the people. Some say she doesn't have a necessary experience for her job. Indeed she has little top-level experience,shavingsonly headed the Science and Technology Agency in 1994-1995. However, the people strongly expect the new leader to change the nation's politics, and the ministry receives a mass of telephone calls and e-mails from her supporters telling her to hang in there.

　　Ever since she took office, Japan's "Iron Lady" has been the target of leaks from within her own Foreign Ministry, and vicious attacks in the Japanese media. The apparent reason is that she has alienated the lifetime civil servants who staff Japan's central government, and who will brook no interference with their financial and political prerogatives. Tanaka strodesintosoffice and was no sooner through the door when she began investigating rampant embezzlement—a top ministry official spent hundreds of thousands of yen on the racetrack and girlfriends—and moving to establish control over an out-of-control institution.

　　Different from other figures in Prime Minister Junichero Koizumi's Cabinet, Tanaka represents the spirit of reform, of the urge to challenge and change the paralysis of Japanese politics: and, perhaps because of this, she is arguably the most popular figure in the government, even more popular than Koizumi. In the narcotized Japan of postwar prosperity, no normal person ever took the slightest interest in politics: the Koizumi revolution changed all that. Japanese housewives and "office ladies" are now glued to the tube during the afternoons, when Japan's parliamentary debate is televised: they can't wait to watch Makiko Tanaka take on the men and win.