The Kyodo news agency reported that former Japan Football Association president Saburo Kawabuchi was the front-runner to take over from Mori. The 84-year-old Kawabuchi played soccer for Japan in the 1964 Olympics and now heads the athletes’ village for the Games.
But many women took to social media to express their dismay that Japan’s elite had apparently chosen to replace Mori with an even older man, who has a reputation as a right-winger and has courted controversy in the past for supporting corporal punishment.
Fukuda said she was disturbed by the way the decision to replace Mori with Kawabuchi was apparently made behind closed doors, in the typically clubby way that excludes women.
“Repeating this way of decision-making has already shown us that they don’t understand what kind of change needs to be made, to see they are now really supporting gender equality,” she said.
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<Simon Denyer>
Simon Denyer is The Washington Post’s bureau chief in Tokyo, covering Japan and the Koreas. He previously worked as The Post's bureau chief in Beijing and New Delhi; as a Reuters bureau chief in Washington, New Delhi and Islamabad; and a Reuters correspondent in Nairobi, New York and London.
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