JAPAN: Women's group says they will not to have sex with men who vote for Tokyo governor candidate Yoichi Masuzoe

Record ID: 335451

  • Title: JAPAN: Women's group says they will not to have sex with men who vote for Tokyo governor candidate Yoichi Masuzoe
  • Date: 6th February 2014
  • Summary: TOKYO, JAPAN (FEBRUARY 6, 2014) (REUTERS) CAMPAIGN TRUCK WITH TOKYO GOVERNOR CANDIDATE, YOICHI MASUZOE (SOUNDBITE) (Japanese) CAMPAIGN TRUCK WITH TOKYO GOVERNOR CANDIDATE, YOICHI MASUZOE, SAYING: "If you leave things to any other candidate, Japan will sink beneath the waves. That is the attitude in which am campaigning." PEOPLE WATCHING MASUZOE MASUZOE STANDING ON TRUC
  • Embargoed: 21st February 2014 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Japan
  • Country: Japan
  • Topics: Quirky,Politics,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVA1I20HIDP9M4W0FBFD5YLYF53D
  • Story Text: With the election in Tokyo for the next governor only days away, one group of women has taken the battle to the bedroom as they look to bring down one candidate.
    Tokyo governor candidate and former health and labour minister Yoichi Masuzoe is supported by the current ruling party of Japan the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and has even had Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe come out to support him. He is currently running in first place, according to a majority Japanese media opinion polls.
    "If you leave things to any other candidate, Japan will sink beneath the waves. That is the attitude in which am campaigning," Masuzoe said to supporters on Thursday (February 6) morning.
    For one group of women though, they don't believe that Masuzoe has the credentials to run one of the world's largest cities and with some creating a Twitter group calling for women not to have sex with men who vote for Masuzoe. They say that Masuzoe has a male chauvinist image.
    Thirty-four-year-old member Maki Arai says even going out with anyone will vote for him is unfathomable.
    "If I actually met someone like that (who would vote for Masuzoe), even before asking whether they would vote, I don't think I'd get along with them. But if I did ask them and they said they'd vote that way, then there's no chance," Arai said.
    Arai's husband however is not in trouble. She says whenever they watch the news together they tend to agree on who they prefer.
    "Right now, between the two of us, our opinions match so when we look at the news we both say that this person or politician is good and tend to agree. So I think we're okay," Arai said.
    The women's group, is now 2,800 strong.
    Thirty-two-year-old Akiko Yoshida, who helped found the group, said she was inspired by the classical Greek play Lysistrata where the women of Sparta and Athens withhold sexual privileges from their husband as a way to end a war between the cities during the Peloponnesian War.
    "We felt that this was the time we needed to do something, and we had people who would even say that 'Oh this is like Lysistrata' and would support us for that. But in that story, they (the women) co-operated with the enemy's wives. For us however, it would have been better to get support from those in the LDP or Komeito," Yoshida said, referring to the two major parties that support Masuzoe.
    Tokyo's governor election takes place this Sunday (February 9) and had been called following the resignation of then-governor Naoki Inose in December - three months after Tokyo won its bid to host the 2020 Olympics - over his receipt of 50 million yen from a scandal-hit hospital chain.
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