By Yoo Jung
June 29, 2026 · 5 min readIn May 2026, Shoko Kawata, the 35-year-old mayor of Yawata City in Kyoto Prefecture, announced that she was pregnant with her first child and would take maternity leave before and after her expected delivery in September, becoming the first incumbent mayor in Japan’s history to do so.
In a city of about 68,000 people known for shrines and tea culture, the decision moved from local news to a national debate over whether an elected official could step away from public duties for childbirth.
Kawata’s case drew attention because Japanese law guarantees maternity leave to ordinary female workers, but mayors and other elected officials are not classified as regular employees, leaving her leave to be arranged through an acting mayor system rather than a clear legal entitlement.
As Kawata told reporters, “Systems can be changed, but people cannot,” adding, “I cannot become a man.” Her statement captured the central issue that the controversy was not only about one mayor’s absence, but about whether Japan’s political institutions were designed with women’s bodies and family lives in mind.
Kawata had already challenged political convention before her pregnancy. In 2023, at age 33, she became the first woman elected mayor of Yawata and the youngest female mayor in Japan’s history.
Kawata entered office after working as a Kyoto city case worker and political aide, campaigning on childcare and medical services for children, to name a few. Her political agenda is significant because Yawata itself reflects Japan’s demographic pressure as its population fell from 74,329 in 2002 to 67,876 in April 2026.
Kawata said that once she became mayor, she “really started to comprehend the seriousness” of Japan’s shrinking population. Her pregnancy, therefore, became symbolically complex because while Japan urgently needs more births, a woman in public office who chose to give birth while serving was treated by some critics as a problem.
Yawata City announced that Deputy Mayor Shigeto Nose would serve as acting mayor from July 20 to November 8, covering administrative work, city council responses, public events, and disaster response.
The leave period, eight weeks before and eight weeks after birth, was based on the standard applied to city employees and city council regulations. The city also said that Kawata could receive essential information through online meetings and an emergency communication system if needed.
This arrangement weakens the argument that the city would be left leaderless. However, critics focused less on the administrative plan and more on the principle of an elected official being absent.
Some Japanese netizens called it “a waste of taxpayers’ money due to a public official’s prolonged absence.” Toshio Tamogami, a retired general and nationalist politician, said he felt “a great sense of discomfort about someone in public office taking such a long vacation.”
In an interview, Toshio Tamogami argued that women who planned to have children or take maternity leave should avoid running for office, saying a mayor is “irreplaceable.”
If mayors are truly “irreplaceable,” then maternity leave appears incompatible with office; but if democratic offices can function through deputies, delegation, and emergency communication, then the issue becomes whether childbirth is being treated differently from other temporary absences.
Kawata herself identified the cultural assumption beneath the backlash, saying, “There’s still an idea that in work, people should sacrifice their personal lives in order to devote themselves to their career.”
She also emphasized the physical difference between male and female politicians: “For men, childbirth doesn’t physically affect their bodies,” but for women, “physically, that simply isn’t possible.” Her point is that equal participation may require institutions to recognize biological realities rather than pretend all leaders have male bodies.
Domestic reactions were divided. In Yawata, the City Hall received about 90 messages supporting Kawata and 70 opposing her decision.
Some residents sent gifts such as crocheted baby shoes and ceremonial rocks, while others questioned her responsibility to constituents.
The Mainichi Shimbun supported her, arguing that “Japan needs to create an environment in which people can take that leave as a matter of course.”
Kyoko Morisawa, the mayor of Shinagawa City and a mother, said, “Taking leave should not be news.” This support framed Kawata as making visible a problem that many working women experience privately.
The Japanese term “matahara,” or maternity harassment, already exists because discrimination against pregnant women and young mothers remains common in workplaces.
International coverage also emphasized the broader gender inequality behind the case. The Guardian wrote that in “many other nations, no one would blink an eye,” but in Japan, Kawata’s leave “made headline news, spawned opinion polls and sparked a national debate.”
Japan is the world’s fourth-largest economy, yet it ranked 118th out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Gender Gap Index, the lowest among G7 nations. Women make up only about 30 percent of local assembly members, and just 1.2 percent of those female councilors are under 40. At the municipal leadership level, as of last year, fewer than 4 percent of Japan’s 1,740 municipal leaders were women.
The larger picture is that Japan has passed some family-related workplace reforms, but political culture has not caught up. Female workers can generally take six weeks of prenatal leave and eight weeks after birth, and childcare leave can continue until a child turns one, or longer if childcare is unavailable.
Men can also take up to four weeks of “postnatal papa childcare leave” within eight weeks of birth. Yet elected officials often remain outside these protections, because they are not treated as ordinary workers under labor law.
Earlier efforts to guarantee maternity leave for national lawmakers, including a 2018 “Women Lawmakers’ Maternity Leave Act,” failed when parliamentary terms ended. In 2021, lawmaker Yong Hye-in was unable to enter the National Assembly chamber with her 59-day-old baby because chamber rules restricted entry to members only.
Kawata’s maternity leave therefore, exposes a contradiction at the center of Japanese public life. Politicians regularly describe the low birthrate as a national crisis, yet women who combine childbirth with leadership still face suspicion and demands that they step aside.
Kawata has said she wants a society where “talented individuals — regardless of gender — can demonstrate their abilities in high-level positions without having to sacrifice their family life.” As Kawata put it, women should not be forced into an “either-or” choice between having children and building careers.
