Japan’s Prime Minister Joins Female Lawmakers in Push for More Women’s Toilets Inside Parliament
Japan’s PM backs a bipartisan push to add 20 women’s toilets inside parliament after female lawmakers missed a vote while queuing.
A Lavatory Lobbying First
Tokyo—When Prime Minister Fumio Kishida rose in the Diet on Tuesday, he wasn’t defending budgets or borders. He was championing something far more mundane—yet, for half the nation, monumentally overdue: more women’s toilets inside Japan’s parliament building.
The Long Walk
Walk the marbled halls with rookie lawmaker Yui Sato and you clock 212 steps from the chamber doors to the nearest ladies’ room. Her male colleagues? Twelve steps to a urinal. “We sprint between votes,” Sato laughs. “Heels aren’t built for marathons.”
“If the seat of power can’t accommodate women, how can the nation?”
—Yui Sato, Member, House of Representatives
From Embarrassment to Emergency
The crunch became impossible to ignore after last month’s late-night security bill. Four female opposition members missed the final roll-call because they were queuing outside the only two stalls allocated to 46 women in their wing. Footage of the line snaking past framed portraits of former prime ministers ricocheted across social media, clocking 12 million views in 24 hours.
PM Steps In
Rather than duck the optics, Kishida convened a bipartisan “Toilet Task Force” within 48 hours. “Our democracy should not be constrained by plumbing,” he told reporters, a line that drew both applause and memes. The task force’s mandate: retrofit 20 under-used storage closets into women’s facilities by the autumn session.
Price Tag and Pushback
Estimated cost: ¥780 million ($5.6 million). Critics call it fiscal fluff; advocates cite lost productivity. A 2022 internal survey showed female lawmakers average 27 minutes per day in restroom queues—time their male peers spend in committee. Over a 150-day session, that’s 67 hours, almost two work-weeks.
Global Lens
Japan ranks 120th out of 156 nations in the World Economic Forum’s gender-gap index. While more women’s loos won’t vault the country up the chart overnight, analysts say symbols matter. “Parliament is the nation’s classroom,” notes Sophia University political scientist Elena Maeda. “Students see who gets convenience and who gets compromise.”
What Happens Next
Construction starts July recess. If completed on schedule, the Diet will boast a 1-to-1 ratio of female-to-male stalls for the first time since the building reopened in 1936. Until then, Sato keeps a spare blazer on her office door—for colleagues who don’t make it back in time.