In Tokyo
Though Japan’s new prime minister Taro Aso comes from a very wealthy family based in Fukuoka, southern Japan, with one prime minister and other luminaries in the family tree, he surprisingly married rather late in life – at the ripe old age of 43.
And Mr Aso might not have met and fallen in love with his present wife Chikako had he not had a distaste for - of all things – sea cucumber.
While he was still a bachelor, Mr Aso was invited home to dinner by then Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki.
One of the dishes on the heavily-laden dining table was stewed sea cucumber.
Seeing that Mr Aso had studiously avoided the dish, Mr Suzuki reportedly said something to the effect that the young politician did not know what he was missing.
Seeing that Mr Aso might feel obliged to try it, Ms Chikako Suzuki, the prime minister’s daughter saved the situation by saying: “Well, there’s no need to if you really do not like it.”
With those words, the two hit it off and eventually got married.
He was 43 and she was 33.
Mr Aso was said to have told an acquaintance at the time: “It’s a wonder that such a beautiful woman should still be available.”
Those were the days when most Japanese women got married in their 20s.
About one and a half months after his wedding, Mr Aso stood for re-election to the Lower House for the second time.
But as it turned out, he lost his seat and his wife blamed herself for his defeat.
Voters in Mr Aso’s constituency in Fukuoka were said to have had difficulty accepting his sophisticated wife, who was born and bred in Tokyo and spoke standard Japanese, not the local dialect.
So for three years after that, Mrs Aso painstakingly mastered the local dialect and now she is probably more popular than her husband.
“If she ran against him, I think she would win hands down,” one local voter said on television recently.
It would not be the first instance in Japan where a politician’s wife is more popular than her husband.
Japanese politicians are normally based in Tokyo, where the seat of government is, so it is their wives that spend more time in their constituencies representing their husbands at various local events and campaigning for him at election time as well.
Read also:
Aso set to end Koizumi reforms