Ex-gravure idol Chisato Morishita is now government vice minister

Chisato Morishita’s trajectory from gravure favorite of the late 2000s to mainstream politics is now complete. After the former model won her first election last October, the 44-year-old with the winning smile has now been appointed to new prime minister Sanae Takaichi’s Cabinet as Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Environment.

It’s a junior role, of course, under the main environment minister (a man, of course — though Takaichi is Japan’s first female prime minister, her ministers are always all male), but it represents a major vote of confidence in the one-time race queen (grid girl), whose mandate in her constituency in Miyagi Prefecture is not especially strong (she won her seat on the proportional representation vote, not the direct vote).

Chisato Morishita is unmarried and remains a slim, attractive woman in her mid-forties. It will be good to have her strutting around the corridors of power, keeping the much-older guys in charge on their toes.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party has a thing for attracting female celebrities, especially those who entertainment careers is on the wane and are looking for a decent, stable income. Past examples include Speed singer Eriko Imai (who had an affair with another lawmaker) and actress and singer Junko Mihara.

Another prominent appointment is Kimi Onoda, a 42-year-old conservative whose father is American. Onoda was actually born in Chicago but moved to Japan when she was very young, after her father walked out on her pregnant mother. Despite her international background, she has positioned herself as a nationalist.

She is now Minister in Charge of Economic Security of Japan, but her portfolio also includes handling foreign resident policy (“minister in charge of a society of well-ordered and harmonious coexistence with foreign nationals”). She has promised to be tough on “misbehaving” foreigners. (A lot of misinformation was flying around the interweb this week that Onoda was about to begin mass deportations. This is false.)

Onoda is also unmarried, having previous stated that she is “married to Japan” and uninterested in marrying a man. Before getting into politics, she worked as a model and at a video game company.