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The story
On September 29, the University of Tokyo announced it had chosen its first-ever woman as its new president. According to an Asahi Shimbun report, the selection wasn’t a direct reflection of the “preference vote” cast by faculty and staff, but rather a “comprehensive” decision. In the related thread on 5ch’s Breaking News Plus board, some questioned whether the candidate chosen — the runner-up in the preference vote rather than the top vote-getter — was picked mainly because she’s a woman. Others noted that Japan’s Ministry of Education has long pushed national universities not to weight president selections too heavily toward vote results, and pointed to similar cases at Osaka University and Kyoto University where the top vote-getter wasn’t chosen either, suggesting this isn’t unique to the University of Tokyo.
“Finally, the first woman. It sends a message” — New University of Tokyo President Chosen via “Comprehensive” Selection: Asahi Shimbun
September 29, 2026, 11:50 AM
Paid article — Yoshika Uematsu
Source: asahi.com / Original article here
What people said
Ueno Chizuko must be thrilled
Ueno got all those 'ohitorisama' women (her term for women embracing solo living) so hyped up, only to let them down, though
Does she have to be a leftist or something?
But even though she's technically the first female PM, it feels like coverage mostly frames it as 'hope more women run for office' rather than actually spotlighting the 'first female PM' part itself, you know?
As far as the left's concerned, that one's basically been memory-holed
The Ministry of Education's probably the dumb one here, but
Japanese universities have completely lost sight of their purpose lol
Can't help it when that's literally all it looks like
What do you think?
The vote meant nothing, in other words. Someone just
unilaterally decided. That's the problem
There was a guy with literally double her votes, so picking the woman anyway seems like it'll cost them
An opposition faction will probably form on campus and get her pushed out
Typical for Japan, ranked 117th in gender equality
That ranking only measures things you can put a number on,
so honestly a ranking that's this divorced from actual gender equality on the ground
isn't very reliable
By the way, in papers published and citations, it's not just double —
we're talking tens to hundreds of times the gap
Someya, the top vote-getter, comes from the same Institute of Industrial Science as the current president, so
maybe having another one in a row from there would've looked bad for the Hongo campus mainline… well, that's a dumb reason if true lol
It's not only because she's a woman
Her ideology was properly factored in too
'Ideology' lmaooo
2020: 'We're not hiring Chinese people anymore' → instant disciplinary dismissal. 2026: 'It's genetic factors' → a light verbal warning and basically no real punishment. That's Japan's top university for you
That kind of thing used to only get quietly tolerated at TV networks and in the idol industry lol
It's because this woman will listen to the government
Kyoto University's new president wasn't the top vote-getter either, but they installed someone pushing the abolition of the chair system, which pleases the Ministry of Education
"Selection methods that reflect vote results directly in the selection committee's decision, or that otherwise lean too heavily on in-house opinion, aren't appropriate from the standpoint of the committee exercising independent judgment."
As a result, picking a second-place-or-lower candidate, or scrapping the vote altogether, has become pretty normal everywhere, honestly.
2021 Osaka University President Selection
Sawa: 346 votes
Nishio: 263 votes ← Selected
Nakano: 98 votes
2026 Kyoto University President Selection
Sawaragi: 478 votes
Tao: 301 votes
Tachikawa: 299 votes ← Selected
Asano: 213 votes
Hatano: 97 votes
Egami: 48 votes
Osaka University's president is my acquaintance's cousin — is that really just how it works? (lol)
If you're ignoring the vote results anyway, isn't that just leaning too heavily on the selection committee's opinion instead? Is that really fine…
I guess the idea is 'stop it, because it just breeds factionalism and nothing good comes of it'
Thanks to that, Kyoto University got certified as a top-tier research university right after Tohoku University and landed a massive budget
Todai still hasn't been certified because the Law School and others oppose abolishing the chair system
This new female president is expected to aggressively push the kind of national university reforms the Ministry of Education wants
Every reform the Ministry of Education has ever made things worse
The old Second and Third Higher School lineages (which fed into Tohoku and Kyoto) got it while the old First Higher School lineage (Todai's) falls behind — pride wouldn't allow that. Guess it can't be helped lol
Background and key points of this topic
The backdrop here is the 2014 revision of the School Education Act and the National University Corporation Act. National university president selections used to follow a practice where the faculty/staff “preference vote” results were reflected almost directly, but after the legal revision, the vote was repositioned as mere reference information, with the selection committee holding final say. In the thread, posters cited this history and pointed to Osaka University (2021) and Kyoto University (2026), where candidates who hadn’t placed first in the preference vote were likewise chosen, suggesting this isn’t a practice unique to the University of Tokyo. That said, it’s easy to overlook that the preference vote is purely advisory and carries no legal binding force, so a mismatch between the vote and the final selection is itself within the range the system anticipates. It should also be noted that the University of Tokyo hasn’t officially released its actual vote counts, so the numbers discussed in the thread are unverified. Whether the substance of the “comprehensive judgment” was really about promoting a woman or about hopes for university reform remains unclear even from the article itself.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Breaking News Plus) thread ““Finally, the first woman. It sends a message” — New University of Tokyo President Chosen via “Comprehensive” Selection.”
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