Renho, a first-term Upper House member from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, shot to stardom in Japan last November when, as a member of a government committee tasked with screening ministries' budget requests, she had several fierce, face-to-face battles with bureaucrats.
While the 42-year-old politician is certainly not the first or only one to point out wasteful spending of taxpayers' money, she has been among the most intense, relentless — and publicly combative — in doing so.
In particular, her comment on the nation's next-generation supercomputers — "Why should Japan be the world's No. 1 (in the speed of supercomputer processors)? What's wrong with being the world's No. 2?" — drew huge public attention and was repeatedly aired on national TV.