For Japan's ultraright, Feb. 7 is the holiest day of the year. The thuggish men in their loudspeaker-laden, slogan-painted vans will be out in force on "Northern Territories Day," once again testing the nation's aural-pain threshold.
But the voice official Japan pays attention to isn't crackling from the sound trucks; it belongs to a diminutive, middle-aged former bus guide named Taiko Kodama. For most of her 55 years, Kodama has waged a sometimes lonely battle to keep the islands dispute in the public eye and on the front burner of foreign policy. Now, as secretary general of the national island reversion lobby, Kodama is universally acknowledged the de facto "ambassador" to the disputed islands, which she has visited over a dozen times in the last six years.
"She's influential," says Shigeki Hakamada, a Russian specialist and government adviser.