In April 2003, 28-year-old Kanako Otsuji became the youngest person ever elected to the Osaka prefectural assembly when she won the seat for Sakai City. It was a distinction made more special by the fact that there were only six other women in the 110-member assembly at the time. However, another distinction was not known to most of thepeople who voted for her.
Otsuji is a lesbian. Though she did not keep her sexual orientation a secret, the supporters who knew talked her out of revealing this information during the campaign. She was even open about her homosexuality to individual local journalists, but none reported it.
Born in Nara and raised in Kobe, Otsuji was an Asian Junior karate champion while in high school. Later, she dropped out of college and took odd jobs, eventually going to Seoul University to study Korean and tae kwon do in the hope of going to the Sydney Olympics in 2000. She didn't make the national team, though, and later enrolled in Doshisha University in Kyoto, where she became interested in politics. Otsuji interned with a lawmaker in the Kansai region before her successful run as an independent candidate for the Osaka prefectural assembly.