In the weeks since the Democratic Party of Japan secured a majority in the Lower House, the new DPJ members of that institution have apparently been told to keep their mouths shut when they're around the media.
DPJ honcho Ichiro Ozawa, who was in charge of strategy for the election, remembers the PR fallout following the landslide wins for "Koizumi's children" in the 2005 election. The Liberal Democratic Party newcomers knew nothing about governing except what then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told them, and once he decided he no longer had any use for them, he abandoned them as easily as he did that son he hasn't seen since he divorced his wife. Only about 10 percent are still in office.
It's understandable then that Ozawa doesn't like the similar-sounding media term "Ozawa's girls," referring to the 26 DPJ women who gained office. Already, Mieko Tanaka has been outed by the press as a former "sex-industry writer" who once did a nude scene in a movie, as well as Kumiko Hayakawa of Tokyo, who posed in a bathing suit for a photo spread in Friday magazine. Neither of these women deny their colorful pasts but they're not elaborating on them either.