Shiga Gov. Yukiko Kada, who heads the newly formed Nippon Mirai no To (Japan Future Party), is an environmental studies scholar who studied at the University of Wisconsin and holds a doctoral degree in agriculture from Kyoto University.
Her party was officially inaugurated Wednesday, just days after the Lower House was dissolved for a general election. Among its election pledges is a vow to do away with atomic power plants in 10 years.
One of the prominent supporters of the party, actor Bunta Sugawara, urged her to be "a Japanese Merkel" in a message sent to her news conference Tuesday, in reference to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who decided to scrap her country's nuclear power plants because of the Fukushima No. 1 disaster.