For a moment, it looked as if the most powerful people in Japan were three 20-something women.

In a country where the young are taught to keep quiet and defer to their elders, the trio of women decided to speak out after the president of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee made sexist remarks this month when he suggested that women talk too much in meetings.

An online petition the women started mushroomed into a vociferous social media campaign that helped dislodge the Olympic leader, Yoshiro Mori, 83, and prevented him from handpicking another octogenarian man to succeed him. Instead, his replacement is a woman more than 25 years his junior: Seiko Hashimoto, a former Olympian and current lawmaker.