As soon as Diet member Makiko Tanaka was sworn in as foreign minister, a powerful "Tornado Makiko" rampaged throughout the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sending some of the officials way up in the air and forcing others to retreat to hospital. For onlookers, the greater the chaos the more fun it was to watch.
On her first day at the office, she half-jokingly told the ministry officials, "You must have been scared to death when I was named the foreign minister." This joke did not last very long, however.
She issued an order for Jiro Kodera, newly appointed minister at the Japanese Embassy in London, to return to Japan. Only the previous day, Kodera landed at a London airport, filled with hope as he readied for a year of study at a British strategic research institute before filling a post as embassy minister.