Female candidates in the local elections across the country this weekend face one of the world’s toughest glass ceilings

Ai Ishimori was teaching Japanese cookery classes in France when she was gripped by an urge to return to her home country.

“Shinzo Abe was prime minister at the time, and a group of older men were doing a bad job of running the country,” she says. “But I was unable to do anything about it. I was really worried about the direction my country was going in.”