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Meiko Chapter 31 Election [meiko31]
All stories on this web site are purely FICTIONAL. The people depicted within these stories only exist in someone's IMAGINATION. Any resemblence between anyone depicted in these stories and any real person, living or dead, is an incredible COINCIDENCE too bizarre to be believed. If you think that you or someone you know is depicted in one of these stories it's only because you're a twisted perverted little fucker who sees conspiracies and plots where none exist. You probably suspect that your own MOTHER had sex with ALIENS and COWS and stuff. Well, she didn't. It's all in your head. Now take your tranquilizers and RELAX.
Copyright 1993 Donald L. Conover
Registration No. TXu 585-582
All Rights Reserved
[email protected]
License is hereby granted for this manuscript to be ported to
other systems worldwide, provided no fees are charged and local
laws permit such transfer, but it may not be printed or performed
in whole or in part without the express written consent of the
author. If you wish to be added to the electronic subscription
list, please send me e-mail: [email protected].
MEIKO contains the erotic adventures of the first woman Prime
Minister of Japan. If you are underage or would be offended by
such material, please discontinue reading now.
Election
"I have been reviewing some of the tapes of your election
campaigns," Noriko said after a ten day hiatus in their
interviews. "Can we talk a little about the mechanics of how you
were elected?"
"Yes, of course," Meiko said cheerfully.
"What made it possible? You didn't have a political career at
all."
"Disgust and desire."
"Disgust?" Noriko asked.
"Yes. By 1995 I had seen it all; how the system controlled by
men operates. It had dominated my life in many ways. But it was
the attack on David, and my wound, that finally imbued me with the
spirit to take action."
"But many women are angry," Noriko commented. "Only you
became Prime Minister."
"Yes, that is true," Meiko replied. "But I had a secret
weapon. We called it a 'stealth' weapon in those days, because it
was invisible to the Liberal Democratic Party."
"What was that?"
"As you know, throughout Japan there are about 800,000
fujinkai, groups of women who meet regularly to deal with problems
and share experiences. Especially in those days and before, it was
very rare to have husbands home more than one day per week, so
the women had to help one another. In America they would probably
be called coffee klatsches."
"But surely the Liberal Democrats knew of those," Noriko
protested.
"Of course they knew," Meiko replied, "but they didn't think
of them as important. The trick was to get a representative in
every group, who could talk about the plight of women, and what
must be done to change the situation."
"That seems an impossible task for someone like you, though.
You barely knew anything about that lifestyle at all. You were a
professional woman, never married, and you had spent many years in
America. How could you even penetrate those groups?"
"That's where Aoki's genius came into play," Meiko's eyes were
playful again. "We had talked of the plight of women many times
over the years, but it was not until I was recuperating
from my wound in Hayama that we had the idea."
"What was that?"
"We knew that if we could organize Japanese women as a whole,
that we could take the government away from the Liberal Democrats."
"But you had no organization; and no money to create one,"
Noriko protested.
"That was Aoki's brilliance. We decided to piggyback on
another type of organization. For years Aoki had been involved
with Pola. As you know, Pola sells cosmetics through a sales
structure called network marketing. They rely on individual
independent distributors to sell their products. There are many
such companies in Japan, including many American companies like
Avon, Amway, and Nu Skin International. The largest of these have
a million distributors, and generally one in each fujinkai."
Noriko's eyes were getting wider as she scribbled on the page.
"There is a hierarchy of distributors in each company, so that
everyone is connected directly or indirectly to everyone else.
This means that the top distributors have means of communicating to
distributors on the bottom very quickly and efficiently. An
important message from the top can be communicated to everyone in
the network within a day."
"Did you have any relationship to these sorts of companies?"
Noriko asked.
"No," Meiko replied, "but Aoki did. She had been involved
with Pola for fifteen years, and was one of their top distributors.
She knew all the other leaders in Pola, and many of those in the
other companies. Our idea was to start the Fujin-tou, Woman's
Party, and pass its message through these networks."
"Now I see," Noriko said incredulously. "I knew that the
Woman's Party was created overnight, that it offered candidates in
93% of all districts its first election, that it elected a
majority to the Diet, and that you were selected as its first Prime
Minister. But it has never been clear to anyone how you achieved
that magic."
"It was so simple," Meiko grinned. "All we did was develop a
woman's platform, taking on the excesses and arrogance of the
Liberal Democrats, and then we made our case to thirty key people
in the network marketing industry, in many companies, of course.
Not all agreed that they should use their networks in that way, but
most did. They understood the power at their fingertips because of
the power of the business approach. The majority were willing to
invest their efforts to see a change in womens' lives.
"Within a month our scheme was being discussed in every
fujinkai in Japan, completely out of the sight of men. It took
them months before they even realized that a Woman's Party was in
the making. By the time they did realize it was a factor, it was
too late. I was making speeches to meetings with thousands of
women, in hotels and convention halls all over Japan. Aoki managed
my campaign for the Diet in Hayama, where I easily won, despite the
fact that I was focusing on the national movement."
"Remarkable!" Noriko sat back in her chair and for the first
time noticed the complexity of the garden outside Meiko's window.
"No one ever picked up on the network marketing connection before.
How can that be?"
"It was very simple," Meiko's eyes twinkled. "After the
movement was ignited, in the first month, the networks became ours.
We were never promoting the products of the companies in any case.
We simply used the leadership to spread our story, by word of
mouth. And it was a story Japanese women were ready to hear. They
were fed up with the status quo. It was nearly fifty years after
the war, and twenty-five years after the so-called "economic
miracle," and most were still living like a third world country.
"Third World? Isn't that a little strong?" Noriko objected.
"Not at all! Oh, the Liberal Democrats had spread the
propaganda that we were ahead of the rest of the world, but women
knew. By then millions had visited other countries in the
industrialized world, and seen how people lived there. When they
returned to their strictly constrained lives, serving husbands and
children, a deep seed of dissatisfaction was planted. It
blossomed suddenly and instantly with our movement."
Noriko was thoughtful for a long moment, breathless. "We
still have a long way to go," she said finally.
"Yes, it is a long road, but not an impossible one. It only
needs a few leaders. Look at the women's movement in the United
States," Meiko replied. "Susan B. Anthony started her first
nationally noticed activities for women's rights in the Lincoln
Administration, about 1863, but it was not until the 1970s when
women first began seeing real change."
"She started that early?" Noriko's brow furrowed in
amazement.
"Yes," Meiko replied. "She worked for decades to win the vote
for women, but it was not until fifteen years after her death that
the United States Constitution was finally amended."
"But we have had the vote in Japan for decades," Noriko
commented.
"There was something more important that Susan B. Anthony and
Carrie Nation began, and that was the fight against alcohol, and
their men staying at saloons until all hours. That's a problem we
still have here. The men think their partying is more important
than their families."
Noriko smiled ruefully, remembering her evening alone last
night, when Akio said that he had to go out with some schoolmates
from fifteen years ago.
"Oh, they blame it on the need to socialize with their
colleagues for business purposes," Meiko went on, "but in most
places in the world that is accomplished during business hours."
"What did they do?" Noriko asked.
"Susan B. Anthony was a founder of the Daughters of
Temperance, a noisy organization which stood up for closing down
saloons. Carrie Nation got frustrated with the progress and in
1900 began breaking up saloons with a hatchet."
Noriko smiled at the image.
"Ultimately their efforts led to Prohibition, about thirty
years later. But we know how that experiment failed."
"What's your point?" Noriko asked.
"The point is that by attracting attention to places where the
society is out of balance, eventually good changes occur," Meiko
said. "Oh, yes, it's true that some Americans still drink too
much, but by the 1980s social drinking was cut back drastically,
much to the benefit of the American family and women in particular,
since they were often abused by drunken husbands. That evolution
was half a century after Prohibition."
"I see," Noriko said. "So you feel that we can gradually
change the status of women in Japan."
"Yes, we can ... and must!" Meiko replied, looking earnestly
into Noriko's eyes.
"But how? What are the steps?"
"By shining a light on the injustices; the male behaviors that
subjugate women," Meiko replied. "I was able to do this some
during my term as Prime Minister, but in the ways of politics, I
had to walk a narrow line to keep my voting block together. But a
reporter ... with a voice ... and with a national journal like
yours ... could have a huge influence on the behavior of Japanese
women."
Noriko's earlobes were hot. She knew that somehow these many
months of discussion were preparing her for Meiko's push. She
sighed and relaxed, realizing that she had months to decide, since
the publication of Meiko's story was still months away. "Well, our
first task is to get this story published," Noriko said, trying to
change the subject. "Did you finish the manuscript you promised
about your resignation?"
"Yes, I did," Meiko said, handing the bundle of papers to
Noriko with a little grin of knowing that her story alone was a
snowball rolled from the top of a frigid mountain.
"At last!" Noriko said, accepting the bundle. "Since you
left Japan so quickly after your resignation, people have always
wondered what really happened. You were very successful at keeping
most of your story private."
"Well then, you will enjoy this," Meiko said with an elfin
giggle.
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