Ornithologist Hiyori Soma (Kei Tanaka) is about to head off on a bird-watching expedition when his politician wife, Rinko (Miki Nakatani), poses to him a life-altering question, delivered with the nonchalance of someone asking if she should get a new haircut: Would it bother you if I became prime minister?
When he returns 10 days later, apparently having been out of cellphone range for the whole trip, the deed is already done. Through some canny maneuvering, Rinko — who is so effortlessly cool, she leaves people swooning in her wake — has become the first woman to lead the country, and Hiyori is forced to play the acquiescent political spouse.
The premise of Hayato Kawai’s “First Gentleman” may still have felt like speculative fiction when the film’s source, a novel of the same title by Maha Harada, was published in 2015. In an interesting bit of timing, however, it’s now being released in the middle of a Liberal Democratic Party leadership contest that may, in fact, produce Japan’s first female prime minister.
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