Shafaqna English- In a historic move on Monday(20 Jul 2026), a mayor from a small Japanese city became the first sitting mayor in the nation to take maternity leave. Shoko Kawata, who leads Yawata, a city of about 69,000 residents in western Japan, said that when she became the country’s youngest female mayor at age 33 in 2023, she had already been thinking about having children. According to her, Yawata city staff are entitled to 16 weeks of maternity leave, but no comparable policy existed for the mayor. In an interview with Reuters on Friday(17 Jul 2026) at Yawata City Hall, Kawata admitted that she was genuinely surprised to discover she was the first mayor to take maternity leave. She observed that this revealed how few women, especially younger ones, have become mayors in Japan.