With new cabinet post, Yuko Obuchi's political star keeps rising in Japan

When Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe unveiled his new 18-strong cabinet in Tokyo last week, there were few surprises. Perhaps the least surprising appointment was that of Yuko Obuchi to one of the most powerful posts in government - minister of economy, trade and industry.

Already the youngest minister since the end of the second world war when she was named to the cabinet in 2008, Obuchi is still just 40 years old, making her a stripling in Japan's political world. Even more significantly, she is a woman in the old boys' club that still rules the roost in the Diet.

Her ministerial role will thrust Obuchi into the spotlight, as she will oversee the government's unpopular plan to restart nuclear reactors shut down after the 2011 tsunami triggered a meltdown at an atomic power plant at Fukushima, a policy that polls indicate is opposed by a majority of the nation's women.

Obuchi's meteoric rise has fuelled a growing sense that she is on course to become the first woman leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and thereby the first woman prime minister in Japan's history.

There have in the past been other women tipped to break the men-only barrier at the top of Japanese politics. Makiko Tanaka, the daughter of former prime minister Kakuei Tanaka, served as minister of education and then became Japan's first woman defence minister in the government of Junichiro Koizumi in 2001 , but she cut an abrasive figure and made more enemies than friends before losing her seat in the Diet in the 2012 general election.

Obuchi, however, is cut from very different cloth. The second daughter of Keizo Obuchi, who was voted in as prime minister in July 1998, Yuko studied at Seijo University in Tokyo before joining the Tokyo Broadcasting System TV company in 1996. Two years later, she became her father's secretary.