Quote:There is a Japanese proverb that means making an already strong person or thing even stronger.

It is also the title of an NHK serial drama that aired this year, "Tora ni Tsubasa" (adding wings to a tiger), based on the true story of Yoshiko Mibuchi, one of Japan's first female lawyers in prewar Japan who later became a judge after World War II.

The series, broadcast from April 1 to Sept. 27, coincided with a milestone in the fight against gender inequality, as women surpassed 30 percent of successful applicants in the 2024 bar examination for the first time in its history.

In Japan's legal professions, as in other sectors, women's advancement has been slow, even 84 years after Mibuchi and two other female candidates became lawyers.

But Japanese women in 2024 took the two top positions for lawyers and public prosecutors -- president of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA) and prosecutor-general, the head of the Public Prosecutors Office.