Profile of Noemi INOUE: city council representative for Sumida City, Tokyo
City Councillor elections for Tokyo were last month. A number of politicians who were originally another nationality have run for office in Japan , and quite a few get elected. We have covered other city councillors (as well as national level politicians in the House of Representatives and upper house of Japan's Diet) who were originally of another nationality but naturalized and took Japanese nationality. For this article, I'd like to feature 井上ノエミ { INOUE Noemi } , formerly a Bolivian national who has been representing Sumida City in Tokyo ( 東京都墨田区 { Tōkyō-to Sumida-ku } ) for many years now. She was re-elected to a second term last month. I should note that Ms. Inoue shares the same family name (Inoue) as I do, and also writes her given name in カタカナ { katakana } (Japanese block-style syllabet). Of course, there's no relation: "Inoue" has been a very common name throughout Japanese history — it is sometimes spelled "Inouye" overseas due to ...