Japanese women are in demand as never before. "Women have the greatest potential," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently told media, "and allowing them to demonstrate their full abilities is the core of our growth strategy." He must be pleased by the recent news flow. Even Japan's conservative financial companies are taking women executives more seriously. 

On the final day of trading 2013, Japanese shares closed with an annual gain of 57 percent  the highest ever since 1972. That this occurred this year is no coincidence – Shinzo Abe’s three-pronged strategy for Japan’s economy dubbed “Abenomics” is working. For now. After Japan’s “lost decade” puzzled economists for years, Shinzo Abe in his second term as Prime Minister, with Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, demonstrated that Japan hadn’t in fact tried everything in its economic toolkit.