 Thank you all for coming today. I hope that you are as energized by this session today as we are. This has been remarkable. And we are very honored to have you all here. And of course, we're very honored to have Aki Abe with us today as the keynote speaker. Japan is often said that Japan is a country that's very poor on energy and that it doesn't have the natural energy resources for society. But I just want to say, over the last year, there's been these remarkable breakthroughs in Japan. And we've discovered this enormous, tremendous energy resource in Japan. And it is such a powerful energy resource, it's all over. It's across the entire country. It's an energy resource so abundant and so easy to convert to almost any economic opportunity that it's going to be a tremendous new boost for Japan's economy. And of course, this new energy resource is the discovery of women in the workplace. Just think, let's think about this in a different way. Let's not think about this as a burden for society. Let's start thinking about this as this enormous energy reservoir that's available overnight. And it's available around the world. Best of all, this energy resource is available in the poorest countries in the world. It's abundant. We just have to now figure out, how do we harness and tap into this enormous energy resource? It's possible to do that, but only with real leadership. Because it does involve change in how people think about their world. And they think about their relationships. And this takes people that can set a new tone, a new direction. And of course, this is why we're so honored to have Abe-san here today to keynote our comrades. We've decided to relabel this while Washington. I don't know how many of you know about the while conference, you know, that Aki Abe was instrumental in forming in Tokyo last week. Well, we want to make this an annual thing in Washington. We want to make this while Washington. Not only about the future of women and their empowerment in Japan, but around the world. If you think about, I mean, with a quarter of the women in Africa spending three hours a day trying to get clean drinking water for their families, think about that as a lost resource that we could harness and we could bring about for the betterment of everyone. There's so much opportunity in this world if we think about this in a new way. And we have a leader who's with us today who's going to share her inspiration, her thoughts about this. She is a professional in multiple dimensions, you know, and right, as you know, the great debate in Tokyo is whether Aki should turn her rice into food at the restaurant or into sake, you know? I mean, that's the big debate in Tokyo. And she's made a marvelous career for herself as a farmer, as a leader in civil society. She's championing the campaign against AIDS, which is a wonderful gift to the world. So many great things that she's doing, but today what she's doing is she's sharing with us her vision about this new Japan, this new Japan filled with energy, with this marvelous new power source. With your applause, would you please welcome Aki Abe and welcome her to this stage. Today, I am very honored to be invited to speak with you, speak to you today at this CSIS. I have gotten married to my husband, and since then I have been supporting him as a politician wife. And in Japan, for a wife of a politician to talk about politics is not preferred. Therefore, I have been focusing on asking people to support my husband. So the only time I'm in public is during the election campaign season. However, today, I have been invited here today to CSIS or I was given the opportunity to talk with Madame Cherie Blair at WAU. And which shows me in us the change Japan about two weeks ago on September 12th and 13th, an event titled WAU Tokyo 2014 was held. It was titled Symposium for a Society in Which Women Can Shine. I'd like to talk about what kind of issues that women are facing in Japan. And perhaps I could share some of my own experience as well. My husband feels that it is his historical mission to create a society in which women can shine as a prime minister. And therefore, he is actively promoting many initiatives. WAU is one of the ways that his determination has been materialized. Leaders from all over the world who are tackling with women's issues gathered in one place and had lively discussion regarding issues that women face today. Madame Hillary Clinton joined via video message. And US Ambassador to Japan Kennedy came and gave a speech. I myself, just like I mentioned earlier, I myself have met and exchanged views with Miss Cherie Blair. There we had discussion about how to create a better environment for women to work. And it was pointed out that female ratio in the leadership position is still pretty low and that excessively long work hours is a problem. For women to flourish in their jobs, just like men do, just as some panelists have mentioned earlier, there is a need for more flexible work styles such as telework in order to improve productivity. These are some of the suggestions that came up. One described that as we must aim for a way of working in a different dimension. In other words, we are in need for more than the flexibility and efficiency that have thus been discussed. But rather, we are in need for a much bolder change. I agree with this kind of proposal. I don't believe that creating a society where women work the same way as men do is a way to create a society in which women can shine. You see, in Japan, there's still a tendency for people to believe that excessive overtime equals hardworking or success. At least to me, it's hard to believe that a kind of society where women work the same way as men do is a happy and a good one. Rather, my belief is that both women and men should be accepted to work in various ways of working and there should be many different ways to shine. I have met many wonderful women, but I have realized that women are good at networking with others and accepting each other. Women work together with men in the farming and fishing industries, grouping and chatting together. Women can smooth out the differences. One of the female farmers gave deprived women chances to enjoy the work in the field and let her know the joy of acquiring special skills. Other women opened up her farm to the disabled children so that they can contribute to the society through farming. I may be biased, but I think that men tend to favor vertical or pyramid-shaped society where you can go up and down. Men have cultivated and adored this male-oriented corporate world for a long time. I think it is too much or too need to throw women in such an environment. I think it is ideal to allow both genders to work in a variety of ways and contribute themselves in a various manner without compromising man-head, man-foot, or woman-foot. Ladies and gentlemen, the society in which women shine, targeted by the prime minister, does not seek to the economic benefit only. While discussed a wide scope of topics, including women's role in the international cooperation, how women can contribute to realize the world peace and to prevent conflict as well. What prime minister meant by the society in which women shine is not only for Japan to recover from its economic draw drum, but also for the world community to shine. And personally, more interested in the topics of international cooperation than economy, so I spent more time in the international cooperation sessions. The participants of this symposium was cross-sectional, including government officials from advanced as well as development countries, leaders from international institution and academia. It was very impressive to see they agreed on the women's issues, even though the backgrounds were so different. If you examine such issues as conflict prevention, creation of peaceful world, elimination, poverty with the women's angle, you can see a lot of common themes shared between advanced and developing countries. I saw clues to solve these different issues. If women take some part of leadership in the process of post-conflict recovery and reform, they can create more peaceful and more vulnerable population-friendly society inclusive of women, children, and seniors. Women's ability to accept and to connect with each other stem from motherhood. I, as the first lady of the Japanese prime minister, believe that motherhood of women create peaceful and brighter future. In order to realize that, however, women should be given the opportunities and abilities to learn so that they can think and act independently. The Japanese government actively supports the development countries so that women can be empowered. I personally also actively support this scholarship for the female students who have difficulty to go to school due to various reasons, including poverty. More specifically, I support Asia University of Women AUW in Bangladesh, where a lot of highly ambitious girls who seriously think that they can change the society and make it more peaceful. However, I do not think this effort is good enough. US and Japan share the same values to respect fundamental human rights and seek world peace. I look forward to seeing more active corporations in this field between the governments of both countries, as well as private and NGO sectors. Ladies and gentlemen, we have to expand the scope of our discussion. Coinciding with the AUW symposium in Tokyo, a lot of local events were held all over Japan involving local communities. And NGO and academia to create the society where women can shine. We called it as Shine Weeks. The Shine Weeks was announced only one month before the commencement of the event, but total of 120 events were registered as a Shine Weeks event. I participated several of the events, too. AUW concluded with 12 proposals to create shining women's society called AUW to do. Political and economic leaders in Japan and the world propose implementing the different dimensional way of working and fortifying women's role in the world peace and security. On the other hand, the most important thing is to put this proposal into action. The Prime Minister Abe always says that Japan is a country which can take action. So my friends in U.S. in the world, please watch Japan taking actions. And I think it's wonderful to see this movement spreads from Japan to the world. I also watch Japan from the closest place to the Prime Minister. Thank you very much. Well, I'm Michael Green from CSIS, and I just want to say once again what an honor it is to have Mrs. Abe here. And how much everyone appreciates her commitment and leadership and her husband's commitment and leadership on this issue. We have a lot of very distinguished speakers at CSIS, including Prime Minister Abe, but I've never seen so many cell phone cameras go off during a speech. So you're bringing not only a very concrete action plan, but some real excitement, and we thank you. We have, I think, about 10-15 minutes for questions. We'll ask you to raise your hand, and we have microphones. But let me first ask something of Mrs. Abe that came up from our first speaker today, Ambassador Wendy Cutler from USTR, and she's very enthusiastic and supportive of womenomics. But at the end of her presentation, she said, there is one issue we have to consider as the Prime Minister and the government of Japan and Japanese corporations move to increase the number of women in boardrooms, in management positions, in government. There may be, and already there are, some rumblings from men who feel maybe it's not fair or women who question whether they got their promotion through merit or through some government policy. This is not unique to Japan. This is going to be a challenge everywhere amidst the policies that are the right policies, but this is one of the things that Wendy Cutler raised that she thought people should think about. So I've been thinking about it and I don't know the answer and I wonder if maybe you do know the answer. What do we say to those who are a bit nervous about this change, including women, who may, as Wendy pointed out, question whether they got promoted because of policies or because of merit. So I'm starting with a hard question and I apologize for that, but thank you. Until now, Japanese men have been ignoring the complaints of women in Japan. So in that context, things are changing right now. I believe that men are facing a reality that there's no choice but then to accept the complaint or accept the change. And I think that up until now, many people knew that there are some changes that need to be happened for the female participation, but we are now reaching a point where we can no longer afford to ignore that. Of course, it is anticipated that the men will feel the complaints, but I also want to tell them please think about the complaints from the female side. These men, friends, asked me to ask that question. So the floor is open and the issues we can address and we certainly welcome your comments or questions. People are still starstruck. Yes, please, go ahead. Right here. My name is Jeanine Nguyen with Voice of Vietnamese Americans. And I thank you for pointing out that women and men can both contribute to the labor force of the country in different ways and therefore the cooperation environment needs to actually make it more welcome to women so that we can still contribute in our own spatial way. I like that very much. And I hope that you, in your speech, you did talk about developing countries, especially in Asia. And Vietnam is one of the countries that is very dear to my heart. I'm American now, but I'm from Vietnam. And the woman in Vietnam is suffering so many hardships. So I would hope that in the changing environment in the labor force in Japan, Vietnam and Vietnamese women can somehow be taken into the pictures to support you in the transition as a home healthcare giver supporting you at home or supporting you in the labor force. Because Vietnam is fast growing and our population under 35 is 65 percent and half of that are women. So please take that into consideration that we can support you in your way, leading us forward. Thank you. You've also had an interest, I know, in Myanmar, Burma over the years and traveled there and worked on education. Have you seen opportunities in countries like Vietnam? Myanmar, your husband has visited every ASEAN country. Have you seen opportunities to advance women's empowerment and womenomics in the neighborhood in Southeast Asia? Thank you for the question. Vietnam and Myanmar are the countries that I have been involved in and there are many wonderful, hardworking women in these countries. For Japan to change will affect the way that the way females in other countries work is something that I understand and there are many Japanese, excuse me, women in Vietnam and Myanmar who are already working in a good way. I'm sorry, I wonder if that answered the question. Yes, it did. I think you can play in resolving conflict and recovering from disasters in your presentation, which was a major theme for our panels this morning. Yes, ma'am. Hi, I'm Nina from Fortune Magazine. Madame First Lady, it's wonderful to meet you. Thank you for being here. What do you think is the biggest obstacle facing womenomics in Japan? The culture or the consciousness of the woman and men's part. The women themselves, as mentioned before, has some dream to be a lucky strike housewives. So that is the choice that they make, so I do not have to complain about that. But the life of the good housewife might not be for eternity. You might get divorced, or maybe due to the accident, husband cannot work anymore. So from now on, we women have to be independent. And as a choice of a housewife is one choice. However, if something happens, women have to be independent enough to participate in a society to earn money. I think that that kind of culture and the consciousness is lacking right now. And they are very comfortable working for women, working for men and men. So that kind of culture or the way of thinking has to be changed. Do you feel that those attitudes about the role of women have changed very much over the last, say, 10 years or so? They had no choice about changing. 30 years ago, when I got first married, I thought that, and I grew up being told that the husband is the best or the happiest way for women. So it was very widely accepted. However, if my husband is gone and if I do not have any money to earn my living, I cannot do anything. And some of my friends are in that kind of situation. So we have to make change. And the divorced women or single women who went through divorce has to depend on the welfare because they do not have any skill to work and earn money. So the family style is changed. And I do not know whether they've already changed or not, but they do not have any choice than changing themselves. I'm Julia Chen Block of the U.S. China Education Trust. Madam Ambe, thank you for a really illuminating remarks. I think as we all know, Sino-Japanese relations right now is undergoing a particularly dangerous phase. I wonder, because of your interest in international cooperation and the fact that you mentioned that on women's issues there's broad agreement, whether we might not through collaboration on issues that are of interest to women, we might not build mutual understanding between Japan and China. The countries and country relationship had some interest and conflict interest occurred sometimes. However, since as a first lady as a woman, I'd like to cooperate with each other and be friendly to each other, to the people from any country of the world. And compared to men, I think that women tend to favor peacetime rather than men. So the solution might be hidden in the connection between the women in the world. And I also make effort to make that happen. Thank you. The expertise that it's important for young women coming into the workforce, making their life decisions to have mentors and to have role models. And you have clearly been a role model on this issue. And I think Japan has real potential to be a role model. My own daughter, who is still fairly young, has two heroes. First is Nadeshiko, the Japan women's soccer team that won the World Cup. And the second is Momo Ranger, Pink Ranger from the Power Ranger Samurai, who's the fastest and strongest of the five Power Rangers. And now I think she's going to have a third hero after today. And after we show her this podcast tonight, which is the first lady of Japan. I want to thank Matt Goodman and the staff and fellows at the assignment chair, Amy Stutterd and colleagues for putting together a wonderful conference today and all of you for coming. And finally, please join me in thanking our very honored guest, Aki Abe. Aki Abe.