TOKYO >> She has been called a “migratory bird,” a “flower,” “Madame Conveyor Belt Sushi” and — by a politician two decades her senior — “a woman past her prime in thick makeup.”

Little of it seems to faze Yuriko Koike, the first female governor of Tokyo, who brushes off most of the inevitable sexism she has faced during her 24 years in politics in Japan.

“Being a woman is a potential power for me,” Koike, 64, said with a serene smile during an interview at the offices of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

In her campaign and less than two months in office, Koike, a former television news anchor and defense minister who is fluent in Arabic, has showed a gritty resolve in standing up to the old boys’ network that overwhelmingly dominates Japanese politics.

When the Tokyo branch of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party refused to support her in her run for governor, Koike decided to stand on her own. She won in a landslide, defeating the candidate backed by the Liberal Democrats, as well as several others.

Overseeing a sprawling metropolis of nearly 14 million people and a budget close to Sweden’s, Koike has already made her debut on the international stage, appearing at the closing ceremonies of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, representing the city that will host the next Summer Games, in 2020.

She is one of three women who have recently ascended to top political posts in Japan in the last three months. Like Renho Murata, the new leader of the Democratic Party, which is the largest opposition party in Parliament, and Tomomi Inada, the new defense minister, Koike will be watched closely to see if she can advance the cause of gender equality in a country where women struggle to achieve parity in politics, business and in the home.

Koike can be a confusing figure for feminists, given her backing by ultraconservative groups that believe women belong in the home and that call for the whitewashing of Japanese World War II atrocities, including the enforced use of Korean “comfort women” as prostitutes. She is a political hawk, supporting the revision of the country’s pacifist constitution as well as a stronger role for the country’s self-defense forces, as Japan’s military is known.

But in a country where female leaders are so rare, simply voting for them can be a revolutionary act, independent of their individual political views.

“People weren’t voting for her as an ideological statement,” said Daniel C. Sneider, associate director for research at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. Rather, he said, voters chose Koike mainly because she campaigned as an antidote to predecessors who had been embroiled in financial scandals. “For voters, somehow, empowering a woman is kind of a reform statement,” he said.

Even those who are discomfited by some of her political views acknowledge the powerful symbolism of a woman in such a prominent position. “Seeing her in a kimono waving a flag in Rio, I thought it was significant,” said Ryoko Akamatsu, president of Women in New World, International Network, a women’s advocacy group. Although Akamatsu opposes Koike’s conservatism, she said, “it’s meaningful to let the world know there is such a woman in Japan.”

Koike, the daughter of an oil trading executive who traveled frequently to the Middle East as a child, studied Arabic and sociology at Cairo University in Egypt.

She displayed an early maverick streak. In an episode described in her memoir of Cairo, “Furisode, Climbing the Pyramid,” Koike decided to hike up a pyramid, a prohibited act. When the police threatened to fine her, she bargained with them to reduce the fine and carried on to the peak, where she donned a kimono and made a pot of green tea under the hot sun.

Upon her return to Japan, she worked as an interpreter before moving into television news, where she interviewed Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

While conducting a television interview in 1992, Koike caught the attention of Morihiro Hosokawa, then the founder of a new political party in Japan, as a prospective parliamentary candidate. “She was the only one who asked interesting questions,” Hosokawa recalled. “She has a good political mind.”

Hosokawa, who went on to a brief term as prime minister beginning in 1993, quipped that Koike was a “jiji goroshi” — literally, “old-man killer.”

“She knows where to compromise,” he said. “She doesn’t leave things messed up. I think she will deal with things well.”

Hosokawa’s party dissolved shortly after he resigned amid allegations of financial improprieties after only eight months in office. Koike subsequently floated through a few parties, leading to her characterization as a “migratory bird,” or “Madame Conveyor Belt Sushi.”

She landed with the Liberal Democrats in 2002, and under Junichiro Koizumi, then the prime minister, she served as environment minister, coining the term “Cool Biz” for an initiative urging workers to wear casual clothes during the summer months so office buildings could save on electricity.

As defense minister during Abe’s first, short-lived term as prime minister, Koike called for a more robust role for the country’s military in international affairs. She also went up against the powerful bureaucracy, orchestrating the resignation of the administrative vice minister of defense.

Abe stepped down as prime minister in 2007, and Koike ran for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats the next year, invoking both Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher as she told reporters she was trying to break Japan’s “iron plate” against women. She lost to a man, Taro Aso, and her career seemed to stall.

When she ran for Tokyo governor this year, Koike often campaigned in a bright green headband, vowing to bring financial rectitude to city government. She pledged to examine cost overruns in the 2020 Olympics budget. And she promised to reduce long waiting lists for day care to help more women enter the workforce.

In a campaign characterized by mudslinging, the most sexist comment came from the former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, 84, who insulted Koike with remarks about her “thick makeup.”

Koike defeated her nearest competitor by more than 1 million votes.

She wasted no time taking on vested city interests. A month after she was elected, she delayed a planned November move of the Tsukiji fish market, a famed tourist attraction as well as the largest seafood market in the world, because of safety concerns about the new site, which is built over an old gas production plant.

Some women’s advocates say Koike’s ability to challenge the male power structure does not override their political distaste.

“I would like to support her policies like reducing the day care waiting list,” said Kuniko Funabashi, a former professor of women’s studies at Wako University in Tokyo and president of the Beijing Japan Accountability Caucus, a network of women’s lobbying groups. “But I worry that she’s too exclusionary,” Funabashi said, citing Koike’s promise to revoke a lease of public land to a new school for Korean residents living in the city.

“Just because she’s a woman,” Funabashi added, “we aren’t going to support her.”

Koike is coy about her future ambitions: When asked if she wanted to become the first female prime minister of Japan, she demurred. “I just became the governor,” she said.

But she noted that at the national level, women are often stonewalled by men. “Some women should be the decision-makers,” she said. “Or,” she added, “the final decision-maker.”

© 2016 The New York Times Company