When Mitsuko Tottori was announced as the new boss of Japan Airlines (JAL) in January, it sent a shockwave across the country’s corporate sector.
Not only was Ms Tottori the airline’s first female boss, she had also started her career as a member of the cabin crew.
Headlines ranged from “first woman” and “first former flight attendant” to “unusual” and “absolutely not!”
One website even described her as “an alien molecule” or “a mutant,” a reference to her having worked at Japan Air System (JAS), a much smaller airline that JAL bought two decades ago.
“I didn’t know about an alien mutant,” laughs Ms. Tottori, speaking to me from Tokyo.
In short, she was not one of the elite group of business people the airline had typically appointed to its top job.
Of the last ten men to hold the office, seven were educated at the best university in the country. Ms. Tottori is a graduate of a much less prestigious women-only junior college.
Ms. Tottori’s appointment places JAL among fewer than 1% of Japan’s top companies led by women.
“I don’t see myself as the first woman or the first former flight attendant. I want to appear as an individual, so I didn’t expect to get so much attention.”
“But I realize that’s not necessarily how the public or our employees see me,” she adds.
Her appointment also comes just two weeks after JAL flight attendants were praised for successfully evacuating passengers from a plane that collided with a Coast Guard plane during landing.
Japan Airlines Flight 516 burst into flames after colliding on the runway at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.
Five of the Coast Guard plane’s six crew members died and the captain was injured. But just a few minutes after the collision, all 379 people on board the Airbus A350-900 were able to escape safely.
Suddenly, the airline’s rigorous training of flight attendants was in the spotlight.
As a former flight attendant, Ms. Tottori learned firsthand the importance of aviation safety.
Four months after she became a flight attendant in 1985, Japan Airlines was involved in the deadliest single-flight accident in aviation history, killing 520 people on Mount Osutaka.
“Every JAL employee has the opportunity to climb Mount Osutaka and talk to those who remember the accident,” said Ms. Tottori.
“We also display aircraft debris in our safety promotion center, so we don’t just read about it in a book, but we look with our own eyes and feel with our own skin to learn more about the accident.”
Although her appointment to the top job was a surprise, JAL has changed rapidly since its 2010 bankruptcy, which was the country’s largest non-financial corporate failure.
Thanks to extensive government financial support, the airline managed to continue flying operations and the company underwent a major restructuring with a new board and management.
His rescuer was the then 77-year-old pensioner and ordained Buddhist monk Kazuo Inamori. Without his transformative influence, it is unlikely that someone like Ms. Tottori could have become the leader of JAL.
I spoke to him in an interview in 2012. He didn’t mince his words and said JAL is an arrogant company that doesn’t care about its customers.
Under Mr. Inamori’s leadership, the company promoted people from frontline operations, such as pilots and engineers, rather than from bureaucratic positions.
“I felt very uncomfortable because the company didn’t feel like a private company at all,” Mr. Inamori, who died in 2022, told me. “Many former government officials brought golden parachutes to the company.”
JAL has come a long way since then, and the attention its first female president is receiving is not surprising.
The Japanese government has been trying to increase the number of female bosses in the country for almost a decade.
By 2030, a third of management positions in large companies should be filled by women, after the goal was not achieved by 2020.
“It’s not just about the mindset of business leaders, but it’s also important that women have the confidence to become leaders,” says Ms Tottori.
“I hope my appointment will encourage other women to try things they were previously afraid of.”