Sparks: A mayor in Japan announced her maternity leave - and got the whole country talking

Time belongs to no office, Lucilius, yet the public howls when a leader pauses to nurture the very life that will one day replace her own fragile authority.

If a city is merely a larger version of the household, does the ruler who masters the art of parenting become more or less fit to govern the citizens?

The matter is this: a society that treats the natural arrival of a child as a political crisis has traded its common sense for the hollow rigidities of a dying tradition.

What difference does this leave make to the Tuesday morning of a clerk, unless we admit that the practical value of leadership lies in the lived example of a balanced life?

She wins her victory today, but the structure of the state will eventually crush her spirit if the institutions do not learn to breathe at the pace of a human heart.

The center of the world is not the mayor's desk, for every cradle is the center of an infinite universe that the narrow-minded priests of bureaucracy refuse to acknowledge.

Things that are elegant: a sash loosened for a resting mother, a quieted office at twilight, and the sharp silence of critics who have forgotten their own beginnings.

Step off the path when the load gets too heavy, but keep your eyes on the star so you know exactly how to lead the way back once the sun rises.

In the lands of the East, a judge may step aside for prayer or pilgrimage, and so it is curious to see a city tremble when a woman pauses for a miracle.

A body that brings forth new greening is a vessel of the divine, and no stone wall of a city hall can stop the flow of life’s necessary season.