Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his cabinet on Wednesday, bringing in five more women into the cabinet; putting a free-marketeer in charge of the world’s largest retirement fund; and reassigning the author of a sales tax hike that caused the economy to shrink.

“A society in which women shine is one of the big pillars of this government,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said before the announcement.  Abe wants 30 percent of senior business and political positions occupied by women by 2020.  Yeah, I know, what about “half”?  Anyway, it’s currently about 11 percent.

“The most underused resource we have is the power of women,” Abe said.  “Japan must be a place where women are given the chance to shine.”  Abe’s female appointments make up less than a quarter of his cabinet, short of his own goals.  And yet five is an all-time high for Japan’s notoriously male-run society.

Yasuhisa Shiozaki is now Health Minister, putting him in charge of Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF).  Shiozaki supports buying more risky investments such as stocks, and was already making plans to boost the weighting of domestic stocks in its portfolio.  Traders are no doubt already salivating over getting their hands on all that sweet, sweet retirement money.

Two veteran lawmakers with close ties to China were named as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s (which is neither Liberal nor Democratic) policy and elections honchos.  One of them is 69-year old Sadakazu Tanigaki, author of Japan’s sales tax hike that effectively kneecapped the small economic recovery earlier this year but slashing the buying power of the consumers who actually create demand.  The effects were so bad, Abe’s allies are begging him to put off the planned second half of the sales tax hike for three years.