I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.

In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?

Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.

A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by

their own light and that light is to be recognized by others. The long history of heroism

with me, Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Rebecca Kesbby, and today we're bringing you an episode from our archives.

To coincide with the Tokyo Olympics, we're bringing you stories from Japan's recent history.

Japan was one of the few developed countries which didn't approve the contraceptive

pill for use soon after it was first developed in the 1960s. Their women would have to wait

until 1999 to be allowed to take oral contraceptives. I spoke to one woman who made it her

life's work to fight for the right, for Japanese women, to take the pill.

I am the sort of person that the more resistance I face, the more motivated I am.

Yoriko Madoka is a politician who served in the upper house of the Japanese parliament between

1993 and 2010. As one of the few women in politics at the time, she made a point of speaking

up for women's rights, including the right to take the contraceptive pill.

The reason I started pushing for the legalization of the pill was because, before I became an

MP, I urged to give a class for women called the Smiley Divorce Class.

I wasn't a professional counselor or anything.

I was just a journalist, but I volunteered to help people who were divorcing because I'd been through it myself.

We had a helpline that people could phone to and thousands of women got in touch.

When they talked about what had gone wrong in their marriages, a lot of them talked about the

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