Sexist Remarks drive Japanese lawmaker to tears.

[Crossroads Inc.]

From CNN

Tokyo (CNN) -- Outrage is growing in Japan after lawmakers hurled sexist comments at an assemblywoman giving a speech this week about the need for more services for women.
Male colleagues heckled Your Party member Ayaka Shiomura on Wednesday during a Tokyo assembly meeting. They interrupted her with comments urging her to get married and questioning whether she could bear children.

Shiomura had taken the stage to urge the Tokyo Metropolitan government to increase efforts to support women. Citing recent regulations that require mothers to fold up their strollers when boarding a train, she outlined struggles Japanese women face when dealing with pregnancy and raising a child due to lack of public support.
She also addressed the issue of infertility.

However, she was interrupted by a male member of the ruling LDP who shouted, "You should get married!"
Shiomura smiled weakly and continued amid male laughter.
Can 'womenomics' save Japan?

A second outburst, "Can you even bear a child?" followed as tears welled up in her eyes and her voice began to break.
When she sat down after her speech, she was seen drying her eyes with a handkerchief. Later, she posted on Facebook that the outbursts were like "a punch in the gut" and called on the hecklers to come forward.

Backlash ensued, with television pundits debating the incident and women lawmakers demanding the names of those responsible be released.

Sexism in common in the nation's workplace, and there have been concerns that Japan's fertility rate will continue to drop as more women choose careers instead of marriage and children.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has attempted to fill a gender gap in the workplace through "Womenomics," but men still hold the majority of positions of authority and command greater salaries.

Men in Japan earn 30% more than their female counterparts, according to statistics cited by Abe during an editorial last year announcing the launch of "Womenomics."

Statistics from the National Personnel Authority show just 3% of women are managers in Japan's central government, a number the Prime Minister has said is too low.

The goal is to increase that number to 30% by the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Abe has said.

I have to say when I first saw this story, I was not going to post it thinking "Oh, Japan being Japan again" But it gets to me that for the most part, Japan seems to receive a 'Pass' on a lot of it's issues by the World media.
You'll see Japan mentioned on economic things almost every day, but when it comes to social stories theres few if any.

Misogyny in Japan is and has been a huge problem and it's something that often goes unreported, I think in part, to the fact we consider Japan so 'Civilized'.
You'll get plenty of stories about trying to advance women's rights in third world countries constantly, but sometimes it's the first world countries that need attention as well.

[AniThyng]

Misogyny in Japan is and has been a huge problem and it's something that often goes unreported, I think in part, to the fact we consider Japan so 'Civilized'.
You'll get plenty of stories about trying to advance women's rights in third world countries constantly, but sometimes it's the first world countries that need attention as well.

Maybe it's the fact that it's not just Japan, but rather misogyny of all shades is present in all east asian cultures, regardless of their economic and political status?

[Thanas]

People think Japan is advanced because they produce shiny gadgets, anime and dress western-like. They are not. There never was a conscious effort on part of the USA to engage in society-engineering and thus you get these predictable results.

[AniThyng]

People think Japan is advanced because they produce shiny gadgets, anime and dress western-like. They are not. There never was a conscious effort on part of the USA to engage in society-engineering and thus you get these predictable results.

"Conscious effort on the part of the USA to engage in society engineering" huh. I'm not sure we can be too proud of the results of such an endeavor as practiced in the USA itself against cultures within its own borders, nevermind if 1950's USA had attempted to go any further than they already did when Japan was broken and prostrate under their bootheel.

[General Zod]

People think Japan is advanced because they produce shiny gadgets, anime and dress western-like. They are not. There never was a conscious effort on part of the USA to engage in society-engineering and thus you get these predictable results.

The US isn't really any better in that regard when you've got lawmakers telling women they should hold a pill between their knees and saying that being a rape victim in college is a badge of honor.

[Thanas]

People think Japan is advanced because they produce shiny gadgets, anime and dress western-like. They are not. There never was a conscious effort on part of the USA to engage in society-engineering and thus you get these predictable results.

"Conscious effort on the part of the USA to engage in society engineering" huh. I'm not sure we can be too proud of the results of such an endeavor as practiced in the USA itself against cultures within its own borders, nevermind if 1950's USA had attempted to go any further than they already did when Japan was broken and prostrate under their bootheel.

Worked fine for Germany. Yes, it had better starting positions. But an effort was made nonetheless with the USA monitoring laws being enacted and making sure the right people got into power.

Douglas MacArthur, besides being a general contemptible human being, made no such effort.

[K. A. Pital]

And thank god America was not trying to play 'progressor' with Japan. That would only create resentment and increase the risk of a highly technically advanced fascism in the future.

The flaws of a society have to be corrected from within the society. It is up to the international forces to support all who cling to progress (instead of giving money, diplomatic support and weapons to crazy islamists like the US loves to do), but it is not their call to come into the country and tell them how they should live. This type of 'engineering' is unwarranted.

I would also say that having technofeudalism as a possible state of existence for a country isn't exactly bad. It would be much worse if material conditions were correlated with their social advancement such as the latter serving as precondition. This would lock many nations in a trap of backwardness and brutality for ages. Material changes, however, do change the circumstances.

Although Japan certainly should have had some social upheavals like other Asian nations; that would teach it to be more female-friendly.

Germany was never engineered from the ground up; Nazism was only a political abberation, the general Western European cultural norms were kept. Since Germany never was heavy on colonialism and itself was a recently formed nation, its short-lived period of racist oppression could be expunged from memory with relative ease. This does not apply to the Japanese Empire.

[AniThyng]

People think Japan is advanced because they produce shiny gadgets, anime and dress western-like. They are not. There never was a conscious effort on part of the USA to engage in society-engineering and thus you get these predictable results.

"Conscious effort on the part of the USA to engage in society engineering" huh. I'm not sure we can be too proud of the results of such an endeavor as practiced in the USA itself against cultures within its own borders, nevermind if 1950's USA had attempted to go any further than they already did when Japan was broken and prostrate under their bootheel.

Worked fine for Germany. Yes, it had better starting positions. But an effort was made nonetheless with the USA monitoring laws being enacted and making sure the right people got into power.

Douglas MacArthur, besides being a general contemptible human being, made no such effort.

I think you severely underestimate the level of social engineering you will need to do to squeeze casual sexism out of asian culture. It's a hell of a lot further than just making sure the right politicians take power. (and in the 1950's, who exactly would you have in mind? certainly not the japanese communists! (just guessing they might be less picky about keeping traditional gender relations, seeing how the chinese communists tried to stamp out gender inequality, with limited success))

[Thanas]

And thank god America was not trying to play 'progressor' with Japan. That would only create resentment and increase the risk of a highly technically advanced fascism in the future.

The flaws of a society have to be corrected from within the society. It is up to the international forces to support all who cling to progress (instead of giving money, diplomatic support and weapons to crazy islamists like the US loves to do), but it is not their call to come into the country and tell them how they should live. This type of 'engineering' is unwarranted.

Right, though honestly, the US cared very little about even doing the most perfunctory war crime trials. Heck, compare this to Germany - sure, they pardoned a lot of Nazis, but they made damn sure that the people who got appointed to society-shaping levels were at least somewhat clean. I am unaware of a similar type of appointment controlling existed for the six or seven years as it did in Germany. Seems more like the USA was content to use the existing power structure to achieve peace, quiet and order.

I think you severely underestimate the level of social engineering you will need to do to squeeze casual sexism out of asian culture. It's a hell of a lot further than just making sure the right politicians take power. (and in the 1950's, who exactly would you have in mind? certainly not the japanese communists! (just guessing they might be less picky about keeping traditional gender relations, seeing how the chinese communists tried to stamp out gender inequality, with limited success))

I am not underestimating anything. What I am saying is that no real effort was made at all. For example, it would have been trivially easy to demand compensation for the comfort women. Real effort was not put into even making the most horrendous examples right.

[AniThyng]

I am not underestimating anything. What I am saying is that no real effort was made at all. For example, it would have been trivially easy to demand compensation for the comfort women. Real effort was not put into even making the most horrendous examples right.

I think the issue of how America could have better handled war reparations and punishing war criminals is really quite irrelevent to stamping out in any form the kind of culturally ingrained sexism that leads to "you should try getting married" being used to shout down women lawmakers, not least because it is not unique to japan*, but to all east asian cultures (or asian, for that matter. See India).

*See the thing is Crossroads, from my perspective, this isn't remotely similar to looking at some wierd fetish hentai or nifty gadget and thinking, "ah, japan! so bizzare.". Rather this is more like looking at Japan and thinking "huh, so they are really just like the rest of asia,"

[Thanas]

I don't think so. Both are results of cultural norms. If you take measures to curb the worst excesses and teach the following generations that this kind of stuff is not acceptable, then eventually it will get better.

[General Zod]

I don't think so. Both are results of cultural norms. If you take measures to curb the worst excesses and teach the following generations that this kind of stuff is not acceptable, then eventually it will get better.

I honestly don't think the US was any better about sexism during the 40s and 50s. It kind of strikes me as silly to suggest that they should have done something when they were just the same.

http://www.businesspundit.com/10-most-s ... the-1950s/

[Thanas]

I don't think so. Both are results of cultural norms. If you take measures to curb the worst excesses and teach the following generations that this kind of stuff is not acceptable, then eventually it will get better.

I honestly don't think the US was any better about sexism during the 40s and 50s. It kind of strikes me as silly to suggest that they should have done something when they were just the same.

The USA was infinitely better about sexism than Japan and anybody who claims they were just the same is pretty much ignorant about how awful the Japanese treated women.

[K. A. Pital]

Seems more like the USA was content to use the existing power structure to achieve peace, quiet and order.

Of course; nothing even close to denazification happened in Japan. Then again, there was no reason to do it. It was not the US proper; it was a foreign territory controlled by the US. That territory may have been even openly fascist for all they cared so as long as it served their goals. Greater powers never give a damn. Germany was a model case; a special case. Japan was not. In reality due to the geopolitical wishes of the US ruling circles even Japan's crimes in Asia faded into oblivion because it was needed as America's unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Pacific.

[Broomstick]

Seems more like the USA was content to use the existing power structure to achieve peace, quiet and order.

Yes, that was the case. Is that such a bad thing after so many years of war and so many people dead as in 1945? EVERYONE wanted peace, quiet, and order at that point.

You are also forgetting that that sort of genderism was ALSO the norm in the US at the time. Women who weren't deliriously happy with being suburban housewives and mothers were sent to psychiatrists in the US, even heavily medicated, and told having any aspirations outside of family and motherhood was abnormal. You are upset because the US didn't change a culture norm that, at the time, was also the cultural norm in the US? That particular norm didn't change in the US until the 1970's, and even today it's not universal here.

[Broomstick]

The USA was infinitely better about sexism than Japan and anybody who claims they were just the same is pretty much ignorant about how awful the Japanese treated women.

I wouldn't describe it as "infinitely" better, just better, and not by that much.

Nothing was done to change how women were treated because the men in charge of making changes after the war didn't see anything wrong with the cultural practice. This sort of ignoring of the issues of women is hardly unique in history and still pretty common today world-wide.

[Dominus Atheos]

I think you are conflating the way Japan treats women now(and the popular western views of how Japan treats women now, which is very different of how Japan actually treats women) with the way they were treated back then.

The way America treated women in the 1940s? That is pretty close to the way Japanese women are treated now. And this is after probably as much progress as the US, so you can imagine how bad it was then.

Also, I'm surprised to see Thanas criticize the US for not forcing our cultural values on another country. Usually it's people criticizing us for forcing our cultural values on others.

[Thanas]

Yes, that was the case. Is that such a bad thing after so many years of war and so many people dead as in 1945? EVERYONE wanted peace, quiet, and order at that point.

Yes, leaving the Japanese version of Hitler in charge is a bad thing. I don't know why I have to explain that one to you. Oh, and compared to every other country out there, the US had it easy. Very easy. So they don't get a pass on that, especially not when they managed to do so much better on the other side of the world.

You are also forgetting that that sort of genderism was ALSO the norm in the US at the time. Women who weren't deliriously happy with being suburban housewives and mothers were sent to psychiatrists in the US, even heavily medicated, and told having any aspirations outside of family and motherhood was abnormal. You are upset because the US didn't change a culture norm that, at the time, was also the cultural norm in the US? That particular norm didn't change in the US until the 1970's, and even today it's not universal here.

Am I just failing to make myself understood here or are you failing hard to comprehend what I am saying?

I am saying that instead of making a conscious effort of encouraging reform voices in Japanese society the USA did nothing. That is one of the reasons why Japan is still ass-backwards instead of approaching a modern society.

The way America treated women in the 1940s? That is pretty close to the way Japanese women are treated now. And this is after probably as much progress as the US, so you can imagine how bad it was then.

Thank you. You're so far one of the only one who actually understands what I am saying.

Also, I'm surprised to see Thanas criticize the US for not forcing our cultural values on another country. Usually it's people criticizing us for forcing our cultural values on others.

I am not a fundamentalist and thus can hold different opinions on different topics. Such as, that when you occupy someone you have a duty to do what is in your power to make their lives at the very least not worse. If you have to occupy someone, at least put some effort into it.

[K. A. Pital]

I am saying that instead of making a conscious effort of encouraging reform voices in Japanese society the USA did nothing.

Broomstick raised an important objection: why would a society with a similar set of misogynist social norms encourage reform? There is no reason for it to do so. In fact, since it cannot see what is wrong, it cannot correct it. In Germany they did not correct such phenomena, but something different: nazism. But the US had colonies and its struggle with Japan was a struggle for power, not an ideological struggle where one seeks to destroy the opponent's ideological underpinnings.

[AniThyng]

I am saying that instead of making a conscious effort of encouraging reform voices in Japanese society the USA did nothing. That is one of the reasons why Japan is still ass-backwards instead of approaching a modern society.

So basically what I'm getting from this is that it is analogous to blaming the British for the current state of affairs in south east asia re: human rights because they did nothing in the 1950's to ensure that 60 years later her colonies would not still have many of the same quint illiberal cultural norms like homophobia, racism, religion and sexism that they had in the 1950's. Britan today might be all okay with homosexuality, say, but Britain in the 50's? Remember Alan Turing?

I remain unconvinced that there was anything the US could have done because what you are asking is not political reform, but fundemental reform of social norms that even americans themselves in 1950 would not recognize as wrong which is ridiculous right off the bat. You cannot compare cultural norm sexism with nazism, and I doubt "would empower women" was even something the US cared about in German politicians circa `1950!

is in your power to make their lives at the very least not worse. If you have to occupy someone, at least put some effort into it.

So do you think that post Iraq war 2 the Americans should not have packed up and left but stayed and basically engaged in a brutal cultural war to wipe out disagreeable Islamic cultural norms? If this is the standard you are judging former imperialist colonial powers by, everyone has failed miserably, not just the Americans in Japan. Nevermind that we managed to turn a story about inherant sexism in japanese culture into a story about america.

[Broomstick]

Yes, that was the case. Is that such a bad thing after so many years of war and so many people dead as in 1945? EVERYONE wanted peace, quiet, and order at that point.

Yes, leaving the Japanese version of Hitler in charge is a bad thing. I don't know why I have to explain that one to you.

Outside of the Jewish minority the US never had the deep-seated animosity towards Hitler that, say, the Soviets did. Sure, the Americans hated Hitler but not having faced the Nazi machine directly the way those in Europe did there was not the same motivation towards obliterating such fascist dictators. Likewise, the Americans back in the US had not directly faced the Japanese in WWII the way the Koreans, Chinese, Philippinos, and others had. To you it is self-evident that Hirohito and his upper echelons should have been killed off but it was never so to the American public. Hence, it was relatively easy for him to be allowed to live.

MacArthur kept the Emperor alive because he thought that the Emperor and the cult of obedience around him could be used to keep the population under control and prevent rebellion to the occupying US military. While there were a lot of reprehensible things about MacArthur he was, actually, correct on that point. The Emperor did cooperate to the extent of urging the Japanese to "bear the unbearable" and submit to the conquerors, and he did not foment rebellion. I can't imagine Hitler would have been so cooperative in similar circumstances and would have tried to rise to power again.

The US was tired of fighting Japan. No, we hadn't suffered the losses of Europe but we sure as hell had seen what happened to Europe and didn't want that for ourselves. Remember, we had just dropped two atom bombs to avoid an invasion with projected fatalities well into the millions. If keeping the Emperor alive while stripping him of everything but figurehead status could keep the peace it looked better than the alternative. I understand if you disagree with the reasoning, but you act like this was done out of some sort of malice and it wasn't.

If keeping Hitler alive would have prevented 5 or 10 millions deaths would that be a fair trade, even with how awful Hitler was? Because that seems to have been the reasoning with Japan - keep the Emperor alive and we prevent a lot of death and destruction.

Oh, and compared to every other country out there, the US had it easy. Very easy. So they don't get a pass on that, especially not when they managed to do so much better on the other side of the world.

On the other side of the world it wasn't entirely up to the US, the UK and USSR also had a say in what happened and frankly we couldn't do a damn thing about Russia rolling over Eastern Europe. Well, I suppose we could have nuked, them, too, but I don't see how that would have improved things. Europe and Japan were two different theaters of war you have to use some caution comparing them... but then, you should know that.

I am saying that instead of making a conscious effort of encouraging reform voices in Japanese society the USA did nothing. That is one of the reasons why Japan is still ass-backwards instead of approaching a modern society.

Right. The US had just fought Japan from Hawaii to the home islands after 5 bloody, vicious years of fighting the LAST thing they wanted in Japan was any sort of dissenting voice even if that was for "reform" because what the US wanted most from Japan was stability. Peace and quiet. What motivation did the US have to do anything more than what was required to keep Japan peaceful and rebuilding to become self-sufficient again?

The less we fucked with their culture the less motivation there would be to rebel. We didn't want Japan rebelling, especially as they started to recover. This, after all, was a nation that had planned to have old men, women, and children meet fully armed Marines at the beaches and fight them with, essentially, pointy sticks. Keeping Japan cooperative was a big deal, even if that meant some morally unpleasant choices.

I not arguing that it was morally right to keep Hirohito alive and as Emperor, I'm saying there was a cold logic to the decision. We put off the visceral gratification of killing an enemy for the cause of keeping the peace and preventing more death and destruction. Well, hell, maybe if we had done that with Iraq there's be a half million fewer graves it the world and Baghdad wouldn't be on the verge of being over-run (again) today.

The way America treated women in the 1940s? That is pretty close to the way Japanese women are treated now. And this is after probably as much progress as the US, so you can imagine how bad it was then.

Thank you. You're so far one of the only one who actually understands what I am saying.

I understand what you are saying but I think you're wrong on several points. You're trying to apply a 21st Century perspective to men from the 1940's. I should sit you down with my dad to let him tell you how his perspective has changed since then. Even people born, raised, and young adults in the 1940's don't have many of those mindsets anymore.

Broomstick raised an important objection: why would a society with a similar set of misogynist social norms encourage reform? There is no reason for it to do so. In fact, since it cannot see what is wrong, it cannot correct it.

^ This. Men in the 1940's, by and large, could not see that as a problem, it just didn't exist, so they would never correct it.

One thing that did change was MacArthur's new constitution for Japan giving women the vote - but then, women had the vote in the US by that time as well, so yes, he was capable of making changes... where he could see them. By that time it was largely self-evident to most American men that giving the vote to women was the right thing to do, so it was done. Giving them equal status in employment, though? Or political office? Not going to happen at that time period. The US didn't do jack for for the Ainu, either, or non-Japanese minorities living in Japan (some brought there unwillingly during the war) because they simply didn't see the problem. You can't fix what is invisible to you. If at that time the majority of the US couldn't see anything amiss with Jim Crow laws why on Earth would they fix the Japanese equivalent? If American women were still, in many ways, second class citizens by reason of gender why would American men see a reason to make Japanese women equal to Japanese men?

[mr friendly guy]

People think Japan is advanced because they produce shiny gadgets, anime and dress western-like. They are not. There never was a conscious effort on part of the USA to engage in society-engineering and thus you get these predictable results.

The US isn't really any better in that regard when you've got lawmakers telling women they should hold a pill between their knees and saying that being a rape victim in college is a badge of honor.

Not to mention someone in authority saying that you can't get pregnant from rape unless you enjoyed it.

[Crossroads Inc.]

A friend I was chatting with said the following regarding Japanese women, and I'm not sure if its true. I did some basic searching and all I can find makes it seem more an urban myth:

""You are right. It's not unusual in Japan that a husband in a family is allowed to use a few thousands yen a month by his wife except for the cost of his really cheap lunch while she buys many cloths, bags, shoes and cosmetics of her own.
There are many families of "Kaka-Denka" in Japan, which means the husband is under his wife's thumb.(Kaka means wife and mother, and Denka or Tenka means reign)
On one hand the position of Japanese women is weak, but on the other hand their position is strong (Of course, so is that of Japanese men). I think it's arrogant for Western people to judge other cultures and situations of them only with Western values.""

[AniThyng]

A friend I was chatting with said the following regarding Japanese women, and I'm not sure if its true. I did some basic searching and all I can find makes it seem more an urban myth:

""You are right. It's not unusual in Japan that a husband in a family is allowed to use a few thousands yen a month by his wife except for the cost of his really cheap lunch while she buys many cloths, bags, shoes and cosmetics of her own.
There are many families of "Kaka-Denka" in Japan, which means the husband is under his wife's thumb.(Kaka means wife and mother, and Denka or Tenka means reign)
On one hand the position of Japanese women is weak, but on the other hand their position is strong (Of course, so is that of Japanese men). I think it's arrogant for Western people to judge other cultures and situations of them only with Western values.""

I'm sure there is a lot of selection bias in the stories to make it sound worse than it really is with regards to how much financial freedom the husband actually has, but even with your western worldview does it surprise you that absent of power outside the household, women would find other ways to assert some degree of control? This would be like the contradiction where women are seemingly more religious than men despite religion being misogynistic because it is an means to reign in the husband.

I can't say I've personally seen it done such that the man has his allowance strictly regulated by the wife (aside from stories of the poor henpecked husband and all that stuff), but traditionally in Asian households it is the wife that controls the joint family finances and is again not one of those things where you marvel had how <wierd> japan is.

[Steve]

I think the belief that Japan would have revolted en masse if the Americans had forced Hirohito to abdicate is more a case of MacArthur's justifications becoming accepted fact. If we had forced him to abdicate and put his son on the throne, it would have worked just as well. One account of occupation Japan I read even had the author quote some of the leadership as expecting the US to do this, just to be surprised when they didn't due to MacArthur and the State Department, who were obsessed with the idea that any deviation would not only lead to popular rebellion, but to the rise of Communists.

And then there's the way MacArthur ran things, and the petty censorship of even legitimate complaints about the authority - the kind of complaints that help foster democratic responsibility in the populace - and any and all reports about the effects of the atomic bombs. It got to the point where the censorship rules, meant for dealing with any lingering fascist sentiments, were being mostly applied to left-wing Japanese publications.

On the flip side, IIRC MacArthur did make sure the new Japanese constitution included terms for the rights of women.


And now I really wish I could remember the name of that book on the Occupation of Japan....