Are Japanese women “birth-giving machines”?
The Japanese Health Minister obviously thinks so! In an effort to become even less endearing to the female population of Japan, Hakuo Yanagisawa on Saturday was quoted as saying “The number of women aged between 15 and 50 is fixed. Because the number of birth-giving machines and devices is fixed, all we can ask for is for them to do their best per head”. He said this in explanation of Japan’s declining birth-rate, but the speech then continued on this bizarre note. After this wonderfully sexist, he kept apologising for using the word “machines” earlier in his speech. Later in an interview he tried to give justification for his words, “In order to make it easier to produce an image, I used the word child-producing machines”.
Now I’m sometimes not the most PC person on the planet, but the Health Minister saying something like that is off the scale! The only other explanation could be that he’s watched The Terminator a few too many times and has started to think that we are all cyborgs under the flesh! Needless to say, womens’ rights groups are up in arms about this one, and rightly so. Japan is very much still a male-dominated society, with very few women in roles of power in the public or private sectors. I don’t know this for sure, but this could be how a lot of older mainland Japanese men (the Health Minister is 71 years old) view women. There are a few organisations which work to improve womens rights and networking within business (e.g. FEW - Foreign Women in Japan for non-Japanese), but these face a lot of resistance in a society which is still dominated by the old guard.
One other thing I found amusing about this comment was the fact that hew as asking women to “do their best” to increase the birth rate. This call for everyone to do their best (i.e. ganbatte, or gan-ba-tay phonetically) is everywhere in society, from schoolkids at their sports tournaments, to high ranking company directors. Basically, what he is saying here is that he wants women in Japan to have as much unprotected sex (and therefore as many babies) as possible in order to stop Japan’s decreasing birthrate. A tiny bit of background for you: over the next 50 years or so the total population in Japan is estimated to decrease by around 35 million people, to a total of around 90 million in 2055. Those numbers are staggering. But this comment leads to another issue, and one I am trying to educate my students about: HIV & AIDS. Since 1993 the number of HIV cases has increased by 503, to 780 cases in 2004. Now that is an increase of over 250%. AIDS has also been constantly increasing in Japan since its discovery here in 1985 to its 2004 total of 385 cases. Now these numbers are very small, but they have the potential to increase exponentially if education and precautions are not taken. Japan is one of the only countries in the world which has a decreasing birthrate, but an increasing HIV/AIDS rate. Which is why these comments from the Health Minister are somewhat reckless I feel. The declining birthrate is a problem, but you’ve got to look at the reasons for it and deal with them, rather than just tell demean women and tell them to “do their best”.
Well that’s it for now - just thought I’d pass on some news from the Land of The Rising Sun. So until next time, birth-giving machines, gents and children, take care dive safely!
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