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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOutrage in Japan as female lawmaker jeered for being single, childless
Japanese officials on Friday condemned the heckling of a member of Tokyos city assembly, during a debate on support for working mothers, by male members who ridiculed her and called on her to get married.
The incident comes amid a push by the government to increase the number of working women as a way to boost the economy and illustrates deep-seated conservative attitudes in Japan, where many men still believe that a womans place is in the home.
City assembly member Ayaka Shiomura, 35, was talking about measures to support child raising and boost fertility during a session on Thursday when male lawmakers interrupted her with cries of Go and get married and Cant you give birth?
She later said most of the calls came from the direction of seats where majority assembly members, including those from Prime Minister Shinzo Abes Liberal Democratic Party, were sitting.
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/outrage-in-japan-as-female-lawmaker-jeered-for-being-single-childless/article19256626/
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy..."
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The number of single people has reached a record high. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.) Although there has long been a pragmatic separation of love and sex in Japan a country mostly free of religious morals sex fares no better. A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way.
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Marriage has become a minefield of unattractive choices. Japanese men have become less career-driven, and less solvent, as lifetime job security has waned. Japanese women have become more independent and ambitious. Yet conservative attitudes in the home and workplace persist. Japan's punishing corporate world makes it almost impossible for women to combine a career and family, while children are unaffordable unless both parents work. Cohabiting or unmarried parenthood is still unusual, dogged by bureaucratic disapproval.
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Some of Aoyama's clients are among the small minority who have taken social withdrawal to a pathological extreme. They are recovering hikikomori ("shut-ins" or recluses) taking the first steps to rejoining the outside world, otaku (geeks), and long-term parasaito shingurus (parasite singles) who have reached their mid-30s without managing to move out of home. (Of the estimated 13 million unmarried people in Japan who currently live with their parents, around three million are over the age of 35.) "A few people can't relate to the opposite sex physically or in any other way. They flinch if I touch them," she says. "Most are men, but I'm starting to see more women."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)MisterP
(23,730 posts)these are the types they're trying to appeal to by continuing the legalization of whaling, too (keeps 'em from harpooning Korean-Japanese?)