r/japan • u/Jonnyboo234 • 4d ago
First mayor to take maternity leave causes backlash in Japan
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqj3d3d37nxgo936
u/pattybutty 3d ago
Very "we need to increase the birthrate. No! Not like that!" energy
102
u/GoGoGadgetPants 3d ago
Japan full of educated idiots honestly, with this type of thinking. No wonder they sadly are on the way out.
27
u/shinsemn 3d ago
Kids are declining, and don't want immigrant. Eventually fewer citizens, smaller workforce, or japan are going to go full android/ai as workforce?
2
u/Grand_Wolverine_4186 1d ago
They finally caught up post covid by accepting cards. They made digital menus. They started robots delivering your food in restaurants. It’s only a matter of time where it gets automated. Lol
2
533
u/pinguineis 3d ago
“We need more children”
“Don’t you dare to take maternity leave”
*teeth sucking” it’s difficult
84
u/Spirited-Lifeguard55 3d ago
Omg i can't stand the overuse of *teeth sucking* noises they do, it's so pretentious and annoying, ffs.
38
-3
36
u/berejser 3d ago
Because as much as people will say that it is a problem that needs to be solved, they think it is a problem for other people to solve without them having to make any changes or feel the effects of any changes. Increasing gender equality is a lifestyle sacrifice they are just not prepared to make.
You see the exact same thing with climate change. "We really need to do something about global warming, but it's the billionaires who need to change their lifestyles, I shouldn't be expected to do a single thing differently."
57
u/StrangeCharmQuark 3d ago
You had me until the billionaires part. Of course everyone needs to do their part, but many of them emit as much in a day as we do in months, and thats still not the major cause, it’s industry. It doesn’t make sense to sacrifice where it won’t make a dent when industry isn’t regulated.
It’s not really comparable to accommodating pregnant women, something we can all do and make a dent in a woman’s and child’s life.
0
u/Economy_Aardvark_354 2d ago
The biggest criticism I see against maternity leave is really from the people affected by it, namely their coworkers who now have to do more work to support the person taking leave. For bigger companies and departments, I say “skill issue” (on the managers’ part), but there are smaller companies that genuinely would be impacted by someone being absent for a while (and not being able to replace them)
I realize YouTube comment section isn’t exactly a one-to-one reflection of reality, but I definitely see this sentiment a lot on videos regarding parental leave.
-18
u/berejser 3d ago
many of them emit as much in a day as we do in months
But there is a lot more of us than there is of them, and that cumulative effect of tens of millions or people all making the same small changes is big enough to overwhelm any other single source.
it’s industry. It doesn’t make sense to sacrifice where it won’t make a dent when industry isn’t regulated.
That's also within our control and responsibility to change, through changing our spending habits to preference companies who are making the choices we want them to be making.
6
u/Virtual-Property-993 3d ago
Honestly, I don't think people in the developed world are ready to face it but they themselves (the "average/median" guy) produce do much carbon it's insane compared to people elsewhere. From car to massive houses, AC, consumer life style. Asking people to eat less meat is already a contentious topic. Maybe we are all the same, the billionaire and I.
2
u/thicc_llama 3d ago
Dunno why you're getting downvoted. In the end it is consumer demand that drives the greenhouse gas emissions of the industries in question, so the answer is a combination of government regulation and a shift in consumption patterns. No demand -> no factory to pollute. On a practical and economical level all of this is extremely difficult to solve, though.
1
4
5
u/TinyIndependent7844 3d ago
every country this. (climate part)
-5
u/ModerateBrainUsage 3d ago
Insert every user in every reddit post (including my wife who isn’t on reddit).
0
u/merurunrun 3d ago
I've already stopped using my private jet to travel and disposed of my collection of super-yachts, so yeah I expect them to do the same.
11
u/Fuzzy-Ad3812 3d ago
Ayo they do the teeth sucking in Korea too
-18
u/Spirited-Lifeguard55 3d ago
doing it occasionally is fine, but there are too many cringe guys doing it 100+ times a day. And noticed it's only the lame ones mostly guys who do it, feminine girls act more civil and don't make such an ugly sound, not in front of others at least.
5
u/F1NANCE 3d ago
This is not reality
-8
u/Spirited-Lifeguard55 3d ago edited 3d ago
Work in a Japanese company and you will see it all the time.
It’s attention seeking behavior. They do loud teeth-sucking noises constantly to announce that they are having a tough time.
But it’s always the same sort of talentless guys who run around the office instead of walking, throw stationary on the table instead of putting it down softly, and talk loudly on the phone and disturb others so everyone can hear them.
These type of posers have no special skill except putting on airs. Teeth-sucking is their way of announcing to everyone around them that they are “working hard”, as if others don’t work as hard as them.
And they are usually dumber than bricks and know nothing and produce nothing but pretentious garbage.1
u/ramenbaby3 3d ago
The irony in that everything you say is also pretentious garbage but I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.
38
u/Carrot_Smuggler 3d ago edited 2d ago
Come on guys you’re literally being misled by OP. Y’all didn’t even read the article title…
Article is about her being celebrated and making it to top influential people list by NYT. Here in Japan everyone is saying that she did good and maybe a handful of twitter losers are trying to stir shit up.
4
116
u/LifeInJapan1999 3d ago
it’s fucking embarrassing to criticize women like this when also complaining about the falling birthrate.
The Japanese people should be making these guys prostrate themselves and apologizing profusely for even thinking like this.
For a country that cares about reputation, supposedly, this Is absolutely insane.
71
u/__surrealsalt 3d ago
If a country clings so tenaciously to misogyny - particularly the practice of pushing mothers out of the workforce and public life - it deserves this low birth rate.
21
u/berejser 3d ago
There are two competing interests. 1) securing the long term future of society, 2) securing your own entrenched privilege. People are overwhelmingly going to choose the selfish option.
11
u/Maleficent-Moose-281 3d ago
From what I've seen in the Japanese comments, it seems that left-wing people support it, while right-wing people do not.
9
53
u/Freak_Out_Bazaar 4d ago
I don't care as long as the child grows up to be a good tax paying citizen who pays in to my pension
-4
17
u/jb_in_jpn 3d ago
Society gets angry at the silliest things, for all the legitimate issues we face.
15
u/Yabakunaiyoooo 3d ago
Like… do they WANT the birth rate to go up or nah?
7
u/CTCPara 3d ago
I think they want the birth rate to go up, but also don't want to actually deal with any of what that entails. e.g. people taking time off for child care, or seeing or hearing children in public places.
4
u/ModerateBrainUsage 3d ago edited 3d ago
Old people want the birth rate graph to go up and money coming into their nenkin. Also they want them to buy things so their share prices go up. But they actually don’t want to see or hear any babies or kids. It’s best if they only exist virtually on paper.
2
2
u/Mr-Thuun 3d ago
They (the older generation) want the birth rate to go up like they want foreigners to come to Japan to live and work. IE: They don't.
6
u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS 3d ago
I do feel like being an elected executive is a bit different than most jobs as far as incapacity goes but the link text is fairly misleading.
2
4
2
u/blosphere [神奈川県] 3d ago
Does she have a elected second, like a vice-mayor? Because honestly I'm a bit torn here and just for time-limited elected positions. Unless there's a elected vice-mayor, then go for it.
It's not the same as some mid-level manager goes on maternity leave. Company is supposed to find somebody to do his/her job, no election needed. Just a meeting or two.
You can't just "choose" mayor when one leaves the job. You have to /elect/ a new one. But that would me she would now lose her job. That isn't fair either.
2
u/Fit_Alternative4541 3d ago
The voices of a small number of people with extreme views carry a great deal of weight.
On the Internet, an opinion that only 10 people agree with can sometimes sound as if 10,000 people support it. The media, knowing full well that it is a minority opinion, reports it as if it were the majority opinion in order to boost page views, and people who believe these reports then discuss them on message boards.
4
u/AgeofFatso 3d ago
If anything, at 36, you don’t have much time left (but pregnancy into 40 is not unheard of nowadays; my cousin’s wife had a baby in her early 40s).
Knowing how Japanese work culture works, I wouldn’t be surprised that she is still be available while on leave and be back in office in 3 months. She is legally entitled for the leave and has done nothing legally wrong (I do understand there are a lot of unwritten rules in Japan including work and public life expectations). I would rather let this play out to see what happens.
Do people get most angry that she went on maternity leave are the same people who hate immigrants? Toxic masculinity seems to correlate with far right beliefs and ultranationalism…
1
u/Eddie_skis 3d ago
My great grandmother had healthy twins at 42 and this must have been in the mid 1930s.
-12
u/Technical_Estate_529 3d ago
Actually I heard that a lot of this biological clock for a woman's body is massively overblown. These days you can even get a baby post menopause if you freeze eggs, do IVF, or undergo a hormone therapy.
6
4
u/LifeInJapan1999 3d ago
It’s not overblown at all. Wherever you heard that from clearly doesn’t know anything about this.
3
u/__surrealsalt 3d ago
No, the previous comment isn't wrong in its fundamental point. The current state of research clearly shows that past claims regarding women's "biological clocks" were exaggerated and, above all, based on methodologically flawed data.
5
u/LifeInJapan1999 3d ago
Yeah well I mean to start with the amount of eggs a women has is fixed, so there definitely is a clock.
And fertility definitely falls off in their 30’s and every year thereafter the fertility rate drops faster until it’s nearly zero. I guarantee no researcher anywhere is disputing this because it’s a fact.
So yeah there’s a clock.
1
u/AgeofFatso 3d ago
Menopause does vary between people; somewhere in the 40s are still probably not a bad guess. Individual women will be different and there will be exceptions. Also you have to consider social factor. If you have children in your 40s, that means when the children reaches adult age, you may be 60 already.
Hence, ideally, it is better to have children earlier and later due to both biological and social constrains.
I am not married, and do not have children but I know many people do. It is tough to be parents especially now, and not to say tough to the women body. If she is willing to go through this, good for her. She is elected legally, and she has rights to have baby. If she cannot do her job, there are also ways to remove her from office. This is due process, so just let this be and see how it works out.
1
3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/LifeInJapan1999 3d ago
"these days you can get a baby post-menopause"
Just to be clear you're the one who started out with this strong of a position.
1
u/Technical_Estate_529 3d ago
You can look it up jfc. Natural conception is no longer possible because the ovaries stop releasing eggs, the uterus itself remains capable of carrying a pregnancy, which is why I said freeze eggs and egg donations with hormonal therapy.
This is not extreme this is basic science. If you find this extreme go to a library and start with ABCs and work your way up.
3
u/Yabakunaiyoooo 3d ago
While it’s true that it’s easier than ever to get pregnant past 40, it’s much more physically demanding and more dangerous for baby and mother. Geriatric pregnancy is considered high risk. So even though the impregnating is much more accessible, actually carrying to term is way harder.
2
u/Technical_Estate_529 3d ago
Yeah I never said it wasn't. I don't know why people are putting all these words into my mouth I never said or coming to conclusions I never suggested. But even then with access to good medical care it's now become significantly easier to do so.
"Carrying to term is way harder" --- yes but you are not getting my point, duh when you get older EVERYTHING physical gets harder everybody's body makes significant changes. Getting pregnant at 42 won't be as easy as 22, of course, that is globally true it is a vacuous statement. It's like doing a long math proof and your conclusion is "therefore probability is < 10", well duuuh it is defined to be in [0,1]
All I was saying was the cultural narrative that was driven primarily by a male dominated medical field for millennia places an unduly and simply incorrect amount of understanding and pressure on the notion of the female biological clock. The rate at which a woman's "biological clock" falls has been significantly over exaggerated and even if there is an increase in the gradient of change as we get older, a lot of modern medicine and science can now help mitigate and counter balance such biological changes.
5
u/macross1984 3d ago
Seriously, Japanese men just don't understand what it take to have a baby just because they don't have to experience the shit women have to face.
And you guys are the one who complain couples not having enough babies.
Mayor should just take her leave so that she can have healthy baby and ignore AHs who bitch and moan.
3
u/FizzyCoffee 3d ago
tbf if you think of the mayor like a ceo I’ve never heard personally of a ceo taking maternity leave, and I imagine it must be extremely difficult. But it should be possible, and executed properly it shouldn’t cause much problems. People are just angry for no reason.
5
u/buzzkill_aldrin 3d ago
I can think of at least two CEOs who took maternity leave:
- The CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, was on maternity leave for 15 weeks. Incidentally, way before that she was the first Google employee to take maternity leave back in 1999.
- The CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Meyer. Notably she took just two weeks of maternity leave for each of her children.
1
u/ElysianWinds 3d ago
Two weeks?? But a baby has to be fed like every other hour still, that absolutely cannot be good for the child to be dumped on someone else already. Not to mention her body isn't even healed yet most likely.
1
1
u/yarukinai 3d ago
Does Jacinda Ardern qualify?
And a quick search for ceo maternity leave results in a long list.
1
u/FizzyCoffee 19h ago
I said personally. As in, the people I know in Japan. Ofc there will be examples on the internet.
3
u/SkyPirateVyse 3d ago
Take maternity leave and be a bad mayor.
Don't take maternity leave and be a bad mother.
Women just can't win.
0
1
u/loveableungovernable 3d ago
Good for her💖 Japan is misogynistic af and also workplace toxic.. someone has to go forward as a good and healthy example 😤
1
2
u/Shiikarii- 2d ago
they didn’t have the foresight when whey put her there? did they expect her to NOT have children? 😭
0
1
2
u/weinhalter 3d ago
Humanity is getting dumber by the day. People are actively spending energy complaining about what we are meant to do naturally.
With all that’s happening in the world right now, the fact that this even news is baffling.
1
u/ramenbaby3 3d ago
Great place to visit but why anyone would want to live and work in that environment is beyond me lol
0
0
u/ScootOverMakeRoom 3d ago
They'd much rather have a leader that doesn't sleep enough, torpedoes the economy, wants to go to war, and blames all the problems on 3% of the population.
-3
u/BaddonAOE 3d ago
Sometimes I wonder why I am still living in Japan. Japanese already gave up their own country.
-21
u/lemonpigger 3d ago
lol is this even legal to be on extended leave while in office? Like if the prime minister is on maternity leave for 26 weeks, what happens to the country
9
u/Kukuth 3d ago
Few countries, states or cities just stop functioning because their head of government is suddenly not able to work. Especially given that I'm sure her pregnancy was known before.
-4
u/lemonpigger 3d ago
It won't stop functioning but you lose the head of state for 26 weeks. I don't think you understand the implications of that.
5
u/Kukuth 3d ago
I fully understand the implications. That's what a deputy mayor is for.
-2
u/lemonpigger 3d ago
A deputy mayor is not a backup. They have their own responsibilities. In the corporate world, when someone goes on maternity leave, you hire someone on a fixed-term contract to cover their work. If they can't do the same its irresponsible.
3
u/Kukuth 3d ago
I think you don't understand how such things work. Comparing a corporate structure with politics is pretty ridiculous.
2
u/lemonpigger 3d ago
It’s called common sense. You saying that an extended leave won’t affect the governing body makes no sense at all.
4
u/Kukuth 3d ago
The head of government at any level is for the most part a representative position. Decisions are made by the administration as a whole, rarely by the head of it. At least in functional democracies that is...
Anyway - this doesn't interfere with the ability of the government to work at all.
11
u/OkTap4045 3d ago
The same it happens when he has an accident or sick.
-1
u/lemonpigger 3d ago
An accident is not an extended leave.
6
u/__surrealsalt 3d ago
The consequences of an accident or illness can very well lead to a prolonged absence. Interestingly, people like you seem to worry about such things only when a woman becomes a mother.
-5
u/lemonpigger 3d ago
Nothing against parenting or being a mother. I’m a mother myself. Just don’t take the office. Heads of state resign due to illness all the time around the world, its the right thing to do. No one should cling to office until they’re carried out.
7
u/__surrealsalt 3d ago
All over the world, elderly people - especially elderly men - assume office and cling to it. Yet when a woman takes maternity leave, everyone freaks out. That is ridiculous.
-1
u/lemonpigger 3d ago
I am not okay with senile men holding office, either. Hell, when was that ever acceptable in any country without backlash?
7
u/Mr_Sooky 3d ago
The prime minister of Japan could be on leave for 52 weeks and nothing would change
0
-2
304
u/Dense-Active-648 [埼玉県] 3d ago edited 3d ago
To be clear, I also think the criticism of her maternity leave is nonsense.
But the only evidence this article offers for a "backlash" is that some negative posts exist on social media. People will always criticize public figures on social media. You can't stop it, and there's no point in engaging with it. This article interviews none of the "critics", makes no attempt to gauge how many people actually hold that view, and cites no data to that effect (June 2026 JX/選挙ドットコム survey found nearly 80% support for elected local heads taking maternity leave).
Calling that a "backlash" is irresponsible, and shows neither neutrality nor basic journalistic standards.