A leader of Japan’s ruling party has sparked an uproar by calling people without children selfish, in the latest in a series of comments by senior politicians urging women to have more babies.
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai on Tuesday said that recent generations think they are better off without children.
He contrasted them with older people who had large families despite the devastation of World War II and urged women to have babies to contribute to Japan’s prosperity.
The country is struggling with an aging and declining population.
“Before, during and after the war, nobody said it’s better not have children because it would be too much trouble. Today, people have a selfish idea that they are better off without having children,” Nikai said. “In order for everyone to pursue happiness, we should have [women] bear many children, so our country will prosper and develop.”
Opponents on Wednesday said that Nikai’s remark neglected people’s right to choose their family size and was insensitive to those who are forced to give up hopes of having children because of financial or medical difficulties.
They also criticized him for rejecting diversity, including same-sex couples and single parents.
Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan leader Yukio Edano told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a parliamentary debate that the decision whether or not to have children “is part of the most basic right of self-determination, in which third parties should never interfere.”
Abe agreed, saying that the decisions to marry or have children should be up to each individual and that he and his wife, Akie, have no children.
“We should not impose our opinion on others,” he said.
Abe pledged to provide financial support for child rearing and education.
A total 946,060 babies were born in Japan last year, the lowest number since the nation began compiling statistics in 1899 and below 1 million for the second year in a row, government statistics showed.
Abe has promoted women’s advancement at work to address labor shortages caused by Japan’s aging and declining population, although rights activists say his measures are inadequate because they are not based on human rights.
Several senior lawmakers have been criticized for urging women to focus more on childrearing.
Last month, an Abe confidante, LDP lawmaker Koichi Hagiuda, angered some women and single-parent fathers by when he said that women should be primarily responsible for rearing children because “all babies prefer mommies [to daddies] — there is no mistake.”
Another LDP lawmaker, Kanji Kato, said every married couple should have at least three children.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS