In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Seiko Noda said the steadily declining number of children being born in Japan is an existential threat, saying the nation won’t have enough troops, police or firefighters in the coming decades if it continues. The number of newborns last year was 810,000, up from 2.7 million just after the end of World War II, he said. “People say that children are a national treasure. … They say women are important for gender equality. But they’re just talking,” Noda, 61, told the AP at a Cabinet office in the Tokyo government complex. “Japan’s politics will not move unless (the problems of children and women) are made visible.” He said there are various reasons for Japan’s low birth rate, persistent gender bias and population decline, “but being in parliament, I feel particularly that there is indifference and ignorance.” Japan is the world’s third-largest economy, a strong democracy and an important US ally, but the government has struggled to make society more inclusive of children, women and minorities. There are deep concerns, both inside and outside Japan, about how the country will reverse what critics call a deep-rooted history of male chauvinism that has contributed to the low birth rate. The gap between men and women in Japan is one of the worst in the world. It ranked 116th in a 2022 survey of 146 nations by the World Economic Forum, which measured progress toward equality based on economic and political participation, as well as education, health and other opportunities for women. “Japan has been left behind because other countries are changing faster,” said Chizuko Ueno, a professor of feminist studies at the University of Tokyo, referring to Japan’s gender gap. “Previous governments have neglected the problem.” Because of antiquated social and legal systems surrounding family matters, younger Japanese are increasingly reluctant to marry and have children, contributing to a low birth rate and shrinking population, Noda said. She has served in parliament since 1993 and has expressed her ambition to become Japan’s first female prime minister. Noda criticized a law that requires married couples to choose a family name – 90% of the time it is women who change their surnames – saying it is the only such law in the world. “In Japan, women are undervalued in many ways,” said Noda, who is one of only two women in the 20-member cabinet. “I just want women to be equal to men. But we are not there yet, and further progress for women will have to wait.” The most powerful lower house of Japan’s bicameral parliament is more than 90 percent “people who don’t menstruate, don’t get pregnant and can’t breastfeed,” Noda said. The lack of female representation is often referred to as “democracy without women”. A quota system could help increase the number of women running for political office, Noda said. Male MPs criticized her proposal, saying women should be judged on their abilities. “It made me think that there are men who don’t have the ability” to run, he said. But during the candidate selection process, “men can just be men, and I guess, for them, just being men can be considered their ability.” Noda graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo and worked at the prestigious Imperial Hotel in Tokyo before entering politics, succeeding her grandfather, who was a member of parliament in central Japan’s Gifu Prefecture. Noda had her first and only child, who is disabled, at age 50 after fertility treatments. Supports same-sex marriage and acceptance of sexual diversity. She has many liberal supporters, calling herself “an endangered species” in her conservative Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan intermittently since the end of the war. Noda said she is often “beaten” by conservatives in the party, but also by women’s rights activists, who do not see her as an authentic feminist. Without the help of powerful male lawmakers in the party, Noda might not have gotten this far, Chiyako Sato, editor of the Mainichi newspaper, said in a recent op-ed. Comparing Noda and her ultraconservative, hawkish rival, Sanae Takaichi, Sato said that despite their different political views, the women share some similarities. “Perhaps they had no choice but to gain the support of powerful male legislators to advance in the Lib Dems at a time when women are not considered full human beings.” A big problem, Noda said, is that Japan’s Self-Defense Force has had trouble mustering enough troops because of its shrinking younger population. He also said not enough attention is paid to what the shrinking numbers will mean for police and firefighters, who rely on young recruits. To try to tackle the problems, it has created a new government agency dedicated to children, which will start next year. Younger male politicians in recent years have become more open to gender equality, partly a reflection of the growing number of children being raised by working couples, Noda said. However, many male lawmakers, she said, believe that issues related to families, gender and population are none of their business and are reluctant to get involved. “Policies were made as if there were no women or children,” she said.
