Japanese Health Minister calls women "birth-giving machines" in speech

Over the weekend the 71-year-old Japanese Health Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa caused quite a stir in the media by referring to women as "birth-giving machines" (kodomo o umu kikai) during his speech to local assembly members of the LDP in Matsue. While talking about the declining birthrate in Japan the health minister said (Japanese text):

"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, although it may not be so appropriate to call them machines."

To many here the minister's comments would still have been seen as sexist and missing the point even if he had not called women "birth-giving machines." Most people feel that a woman does not have any obligation to produce children, of course, and that the real discussion should be on how to improve work-life balance in Japan and improve support for families who would like to have children (or more children) and keep on working but can not due to a lack of day care facilities and myriad other difficulties. One of Japan's leading writers, Izumi Momose, said that she is "extremely provoked" by the minister's comments and went on to say that "Women have children not because they want to resolve the declining birthrate issue but because they want to feel happy by having children."

The health minister is getting slammed in the media today and has since apologized for his remark, though he says he used the term to make it "easier for people to understand the demographic situation." He said he spoke metaphorically, referring to women as "birth-giving machines," to make his point easier to understand. But did this subject need to be simplified in such a manner? Unless he was speaking to a group of small children, who in the audience would not understand the issue of a declining birthrate, and that the remedy (in terms only of numbers) is that women and families will need to have more children on average if the birth rate is to increase over time?  Women feel insulted though because the solution to the problem — assuming you think it is a problem — is far more complicated than asking women to do their best to have more children.

Comments

[John Caddell]

I cringe when I read these tortured "Let me explain myself" apologies. They usually just make things worse. I don't think these are limited to Japan, since I hear these in the US every week, usually from an athlete in trouble or a politician.

What's so difficult about saying, "I'm sorry that I said what I did. It was a dumb mistake."??

[Ivan]

I agree John, and btw great post on this topic, as you live in Japan it hits harder than here in the States.

I was curious, I heard from various sources that there is goverment subsidies in Japan to encourage women to have children to offset this declidng birthrate, is this true?

I agree through, it reminds me of the newspapers arguing whether bloggers are journalists is the problem to the newspapers instead of saying that the problem is Google is a better advertiser than the newspapers (borrowed from Cory Doctorow). Same here, instead of saying the problem is declining birthrate it should be that there is no support structure setup to accomodate would be or existing parents that want to have children.

[Raj Dutta]

LOL.
what's not so funny?
Back in my country, there's a state called Haryana. and according to the latest census, there seems to have been not a single girchild born since september 2006. there was a story on this in Femina India which i'm trying to dig out.