I wrote:

> > I wouldn't disagree out of hand, and am probably as upset as you are at
the
> > waste of human resources I see here in Japan. Even so, the fact that a
few
> > right-wing politicians have their heads stuck in the sand doesn't
reflect
> > the degree of maturity of the Japanese people

and Eric Takabayashi replied:

> Then you aren't paying much attention to the attitudes of the general
public
> themselves when they respond in surveys for example, that they support
> traditional gender roles...

Eric, I'm sure there are many Japanese people - male and female - who on the
one hand think that Mori's comment was crass, but who, on the other hand do
not think exactly the same as politically-correct Westerners on this issue.
My basic point is that Western notions of political correctness are not the
be-all-and-end-all of "maturity".

I don't think that a society which has looked at these issues and come to a
different conclusion is therefore "immature". I lived in the south of Spain
for many years in a society that explicitly and specifically rejected
political correctness to a far greater extent than the Japanese do, but
there was no denying the sophisticated nature of that society.

> ...or the phenomenon of how women work part time for low
> salaries (under 110 hours per month, and under 1.3 million per year, or
> what have you) *specifically* to avoid paying higher taxes or being
> required to pay for their own health and pension.

I don't quite see your point. Surely this is an example of the waste of
human resources I was talking about? The system discourages them from
pursuing a career, right? That's precisely what I was driving at.

> I personally welcome the proposal to eliminate
> exemptions for spouses, to encourage women to work more like
> men, and reduce debt.

Well, this seems to me to be an entirely different issue, but since you
bring it up my initial reaction is that, unless it is one measure in a
well-thought-out package of measures, I imagine the result would be that for
every one women it spurs on to say, "OK, I'll work full-time and make a
proper career out of it" there will be twenty who will say, "Heck, I was
working for peanuts before, but at least they were tax-free peanuts. If I've
got to pay tax on it it's just not worth the bother". Of course, it might
encourage some of them to go on the game, but that could result in some
nasty turf wars with the Chinese girls who at present appear to have
cornered the lion's share of the market and, since it would, by its nature,
be the exact opposite of working "more like men", this is clearly not what
you had in mind.

No, as I see it, by such a measure Japan would lose its biggest source of
cheap labour in one fell swoop and either there'd be a huge influx of cheap
foreign labour to fill the gap (plus - if such a thing is possible! - even
more hairdressers, etc., for the newly-idle women to hang out in) or
Japanese companies would move even more of their operations abroad,
resulting in even greater job losses.

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com