Eric Takabayashi wrote:

> It is not "the system" which is to be blamed for women CHOOSING not to
work.
> Women in the US pay taxes, but they are much more willing to work or even
> support themselves.

Eric, women are not choosing  *not* to work. What they are doing is choosing
to keep their income below a certain threshold, determined by the state, in
order not to get into a situation where they earn more, but get taxed on it
and so end up pocketing less. In other words, they are making a perfectly
logical choice, based on the options the system is offering them.

> They WOULD bother to make their own damned money if it meant women NOT
> collecting government pension or not getting 70% subsidized medical
service.

Yup. That would certainly put the cat among the pigeons. The average
salaryman with a non-working partner would probably be sufficiently incensed
to abandon his reputation for being a patient, long-suffering soul and
embark upon armed dismantlement of the state. Otherwise, no problem.

> Under the current system, one woman in the news calculated she would have
to
> earn 1.7 million per year, IIRC, to take home as much as she did earning
less
> than 1.3 million in a lower tax bracket.

Absolutely. Now you're saying it yourself, "Under the current system". See?
It *is* the system that's creating this situation, isn't it?

> I don't know about you, but I certainly don't know MEN to deliberately
keep
> their work hours or salaries down (also hindering their career
opportunities)
> just to avoid paying tax. I don't know working age men who have a real
choice
> about working or not at all.

Then you don't know about poverty traps, about people who stay on welfare
because a low-end job would involve getting to work on time each day,
working all day and receiving only a paltry amount extra, which would mostly
go on things like transport to work and spending the necessary extra on
clothing, etc.

> > 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
>
> What market are you referring to which Chinese women dominate?

Sorry, Eric. "The game" is a longstanding euphemism for prostitution.

> In Japan's case, if women from their end reduced the gap between how men
and
> women worked, men would also be able to work less, and have more leisure
and
> time for domestic chores. Northern European countries such as Norway have
> reduced many such discrepancies between men and women.

Well, yes, but what works in one society won't always work in another. You
might as well recommend the US to adopt Norway's laws on control of firearms
as recommend Japan to adopt Norway's policies on the employment of women.

> So much so that there is actually
> worry in Norway that women no longer "need" men to raise a family,
> and there is a rise in single motherhood.

There you go, you see. Every silver lining has a cloud. Japanese women have
their problems, and - for all their "maturity" - Norwegian men have theirs.

> If women worked more, for more money, men could work less, for lower
salaries,
> and families would still make it, like in Norway. Men would also do more
> domestic chores, as they do in other industrialized countries. I think
what I
> read just last month claimed husbands in Finland spent four hours per day
on
> housework and child care, and husbands in Japan were down at about 20
minutes.
> The little article I read did not report how much housework the women were
> doing.

> > and either there'd be a huge influx of cheap
> > foreign labour to fill the gap
>
> There wouldn't be enough foreigners allowed to fill the gap. The UN
estimates
> Japan needs an influx of 600,000 laborers *per year*, for 50 years, to
maintain
> Japan's economy in the face of population decline.
>
> Japanese students could be allowed to work, as they do in other countries,
to
> supply low cost or low skill labor in part time jobs. That would encourage
them
> to stop living off their parents, too, and lead to more responsible saving
and
> spending.

Now here you're simply talking out of the top of your head. The number of
hours spent by Japanese students doing "baito" (= part-time jobs) is already
worrying enough. Some of them are running so close to exhaustion all the
time it's just as well some of the lectures are as boring as they are, and
the lecturers don't even try to wake the kids up as they try to catch up on
their beauty sleep.

I not infrequently am asked to write recommendations for students to receive
financial help as it is - the family business that's failed, the student
that's working three nights a week for the family business and holding down
a part-time job as well as trying to study....Your policies would ensure
they didn't get a university education at all.

> There'd be a lot fewer idle young Japanese if they paid for their own
> education or living expenses like many foreigners did.

Poor kids! Their childhood has been sacrificed on the altar of entrance
examinations, their future is in thrall to some corporate magnate, and you
want to deprive them of the little bit of breathing space they get
inbetween!

> Leisure is one sector with potential for growth. It would *create*
> jobs, because I don't see many Chinese girls working at Disneyland, in
> the Louis Vuitton stores, or as bus guides.

Well, then, by all means let's give people more leisure. The problem is, the
steps taken to do that so far seem largely to have failed. For instance, the
Ministry of Education has introduced the five-day week for schoolchildren,
and all that's done is create growth in the cram school sector (not to
mention schools cutting sports events, etc., to make up for the loss of
classtime). If they did something positive, like have students at one school
for the bulk of their school years, so that they weren't spending all their
time at one school preparing for examinations to get them into the next one,
we might see some progress.

> There are still things that low cost foreign labor cannot do. Japanese
need to
> promote growth in such areas as high technology and service.

Japan is already one of the countries on the cutting edge of high technology
and its service industry is like heaven after the UK, but I won't get into
all that as you seem to have a different agenda from that which drew me into
this thread. My points are as follows: (1) different societies follow
different roads to progress, (2) holding up models that work in one society
is no guarantee that they will work in another society and (3) these
differences between societies do not have anything to do with one society
being any more or less "mature" than any other.

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com