Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

This month Japan’s parliament elected a female prime minister first time in modern nation-state history. TAKAICHI Sanae, president of Japan’s ruling party LDP was elected as a prime minister of Japan’s national assembly, or Diet or Parliament.

However, it is not as good news as it sounds. There are three major reasons.

 

1.

The party she belongs to is not a good party. It has been amid scandals of bribery and inappropriate relationship with the cult organization recently so in last two elections the party lost seats and fell into the minority ruling party but thanks to the right-wing minor party’s help, she could have been elected as PM. She’s not fully backed by majority of the parliament. In fact, her policies and attitudes as a politician are considered too extreme and crude to align with some other right-wing politicians and their supporters.

2.

Female leaders of nations have become common recently. It is no longer a unique thing. Like Thatcher in UK, Merkel in Germany, the current PM of Italy, Meloni, already we have seen several cases up until now. Even within Asia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand had such top political leaders of nations. Japan was in fact behind the trend of the world. But surprisingly as a consequence, Japan went ahead of the US whose current president is one of the most racist and sexist men on earth.

3.

Some feminists must celebrate the inauguration of female political leader of a big nation like Japan as a significant progress of gender equality movement. But these days in the world there appears a backward movement so called “trad wives”. Some women want to play a traditional role such as dedicated housewife, totally dependent on their husbands and focus on homemaking and childcare. Rather than working hard to become a career woman, being a good housewife is considered to be a good life for women. It is very hard to be successful in business and become rich for anybody regardless of gender. If you are an attractive lady, marrying a rich guy is easier than trying to be a successful career woman. Women have choices as to whether to be a career woman or a housewife. You do not have to choose undesired one. The era of feminism is over.

 

The important thing is that gender or other attributes should not be a factor for the position. Meritocracy should be the sole factor. Therefore, I, myself think as far as I know, she is not a qualified for the prime minister of Japan.