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.

I happen to watch this show while staying at a hotel in Okinawa. The hotel subscribed to Netflix so I could watch this American show on the hotel room TV. The TV show was remake of 1980’s popular soap opera of the same name. I watched that show while I was attending a university in the US. It was 1990’s so I watched the already re-runs of the show. I was addicted to the show, which helped me improve my English ability. The plot was not very much changed from the original version. A woman named Cristal was married to an oil tycoon Blake Carrington and joined his rich family but some people in the family such as her husband’s daughter and ex-wife were hostile to her and had quarrels with them. 

But there were some drastic changes in the drama, especially casting and setting of the characters due to the time difference. 

1. Normailised portrayal of gay characters; A son of the rich family, Steven was gay. In the original version, Steven and his family struggled with his sexuality and Blake even tried to cut off relationship with his son and removed him from successors of his family business. Cristal, his new wife dissuaded him from doing so because of her gentle character. Steven was married to a woman and had a child to another woman, Cristal’s niece, Sammy Jo. But Steven later got a love affairs with men and his family finally approved of his lifestyle. Although he was a gay character but no kissing scene of two men. 

In the new version, nobody questioned Steven’s lifestyle and he and his lover, Sam, Cristal’s nephew were happily married.

2. More characters of colors; in the original version, Cristal was a white woman but new Cristal was a Hispanic woman from Venezuela. Blake’s spoiled and flapper daughter, Fallon had a love affair with a chauffeur who was a white man but in this new version, the chauffeur was a Black man and had relationship with another Black man. Cristal’s nephew Sam who later became Steven’s husband is Hispanic as well. 

Sounds good but what is bothersome is these characters or their siblings had some criminal records due to the reality? 

In fact, even today, it is unrealistic that a rich conservative white parents would be happy to know their daughter had a love affair with a man of color. 

One more thing to note is more independent working female character setting than the original. In the new version, Cristal met Blake on the board meeting of his company as a board member, PR director. Fallon was a board member and later tried to take over her father’s CEO position. In the original Cristal was just Mrs. Blake Carrington and Fallon was just a spoiled child. 

Steven was not actively involved in his family’s oil business unlike the original version due to his liberal environmentalist thought. 

The new version indeed reflects the trend of 21st century such as more accepting of gay lifestyle and racially diverse demography. It was a good history and social study material for me who enjoyed watching the original. 

I just saw the film at a small theatre in Tokyo. 

It was a biopic about the French politician who lived through holocaust and after the war became a lawyer and the minister of French government and became the first female president of European Union assembly. 

She helped promote women's rights by legalisation of abortion in France, 1970's. She contributed to improvement of prisoners' condition. Why was she so enthusiastic about human rights issues? 

The film started with her childhood in Nice with her family living in a happy condition before the second world war. Her family were Jews and believed France would never betray them. 

But later her family were arrested by German Gestapo. She, 16-year-old, her sister and mother were deported to Auschwitz. Her brother and father were thought to be executed. The three survived in Auschwitz but they were deported again, and then her mother died in other concentration camp.  

After the war, Simone married a man and gave birth to three children studying at a law school in Paris. But she had been traumatized by her experience in the holocaust and couldn't sleep on a bed. Even after the war, she could not tell others about her horrible experience during the war. 

But such experiences motivated her to help others in the world. In her old age, she came back to Auschwitz on 60th anniversary of liberation of Auschwitz. She spoke and wrote all about her experience. She insisted that Europe should get united so no more war happens. Surprisingly she had lived in Germany after the war. 

The film taught us it is the responsibility of living people to make the world better place and right the wrongs. Indeed, we are living in a better world, at least much better than what she experienced. 

I, myself have visited Auschwitz in Poland, and learnt what happened there. 

Such history should never be repeated. I felt it is MY responsibility not to let such horrible events happen again.  

Sadly, it is happening and very hard to stop that. 

It’s been thought women are not good at mathematics and not suitable for engineering jobs. But that kind of notions were proved to be nonsense a long time ago. The film “Hidden Figures” described three Afro-American women working for NASA rocket engineering department as mathematicians, in Jim-Crow era, 1950’s to 1960’s.

I learnt about the film by Voice of America article on NASA’s International Space Station program. NASA named the supply ship to the ISS Katherine Johnson after one of mathematicians in the biopic film.

They were not only being woman but Black women, who had to sit down on back seats in public bus and could not share the same bathroom with their white co-workers. But they did contribute to the very difficult space programs by calculating the orbit and designing rockets.

If they were white male, this story cannot be a film.

Breaking stereotype is the most important factor to counter racism or other type of discrimination such as gender, and sexual orientation. Stereotype is the origin of discrimination. Prejudice is biased view on others using stereotype images. Then people discriminate others based on prejudice.

Stereotype is baseless information about others. Like all Japanese can do Karate, which I don’t. You cannot generalize others based on such stereotype. The sad thing is people judge others by these stereotypes and then sometimes treat them badly.

In the film, NASA officials found the women very useful to the organization’s projects so they accepted them equally. If they hadn’t accepted them as legitimate staff, NASA would have lost such great assets and wouldn’t have succeeded in historic space missions in those days.

Stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination undermine progress of our society.

Let’s get rid of such things from our world.