• Fri. Nov 22nd, 2024

Japan Subculture Research Center

A guide to the Japanese underworld, Japanese pop-culture, yakuza and everything dark under the sun.

A post that was meant to to show Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's support for women, due to some bad English usage with a different meaning when read as Japanese, ended up saying, "Hey all you women in Japan, drop dead!"
A post that was meant to to show Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s support for women, due to some bad English usage with a different meaning when read as Japanese, ended up saying, “Hey all you women in Japan, drop dead!”

 

A blog post written by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to show his support for women backfires when people pointed out that the English word “shine” can actually be read as the Japanese word for “drop dead (死ね)!”

The blog was coincidentally released shortly after a scandal in which members of Abe’s political party yelled sexist comments at the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly where Your Party member Ayaka Shiomura was giving a speech on the difficulties of women raising children in Tokyo.

As reported in The Daily Beast, the public is demanding the resignation of the members who called out, “Hey you, should hurry up and get married!” and “Can’t you have babies?”

The heckling and slurs all came from the seats of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) faction, which is the ruling party in the Tokyo Assembly and in the nation. The Cabinet Office declined to comment about the incident, saying that they “are not in a position to do so.” However, Prime Minister Abe is definitely in a position to comment. He is not only the leader of Japan, he is also the Director-General—the sosai —of the LDP. It looks like deeply-rooted misogyny is hard to hide.

5 thoughts on “Abe tells women to “shine,” but, really, he meant “die!””
  1. This very same comment of mine was deleted in another site. I was just saying that though Iam a female and a feminist for that matter, the shedding of tears of a female lawmaker shows her lack of wit and wisdom. Iam with the guy this time. How can she effectively parlay a solution to the problem when she herself is part of the problem? And I would say again, no cry babies!

  2. […] Womenomics was touted by Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as his progressive policy to elevate the status of women in what is still a very sexist and unequal society, where women are far from being empowered. The Global Gender Gap report published last year noted that Mr. Abe and the LDP’s pledge to bridge the gender divide resulted in actually widening the gulf, with Nippon sliding down a few notches to 111th in terms of world gender equality.  […]

  3. […] Womenomics was touted by Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as his progressive policy to elevate the status of women in what is still a very sexist and unequal society, where women are far from being empowered. The Global Gender Gap report published last year noted that Mr. Abe and the LDP’s pledge to bridge the gender divide resulted in actually widening the gulf, with Nippon sliding down a few notches to 111th in terms of world gender equality.  […]

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