Japan minister slammed for calling women 'child-bearing machines'

Yahoo! News ^ | Sat Jan 27, 10:52 PM ET | AFP

[DTogo]

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's health minister has come under fire after referring to women as "child-bearing machines" in a speech on the country's declining birth rate. ADVERTISEMENT

"The number of women aged between 15 and 50 is fixed," Hakuo Yanagisawa said Saturday at a meeting with local members of the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the western city of Matsue, Kyodo News reported.

"Because the number of child-bearing machines and devices is fixed, all we can ask is they do their best per capita."

Yanagisawa, a 71-year-old former finance ministry bureaucrat, apologised for his remarks during his 30-minute speech, but his comments sparked anger from two of the country's leading women writers.

[DTogo]

Never a shortage of older Japanese politicians suffering from "foot-in-mouth" afflictions.

[L98Fiero]

LOL! That sad part is, he's right. 100 years ago that would have been a compliment.

[SteveMcKing]

Why is sensitivity so overvalued? It's the compelling question of our era.

[DTogo]

Japan * ping * (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)

[DTogo]

It takes two to Tango: even in Japan.

[Mazda3Fan]

That's pretty pathetic, why doesn't he refer to all men as just sperm machines. I hope there is more to me than that.

[canuck_conservative]

With the rise of artificial insemination techniques, ....


... not anymore it doesn't.

[DTogo]

In Japan they still Tango, for the most part.

[Logophile]

The average number of children per woman stood at 1.26 in 2005 and the birthrate will gradually decline to 1.21 in 2013, the survey showed.

Yanagisawa was wrong on two counts. Japanese women are not machines. Nor are they doing much child-bearing these days.

[L98Fiero]

When discussing reproduction, the number of offspring is determined by the number of females, as the old man is pointing out. Regarding the same topic, I'm a sperm-donor and a female is a "child-bearing machine".

The old-timer was discussing birth-rates, it seems so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

[atomicpossum]

They'll waste their time having a fit about this, but, in a few (non-)generations, the Japanese people will disappear...

[The_Reader_David]

This guy's been watching too much anime.

I think he may have this in mind:

(Anyone who knows the anime it's from knows why posting this is an apt comment on Yanagisawa's gaffe.)

[untrained skeptic]

LOL! He pissed off some Japanese feminists. His comments weren't inaccurate. His real offense isn't how he made the comment, it was that he asked feminists to do something as distasteful as bearing children.

He should have just told them that he was sorry that his comments offended them, but political correctness tends to avoid issues rather than addressing them so he's rather be politically incorrect than useless.

[DTogo]

Yanagisawa is part of the problem on 2 counts: he's a "typical" Japanese male, and part of the government.

Both major inhibitors to Japanese women having more kids.

[onyx]

ROTFLOL! The Japanese version of Biden.

[DTogo]

I've done my part to prevent that! ;^)

[R.W.Ratikal]

So What? What ever happened to "Sticks and stones will hurt my bones but names will never hurt me"?

[skinkinthegrass]

I've heard, the TAXES are very heavy in Japan....is any sign, the taxes may go DOWN?....more kids now, more taxpayers.

[4Liberty]

Yes - but people are living much longer.

Maybe we SHOULD ratchet things (reproduction) back, a bit.

Global population continues to climb.

Unless you think we need more "whites" or other racial groups etc. reproducing. Something with which I disagree & find repulsive, frankly.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Off topic (sort of) but if they can make a working birthing tank (incidentally, it the Japanese that are behind a lot of the research), then theoretically all abortion can be outlawed. Abortionists would loose their arguments (except for overpopulation--hopeful society doesn't sink so low that abortion is encouraged to prevent an "overpopulated" Earth).

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Japan has the lowest levels in the developed world, and most other developed countries are below replacement level, too (including the United States).

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Short of a catastrophe, make that a few centuries (that is what their (Japanese) predictions suggest).

[DTogo]

Supply-side economic theory hasn't been translated into Japanese yet.

+ Guys like this Yanagisawa are still stuck in the era of Government Knows Best.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Generally not an overpopulationist (support 1 billion Americans), but respect their arguments--as long as they aren't proponents of abortion to reduce/stabilize the population. Opinion is that more efforts should be made to colonize space (i.e. search for habitable planets and how to get there (superluminal travel), research into terraforming Mars, etc.) so that there is no pressing need for population limits.

[Clintonfatigued]

I didn't see any passages in the speech where he refers to men as "semen machines." By making his case in the most boorish manner possible, he undermined his own argument.

[skinkinthegrass]

WHOA! ....great tagline... :D

[Al Simmons]

"Beat" Takeshi says that its the feminists (modern women) who have made men unable to get it up ;>)

[Clintonfatigued]

Thanks!

I've gotten a lot of comments about it (many not favorable). It makes people think, which is the point.

[DTogo]

If by feminists he means the Code Pink types, I agree with him.

But any man unable to arouse himself in Japan has to be dead.

[Al Simmons]

"But any man unable to arouse himself in Japan has to be dead."

If anime is anything to go by, you just said a mouthful, brother.

Every day when I awake I wish I had been born Japanese.

Kitano's films opened a new world to me and the more I watch Japanese TV on YouTube (helpful when there are subtitles or someone posts what you are about to see) the more I realize that its possibly the most SANE nation on the planet - in a strictly cultural sense, of course.

Women and men know their places.

P.S. I agree with Takeshi, Fumin has GREAT t*ts!!!!!!!!!!!

[cartan]

I've always been wondering what she had to do with this guy:

[Jonah Hex]

Armitage III. And, yes, I get the reference. ;-)

[L98Fiero]

'I didn't see any passages in the speech where he refers to men as "semen machines."'

That's because he wasn't talking about men, he was talking about women and birth-rate. He said nothing that isn't true. He just offended the oh-so-delicate sensibilities of the chronically offended. He never even infereed that is all women are.

[AmericanInTokyo]

And to think he probably said it without even having one beer under his belt.