Word: yanagisawa
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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KATSUSUKE YANAGISAWA, 71, a retired teacher from Japan, about reaching the top of Mount Everest. He became the oldest person to scale the 29,035-ft. peak...
...rate is 1.29 children per woman), appealing to traditional family values while also promising to boost child-care support. But his administration has still managed to appear insensitive and out of touch on the issue. In a Jan. 27 speech exhorting them to have more children, Health Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa referred to Japanese women as "baby-making machines." The minister quickly apologized, but Abe's critics seized on the incident-and on Abe's refusal to fire Yanagisawa-as evidence that the administration can't handle the demographic issue. "The Health Ministry deals with grave fundamental social issues like...
...kidding. Even in Japan, where chauvinism is often an accepted part of public life, Yanagisawa's comments touched a nerve among Japanese women. The country's fertility rate is just 1.29, one of the lowest in the world, which puts Japan on a course for depopulation over the next several decades. Japanese women are regularly harangued by mostly male politicians to help slow the population decline by bearing more children - even though getting married and having a baby often means sacrificing their career and their independence, even...
...Opposition political parties were quick to turn the gaffe into a weapon against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, calling for Yanagisawa's resignation. The minister apologized repeatedly but has refused to resign, and so far Abe has stood behind him - calculating that he can't afford to lose a second cabinet minister just four months into his first term. (Genichiro Sata, minister of administrative reforms, resigned in December over a political funding scandal...
...poll said they wanted to see Yanigisawa resign for his remark - and with elections coming up in July that could decide the control of the Diet's upper house, many of Abe's own party members feel the same way. LDP ethics committee chairman Takashi Sasagawa told reporters that Yanagisawa "should quit quickly like a man" - thus demonstrating that Sasagawa was slightly missing the point of the whole sexism thing. But today Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Abe's right-hand man, confirmed that Yanagisawa was staying, which will only exacerbate divisions with...