Sexist Identified Himself

The member of Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly who hurled harsh sexist heckling to a woman member in her speech was on Monday proved to be an ultra-conservative guy who landed on Senkaku Island, on which China disputed of its sovereignty, two years ago. The man, Akihiro Suzuki, publicly identified himself as the claimer of “Be married soon” and apologized to embarrassed Ayaka Shiomura. Although she expressed a sense of satisfaction, the scandal became something out of her control.

Suzuki’s apology was far from sufficiency. While Suzuki face Shiomura and told that “I am very sorry for bothering you and other members,” he explained that he had not intended to abuse her and thought that he hoped her to be married soon in this social tendency of late marriage. If he had really hoped that, he would have say something different in different situation. There was a pressure from headquarters of Liberal Democratic Party, to which Suzuki affiliated, to identify the man of embarrassing offense. Everyone realized that he reluctantly appeared to the public and was not apologizing from the bottom of his heart.

Two days after the irregular heckling on her, Suzuki pretended to be innocent in an interview of reporters. To a question whether he thought the man of irregular yell should step down as an assembly member, he said “I think so.” His later explanation was “I made a lie.” Assembly men and women are not supposed to make a lie. Sadly, this is nothing but a cheap shot, not making a big difference from quarrels of elementary school kids.

One of the facts people focus on is there seem to be other members who made sexist hecklings like “Can’t you give birth?” or else. While those yells were delivered from seats occupied by LDP members, LDP dismissed that there was no identified heckling such as those. But there is no credibility for LDP to tell the truth, since one of them, Suzuki, made a big lie. In this situation, nobody believes in what LDP says.

The problem is a number of LDP members do not realize it as a violation of human rights, sticking to conservative principle of patriarchy. In 2007, Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare, Hakuo Yanagisawa, made a gaffe of calling women “machine of giving birth.” Frequent outcome of denying women rights, while upholding policy for supporting women, can be resembled to frequent denial of governmental responsibility in comfort woman issue. It is fair to say that LDP has a tendency to see women as objects of sexual affairs.

Here is the reason why Japan has not achieved “an honored place in an international society,” as the Constitution describes. People who gave support to LDP are also guilty on it.