Women, social change and realising political ideals - Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan - page 150

These views seemed open to approaching a new way based less on gender-
de ned roles and more on emphasising human qualities in line with Buddhist

ideals of compassion and caring for others. While the Komeito politician
Hamayotsu always promoted the rights of women, I was wondering what a
male politician thought about this tendency to katamaru of women and men,
the tendency to divide so sharply into gender-de

ned roles.

Sawa Yuji, a newly elected Upper House Komeito MP:
'

everything must change

'

It was 27 July 2004 - just over two weeks after Sawa Yuji won his first term in

o ce after having been working, very successfully, in television as a journalist

and producer for 30 years. I met up with him in one of the guest rooms at the
Komeito Headquarters building in Shinanomachi, central Tokyo. Sawa was
friendly and easy to talk to, in his

fifties, cheerfully handing me a bottle of
water from his campaign trail. It was about 35 degrees Celsius outside. Ueda-
san, the head of Komeito ce, who had arranged this

meeting for me, disappeared after introducing us, only to reappear a few
minutes later with some more cold water. He then left us, but apologised on
behalf of Sawa that he only had about 45 minutes before his next engagement.
The following is an extract from our lively conversation, which ended up
lasting an hour and 15 minutes, with Sawa saying to Ueda, when he came in
to remind him of the time after about 50 minutes had passed,

' s public relations of

'

Just another ten

'
electioneering for Komeito gave them any direct return in terms of overturning
a discriminating social and economic system.

'

minutes . One of my underlying questions was whether female supporters

ANNE METTE : So what about the role of the father? [I was prompting him,
again, to answer this question as he kept going back to his favourite topic:
education].
SAWA : Oh yes. Well at the moment the birth rate has fallen to 1.29. Minshut -
has refused to cooperate to negotiate the pension system. The current pen-
sion system set up 50 years ago depended on the birth rate not falling
below 1.39; with a slight fall it would still be sustainable. But the system is
not sustainable now. This is a very important point. It is not just a
question of the birth rate falling below 1.29, but that national wealth
will decrease, which means that the current living standard cannot be
maintained. This is the big problem we face. The 1.29 rate means that in
100 years the Japanese population will decrease by half. This may not be
completely accurate, but the possibility is there. The Japanese population
will have to consider how to deal with this if we want to maintain our
present living standard. In the short term, no one is concerned about this.
There are many people who think that this has nothing to do with
them. But I really want to stress how important this 1.29 figure is for

everyone. It is with this in mind that Komeito has proposed extending