Notes - Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan - page 228

6 He has received some 70 honorary doctorates and professorships in China
(including Hong Kong and Macau, but not Taiwan).
7 See, for example, Kyodo (02/02/2006); The Japan Times (06/12/2005); or Asahi
Shinbun (26/09/2005).
8 See, for example, Masaki (2005); or Asahi Shinbun (27/05/2006).
9 The Japan Times (17/10/2005); or Yomiuri Shinbun staff writer Funatsuki (2005).
10 Nakasone Yasuhiro was a right-wing prime minister in the 1980s who was still
active in constitutional debates during this time.
11 Komeito continued to proclaim during this their function of ' pulling back ' the
LDP from its more right-wing proposals (see also Hardacre 2005; or Asahi Shinbun
07/12/2005, 02/02/2006).
12 Boulding has various contact and engagement with Soka Gakkai International.
13 For Ikeda ' s yearly peace proposal see www.sgi.org/sgi-president/proposals.html.
14 Also during this time, Ikeda wrote an essay that turned into the award-winning film
' Another Way of Seeing Things ' (2004), speaking directly about the atrocities that
can occur by having misconceptions about other peoples.

4 Women, social change and realising political ideals
1 This chapter will not include other types of relationships or sexualities such as
lesbian or gay women and men, because I did not come across any. This does not
mean that such relationships do not exist, but until recently there was no o cial

emphasis on ' non-traditional ' , i.e. other than male - female married relationships. In

cials in 2008, there was a clear recognition that
homosexuality had to be openly recognised to avoid discrimination.
2 Such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Law in 1986, the Childcare Leave
Law in 1991, the Angel Plan in 1994 (expanding care facilities for children and the
elderly), the Elderly Care Leave Law in 1998, and the Nursing Care insurance
programme in 2000.
3 For a cross-national comparison of gender empowerment measures see UNDP (2006).
4 However, with no female members in the cabinet in June 2011.
5 For example, Lo (1990) explored how women in the Brother Company who failed
to get married, ended up working for the company for many years, but without any
prospect of promotion.
6 Kenneth G. Henshall (1999) in Dimensions of Japanese Society: Gender, Margins
and Mainstream, suggests the same thing.
7 Adi erent version of this topic, addressing a more general readership who may
not be Buddhist, became a bestseller on the Amazon online bookstore.
8 McLendon (1983) has also shown how women in large trading companies joined these
more prestigious companies to find a good husband rather than for the work itself.
9 Komei (2004b) for further details on specific childcare policies.
10 See, for example, Gilligan 1993; Jordan et al. 1991; Garry and Pearsall 1996, for
arguments of this kind.

interviews with Soka Gakkai o

5 July 2009 to July 2010
1 Ozawa is a complex figure, controversial but he has also been one of the most sig-

ni cant politicians in the Japanese politics of the past 25 years or so. He was the

principal architect of the coalition governments of the mid-1990s, the achievement
of which it was to reform the Lower House electoral system. He has been a stra-
tegist of political change to a badly atrophied system dominated by the LDP and
government bureaucracy, and a crucial force in the rise of the Democratic Party, in
o ce since 2009. Perhaps it is incorrect to imply that he can be understood simply

in terms of corruption allegations, as some would argue.