By IPS Correspondents
TOKYO, Sep 30 2002 (IPS)

The steady decline in birth rates is forcing Japan’s male-dominated society to rethink the merits of its traditional gender roles, once touted as the backbone of the country’s post-war economic miracle.

The revolutionary change is even more dramatic as it is has been endorsed at the highest levels.

Starting April 2003, the health, labour and welfare ministry will implement various new initiatives, including an incentive budget of almost 9 billion U.S. dollars for childcare leave, to help boost birth rates in this nation of 125 million people.

The centrepiece of the programme is a paternity childcare leave, according to the ministry, which said that companies can get up to 80,000 dollars from the ministry to implement liberal parental childcare leave.

Japan’s number of new-born babies dipped alarmingly to 1.18 million in 2001, from around two million a year in the late 1960s and early seventies, making the country the world’s fastest ageing society.

From a survey of 30 countries in the region, Japan’s fertility rate of just 1.3 is the lowest, which compares with 2.6 for Asia and the Middle East, according to the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based non-governmental organisation (NGO).

The fertility rate is a measure of the average number of children that a woman would have during her childbearing years, considered to be between 15 and 49.

Surveys indicate the major reason is late marriages. The average age for women marrying for the first time rose to 27.2 compared with 25 in 1980 and the average age for first pregnancies likewise rose to 28.2 from 26 in the 1980s.

“It’s a miracle,” says Yoriko Abe, the editor of ‘Women’s News’ a feminist newspaper, referring to the government’s initiative of supporting paternity childcare leave.

Yoriko’s paper has fought a long battle against what it calls Japan’s official system that steadily encouraged men to put work before family and restricted women to the role of home maker.

Indeed, the government package set a precedent last week when it set a target to raise the proportion of men taking paternity leave to 10 percent from the current 0.4 percent.

In addition, the ministry talked of increasing the number of women taking maternity leave to 80 percent, compared with the 56.4 percent in fiscal 1999.

A special budget set up to subsidise child rearing under a pension reform plan for fiscal 2004, calls for expanding exemptions to include parents with young children from making pension insurance contributions.

Japan, in a bid to soften international criticism, passed a childcare leave law 10 years ago, to include giving working fathers the right to take a one-year childcare leave which was once reserved only for working women. The move, however, has not had the desired results.

In the new stipulation, parents taking childcare leave will receive an additional 40 percent of their salaries, drawn from employment insurance, until the child turns one.

Toshiyuki Shiomi, who teaches at University of Tokyo’s education department, explains that the root of the problem lies in the ingrained view that child rearing is a woman’s job.

“The psychological imprint on these people is so strong that it is difficult for them to change even if they think they ought to,” says Shiomi.

Takahashi Kiriku, head of the Keidanren, Japan’s largest business conglomeration, is another expert who does not believe the push to get men to take paternity leave can work.

“Ten percent is a wishful target on the part of the government,” he says in an ‘Asahi Newspaper’ interview on Sep. 21. “There are companies out there who feel the new government package is interfering with their business,” Kiriku said.

Take the case of Minoru Onishi, 35, who took three months leave in 1999 to care for his newborn triplets.

When Onishi returned to work he was shocked to find out that the electronic parts company he worked for decided to penalise him for his time off by downgrading his employment ranking from C to E, the lowest in the scale.

Despite the overwhelming barriers, there are some signs that indicate Japan could be on the road to a long awaited transformation.

For example, the same official survey on child-leave taken by the health, labour and welfare ministry discovered that while the actual number of men taking paternity leave was dismal, 7.4 percent of men said they would take paternity leave if possible.

The recent emergence of groups composed of young fathers, who proudly acclaim their child-rearing skills, is another encouraging development.

Masaki Matsuda, 38, heads Ikujiren, a citizen’s group pushing men’s rights to childcare leave.

“I work part-time jobs and do the bulk of the housework,” he says. “The decision was made after my wife decided she wanted to work full-time, and I have no regrets.”

Matsuda says: “There is a growing number of younger men who believe if Japanese fathers are granted leave to spend time with their children, society will benefit from it”.

“My mother or I hardly saw my father who used all his time for the company. Japanese women are fed-up with the situation and children miss their fathers a lot,” he explains.

Comments from Mariko Inoue, 33, and her husband, Yukio, 34, who have a one-year old son, indicate that paternity leave could boost birth rates.

“We are already thinking of the second child,” says Mariko, who works as a finance consultant. “My husband applied for a special childcare allowance that allows him shorter working hours, which has allowed me to keep my career going,” she explains.

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