“Board meetings with women in them take too long.
“Women, and this is a good thing, but they’re very competitive. If one raises her hand, they must think, Now I have to say something, too, and they all start talking. [...] If we have to increase the number of women, I won’t say who said it, but they said that there would have to be some limit on how long people can talk, or we’ll be stuck in endless meetings.
“We have a few women on our committee—about seven—but they know their place.”
Former [Japanese] Prime Minister Yoshirō Mori apologized for his “inappropriate comments” on the 4th [of February]. His defiant attitude made it sound as though he were saying, Like I said, I’m taking it humbly, and, Personally, I don’t think it was “inappropriate,” but my wife, daughter, and granddaughter had issues with it, in addition to the whole world making a fuss, so I must have said something offensive. It really didn’t seem like he felt anything.
Mori apologized by saying, essentially, Well, I don’t really understand, but I guess I’d better say sorry, and setting the issue aside, claiming he couldn’t make the judgment on his own and relying on commonly accepted standards. That he could get away with that must be because of the way he conforms to the mass media’s logic (even though he shouldn’t be on good terms with them). The media can’t openly empathize with people like Mori, but I think they sympathize behind the scenes.
Newspaper headlines at the time said things like “Could Be Taken as Discrimination” and “Insulting Women?”
I can imagine a young reporter of two or three years assigned to the society section writing a story calling the remarks discriminatory and insulting and the desk ignoring her views to slap that sort of headline on it.
Feeling unhappy about it, she might ask her coworker’s opinion, only to be given a useless response like, Isn’t it better to not lean too far to one side on an issue where there are lots of different opinions?
In Sayonara, otokoshakai (A farewell to the patriarchy), a book I published last year, I wrote that men see our society as “society,” while to women it is clearly nothing but “(male-dominated) society.” Men can’t see the “male-dominated” part. So it’s possible that the society section of the newspaper is also the “(male-dominated) society section.”
Whether they are conscious of it or not, the men who make up male-dominated society can’t understand the grammar women use. They could be speaking in terms that would allow them to maintain their cut of the power, so why don’t they “know their place”? Why are they bringing up all these details? To the men, their discussions seem to have no conclusion in sight.
Details form the answers to questions such as, What happened to get us into this situation, and what underlying assumptions were there during that process? If we examine those assumptions and processes impartially, can we say we still need them? They manifest during the course of a person’s full statement, so we need to be willing to listen to the end. Saying everything you think is an act that takes time.
Whether you understand that act or not, it must be responded to by lending an ear. “Must” because that is how people treat each other with courtesy; that’s paying respect. Respect is always expressed through behavior; there’s no other way to show it.
Lacking courtesy is a critical failure. If we don’t understand how urgent it is, perhaps that’s proof that we’ve gotten too used to the sad spectacle of brown-nosing with a grin to convince ourselves our status is secure.
It’s not just that the remarks were inappropriate. These men who serve the outdated male-dominated society, what do they take pride in? What does it mean to respect someone? We’re forgetting what it even means to act appropriately in this world.
What are the words I am putting in my mouth and what kind of grammar makes that possible? What is the power I wield—which is therefore invisible to me? All we can do is ask ourselves these questions.
Translated by Emily Balistrieri
Social preview image: Yoon WoongDae’s Sayonara, otokoshakai (published by Akishobo)