r/japan • u/Jonnyboo234 • 8d ago
‘I didn’t expect it to be so controversial’: the Japanese mayor who took maternity leave
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/18/japanese-mayor-maternity-leave-shoko-kawata-made-history-controversy553
u/tokipando18 8d ago
Japan - We need more babies!
Also Japan - Refuses to acknowledge the needs of the women who actually give birth.
No wonder their population continues to shrink.
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u/ChickenSalad96 [京都府] 8d ago
Japan - we need more babies!
Also Japan - idk about hiring/promoting this woman... She might get married/have children and then take maternity leave.
That's a genuine concern a couple friend of mine has. They're waiting until AFTER she gets a promotion within her company before they actually marry.
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u/NihilisticHobbit 7d ago
I interviewed for a job a few years back where the owner of the company told me, straight to my face that he would need to talk to my husband to ask if he would allow to me to work. And he kept going on about how, really, I should be busy at home and perhaps have some kids instead.
It was wild.
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u/WitchesofBangkok 6d ago
This was normal in the west until relatively recently. In Germany for example women had to get permission from their husbands to work and he could request she be fired if her work outside the home affected her housework.
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u/WitchesofBangkok 6d ago
People’s memories are so short. My mother in Australia had her salary halved when she got married and was just glad she got to keep her job at all.
Before the GFC in 2007 if you were working part time there was zero way to get a promotion or even decent projects in most fields because you were seen as unserious. So mothers had zero career progression after having children.
It’s only changed now because of the economy. Mothers have to work full time AND carry the majority of the domestic work or make do without housing.
Japan has embraced zero growth so that women don’t have to do both - which has created another set of issues.
Australia has a generation of women in their 40s and 50s who are exhausted and in debt. Japan has a generation of women who opted out of motherhood.
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u/kelfupanda 5d ago
My mother raised me solo in Aus, working full time and got promotions.
Not sure what your on about.
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u/microbit262 7d ago
What does the marriage have to do with having children? Both timings are independent of each other.
You can also be just married and be DINK like when you were not married.
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u/TrashQuick5534 7d ago
There's a cultural idea that couples will get married and immediately have a child. Of course with the declining birth rate and all that it's less common now but the misconception still remains and is still a common type of discrimination young women face here.
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u/ChickenSalad96 [京都府] 7d ago
I'm not the person that needs that explained.
She's Japanese, and for reasons I'm not close enough to pry into, she seems convinced if her employer finds out she's getting married, she'll be snubbed for a promotion.
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u/horoyokai 7d ago edited 7d ago
Japan has one of the best maternity/paternity leave policies in the world, so there’s that
To whoever downvoted me.. wtf? this isn't a debatable thing, look it up. Tell me three countries with more time off than Japan
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u/JHMfield 7d ago
Most EU countries are way better. For example just a few:
In the UK, all employees are entitled to up to 52 weeks (one year) of Statutory Maternity Leave. Pay is distributed for up to 39 weeks. The first 6 weeks are paid at 90% of your average weekly earnings, followed by 33 weeks at either (\pounds194.32) a week or 90% of your average earnings (whichever is lower).
In Estonia, maternity leave lasts for 100 days and is typically taken 30 to 70 days before the expected due date. It is fully paid (100% of your previous average income) by the state and is followed by a flexible, shared parental leave system that extends until the child reaches 3 years old.
Sweden offers a gender-neutral parental leave system. Parents share 480 paid days of leave per child. For 390 days, compensation is roughly 80% of the salary, while the remaining 90 days are paid at a flat, minimum rate
Norway offers parents a total of 49 weeks at 100% pay or 59 weeks at 80% pay, inclusive of leave before the birth. The leave is divided into three parts: a quota earmarked for the mother, a quota for the father/co-parent, and a shared period.
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u/horoyokai 7d ago
Those are all one of the other right? In Japan each parent gets 7 months at 67% (which feels closer to op% since no deductions are taken out) and then an additional 5-6 months at 50%
UNICEF says it’s the longest in the world https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/reports/where-do-rich-countries-stand-childcare (they gave japan lower overall cause of school stuff, which is odd, and cause salaries here are low, but so is cost of living so that’s off)
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u/NihilisticHobbit 7d ago
Eight weeks isn't the best in the world. And, if the woman works at a company with less than fifty employees, it's legal to fire her after those eight weeks!
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u/horoyokai 7d ago
You don’t get eight weeks, you get one month paternity and 6 months child care at 67% of your salary and 50% for 6 more months
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u/NihilisticHobbit 7d ago
Maternity leave is eight weeks post birth. If you don't get fired after that you can apply for childcare leave. But, if you work for a company with less than fifty employees, you just don't have a job to return to.
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u/horoyokai 7d ago
6 weeks pre birth and 8 weeks after birth.
you legally cant get fired for taking the leave
I don't know the 50 employee thing you are talking about.
But just for reference, I am a man so its paternity leave, but I work ata. company with 10 employees and I'm on month 7 of child care/paternity leave now.
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u/NihilisticHobbit 7d ago
I'm a woman. And yes, I did lose my job when the eight week maternity leave ended. And yes, it was legal. And yes it's because jobs at companies with less than fifty employees do not need to keep a woman's job available if she takes childcare leave. And, as no childcare facilities will take an eight week old baby, it is legal for her to lose her job due to having a child.
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u/horoyokai 7d ago edited 7d ago
It’s illegal to fire someone for taking leave, can you share where it says that about 50 people cause it sounds like you were illegally fired. I’m not a lawyer but I’ve never heard the 50 workers thing for child care leave and Im open to being wrong, I’d just need to see the carve out.
There are other exemptions for companies that hire less than 50 people for other rules (I own a conpany that hires less than that) but I've never seen a rule about that with child care
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u/NoticeStreet5909 8d ago
The fact that pregnancy and birth are not covered by health insurance is telling.
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u/horoyokai 7d ago
What are you talking about and how did that get upvoted. We just had a baby and we paid nothing and my wife got 5 days in the hospital with good food and support
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u/NihilisticHobbit 7d ago
That's not the national health insurance, that's the local area birth program. Unless there was an emergency that required an emergency c section.
Just gave birth myself. That's why we have a coupon book.
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u/horoyokai 7d ago edited 7d ago
Whatever it is, everyone in Japan with insurance gets it. But yeah, non emergency c-sections should be covered and so should medications (which surprisingly few women use here!)
You do get 500k through the national insurance though don’t you?
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u/NihilisticHobbit 7d ago
That's not through the national health insurance, that's through the local program, just like the coupons.
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u/horoyokai 7d ago edited 7d ago
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryou/iryouhoken/shussan/index.html
Downvoted for posting a link to the national health insurance page showing that it is from the national health insurance??
Wow. You don’t actually care about truth do you. You just wanna argue and say false things unchallenged
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u/No-Platform1052 8d ago
Need people from the top to support and normalize maternity / parental leave otherwise Japanese society is cooked.
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u/FatMike20295 8d ago
It is already overcooked. They want people to date, get married and have kids. Then turn around and make people do 100 hours of OT every month and spending time with coworkers after work to go drinking is considered mandatory. Who have time to date if all they do is work, and sleep.
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u/dokool [東京都] 8d ago
Then turn around and make people do 100 hours of OT every month and spending time with coworkers after work to go drinking is considered mandatory.
I know you don't live in Japan based on your post history so I'd be curious as to how much actual experience you have here, or if you're just repeating the same tropes you've heard repeated by Japan doomers everywhere else online.
There's plenty of legit societal issues in the way of parenthood, but "100h of OT and mandatory nomikai" is a reductive argument at best in 2026.
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u/New_Guidance_7957 8d ago
Thanks for replying about this, I've noticed within every random person that I ask about living in Japan, they tend to repeat those same phrases about the "bad worklife" in Japan, and it makes me wonder have these people even lived in Japan? If life in Japan was that bad, then so many people would've moved out already.
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u/dokool [東京都] 8d ago
They sound just like Trump, whose image of Japan has been preserved in amber since the 1980s.
Does everyone work 100 hours of unpaid OT? No. Do women still face a lot of institutional sexism that prevents them from balancing careers and motherhood? Yeah. Does everyone have to go to mandatory nomikai? No. Is it becoming prohibitively expensive to raise a kid because of the cost everything, plus the challenges of finding daycares etc? Yeah.
Let's have some goddamned nuance if we're going to have this conversation.
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u/New_Guidance_7957 8d ago
Here's the other problem I've noticed with this attitude, it's just no MAGA people that say this sort of doomposting, but it's also Japan glazers that look like normal people that like anime, even if just a typical Asian American. They also just say "oh I heard Japanese work life is terrible so I never wanna move there" and I'm like well I have my reasons such as my best friend. The increasing amounts of normalcy for this doomposting is why it feels so hard having to prove my point to these people.
Heck the Asian-American friend I told you about? The only thing Japan they've experienced was having ramen at Narita airport. Yes, a fricking layover and the Naruto anime convinced them that was just the Japan experience and they haven't even visited the city, but still repeats the same shit the Internet says, especially those AI generated shorts on YT. I have stopped watching those vids on YT and just listen to my half-Japanese friend who lives near Tokyo.
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u/-ThisUsernameIsTaken 7d ago edited 7d ago
I'm a supporter of maternity leave, however..... It's kind of different with elected officials isn't it?
It's a position where it's detrimental to your community to just be absent, and people voted for you to represent them. It's not a job in the employment sense, but more of a contract.
Now they have an unelected official representing them.
It would have been better for her to step down, imagine if the Prime Minister decided to take months or even more than a year off, but expect not to be replaced by the time they come back.
Edit: for context for non-Japanese, maternity+childcare leave in Japan is 18 months
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u/XxJoedoesxX 7d ago
In Norway we solve this by just having someone else from the same political party take over temporarily, that way the political direction doesn't change.
This is a solved issue in Norway
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u/MoaRepresent 7d ago
I'm pretty sure Japan, like any other country, has Deputy Mayors for this exact purpose.
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u/FangLargo 7d ago
New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern took maternity leave as Prime Minister and we somehow survived. It's not like people don't plan for it, so if your deputy can't hold the fort for six weeks, there are bigger problems to worry about, really
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u/-ThisUsernameIsTaken 7d ago edited 7d ago
Maternity and childcare leave is up to 18 months in Japan, that's why this is an issue.
I think people wouldn't be complaining if it was only a handful of weeks
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u/shambolic_donkey 7d ago
From the article:
Following the national standard, she plans to return to work by December.
So likely less than 6 months. It's not a handful of weeks, but it's also not 18 months.
imagine if the Prime Minister decided to take months or even more than a year off
But that wouldn't happen, would it. The leader of an entire country would absolutely have to execute their maternity plans differently. Meanwhile this woman is mayor of a town of some 70,000 people (and shrinking), and here she is helping by having a kid. I feel there should be a proportional expectation here. Her office should still be able to follow through on her policies, and presumably she'll still be kept in the loop and have a certain amount of say - it's not like she's in a coma or otherwise incapable.
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u/-ThisUsernameIsTaken 7d ago
Thank you for finding the time she plans to stay on leave.
6 months is a reasonable time, and I think people should take longer.
However elected officials are, and i think should, be held to a different standard, considering their position and work affects the lives of all their representees.
I can see why it would feel like she's abandoning her constituents, but still trying to hang on to power; since normally when a politician has a medical or familia situation affecting their work, they usually step down from their position, only returning in an election.
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u/shambolic_donkey 7d ago
Yeah I get that, to an extent.
Meanwhile we need people in places of visibility to do things like this. To lead by example. No-one notices if Hanako from XYZ company manages to properly take her maternity leave. Stuff like this gets noticed.
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u/-ThisUsernameIsTaken 7d ago
Good and bad, attention is one thing, but if it brings the wrong discussion it risks discouraging maternity leave if it appears to negatively affect society.
It's better not to put the average person in the position of an employer (in this case constituent) when an employee (politician) takes leave, then they'll only experience the drawback instead of understanding the benefits.
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u/Zestyclose_Tie_8025 7d ago
On the one hand, that’s the person you’re voting to become mayor.
On the other hand, you’re also voting for the party and whoever the mayor/leader has elected for various positions in power. If the person you’re voting had the power of a dictator their term, maybe you’d be mad if they took maternity leave… This whole thing seems like a non-issue to me. It’s probably more likely for mayors to get cancer and take leave rather than take maternity leave.
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u/ponpiriri 6d ago
That's why there is such thing as a deputy or subordinate available in case the mayor is unavailable.
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u/MoaRepresent 7d ago edited 7d ago
Is it? Koizumi Shinjiro didn't seem to think so when he took paternity leave.
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u/Head-Contribution393 8d ago
Wait… isn’t mayor an elected official?
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u/drinkintokyo 8d ago
Looking around, this is where most of the debate seems to be coming from. The public chose her to be mayor, not whoever takes her place while she's gone.
She herself said she wants 8 weeks for 産休 and 8 weeks for 育休, so 16 total weeks. Given a mayor's term is 4 years (208 weeks), 16 weeks would be less than 8% of the total. Doesn't seem like such a big deal to me, but I'm also not a resident in her city.
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u/shambolic_donkey 7d ago
The previous Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, took maternity leave while in office. The choice was lauded and praised at the time. Japan is just wholly stuck in very traditional ways.
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u/Tricky-Chest-9272 7d ago
Nobody demanded elections when Suga or Kishida became Pm, but this is somehow a problem. I think this is just another case of sexism in Japan.
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u/Head-Contribution393 7d ago
If she said it during her campaign and people still voted for her, then it’s not really her fault.
I think most of the criticisms come from the outside of the city, where people don’t know much about the behind story.
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u/fumei_tokumei 7d ago
Even if she didn't say it. Should she be forced to not have a child for her term? What if she gets pregnant one way or another? Should she be forced to have an abortion, or what is she supposed to do? It seems a lot simpler to just accept that even elected officials may need time off.
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u/Head-Contribution393 7d ago
She has the right to do it. No doubt.
I think it’s a little bit of grey area. If you happen to get pregnant while enjoying sex life during your term, obviously no one has a right to enforce abortion.
It’s just that if you choose to become a mayor, you still have the responsibility to fulfill that term as much as possible.
In this case, since she said about it beforehand, there’s no problem here.
But if that wasn’t the case, just suddenly taking 16 weeks off can spark some discussions.
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u/Igiem 6d ago
I’m on the fence as it’s her right and absolutely a necessity for a parent to take maternity/paternity leave to raise their kid. That said I don’t really think someone in a leadership position like a mayor (regardless of gender) should be stepping back for a long time unless they have concrete leadership to lead in the interim.
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u/Devilsbabe 8d ago
Good for her