THE TIGER: A REPORT ON THE PRECARIOUS STATUS OF REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS IN JAPAN.

MANY OF MY JAPANESE FRIENDS HAVE BEEN ASKING ME TO ELABORATE MORE ABOUT THE RESEARCH I HAVE CONDUCTED ABOUT FEMINISM WHILE IN JAPAN. THIS IS ONE OF THE PIECES I HAVE JUST COMPLETED FOR MY INDPENDANT STUDY, AND IT DISCUSSES THE CURRENT STATUS OF ABORTION IN JAPANESE SOCIETY. IT IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. YOU WILL NOTE THAT SOURCES ARE CITED THROUGHT THE TEXT, PLEASE CONTACT ME VIA EMAIL IF YOU REQUIRE MY WORKS CITED PAGE.

Disparities between the intent of written legislation, and actual legal action carried out in the daily lives of Japanese citizens, have earned many Japanese laws the nickname, “A Tiger With No Teeth” (Fabiano, 2005). Japanese laws are notorious for threatening highly restrictive codes which prohibit taboo social behaviours, but which actually having little or no enforcement in preventing such “unmentionable” citizen behaviours. This is clearly illustrated when one takes into account the high accessibility of illegal activities such as underage smoking and drinking, gambling, pornography, and prostitution.

If an individual who had never been to Japan were to form an idea about what Japanese life were like based on reading the legal codes of the country, they would logically assume that these illegal activities were not a part of Japanese life. However, walking the streets of most any larger Japanese city, that same individual would be bombarded by the flashing lights of “pachiko” gambling houses, “escort” prostitution services, sexually explicit or bestial pornography, and unmonitored, uncontrolled vending machines selling both alcohol and tobacco products to anyone, of any age.

This widespread, organized and socially condoned hypocrisy creates two worlds within Japan; one superficial and one subversive. In the case of abortion, women have been systemically oppressed by the disadvantageous circumstances created within both the public and private practices of Japanese society. Superficially, women lack the emotional validation or political power that come with being able to publicly express one’s opinions and feelings about this deeply personal experience. Since abortion remains an unmentionable secret, relegated to the subversive sphere of society, women lack open forums for education about their own reproductive freedoms. Consequentially, women stand exploitation by the larger social structures which demand said secrecy, such as the government, medical system, or religious communities.

Abortion in Japan is not legally allowed as a reproductive freedom. Rather, according to the current Japanese legislation, The National Eugenics Code, abortions are restricted to scenarios of extreme medical necessity, pregnancy resulting from rape, or a dire inability to economically support a pregnancy. The inability to economically support a pregnancy is outlined within The Economic Reasons Clause (Kanazumi, p.96) It is therefore important to note that, Japanese law does not authorize abortion as a primary means of birth control, but rather only as an option only for women in the utmost dire situations. This is a contrast to America and other industrialized nations where a woman can legally access an abortion even if she is in good health and high economic standing. In most other nations, abortions are legally performed on the basis of a woman’s autonomy and freedom of choice, rather than the conditions of her life and pregnancy. Yet despite this carefully authored system of clauses, Japan has the highest abortion rate of any industrialized nation (Komatsu、2005).

Currently, 95% of all abortions in Japan are performed under The Economic Reasons Clause of The National Eugenics Code (Kanazumi, p.96). This clause was introduced during the period of extreme poverty and desperation which consumed Japan after the Second World War. The intent of the clause at the time it was penned, was to prevent further stress upon families already facing starvation, homelessness, and poverty. Abortion was seen as a humane solution to the problem of dramatically rising accounts of infanticide. It was also introduced so that impoverished Japanese women who had resorted to prostitution with American servicemen, would not have to bear the shame of giving birth to an illegitimate and bi-racial child, an unspeakable social taboo at that time (Kanazumi, p.96).

Today, Japan is home to one of the most prosperous economies in the world, possessing a large middle class, and low poverty and unemployment rates. Japan’s GNP is now thirty-two times higher, and its national income is twenty-four times higher than they were in 1953, when abortion laws were instituted (Yoshiko, p.170). The original rational of The Economic Reasons Clause is no longer valid when conisering the high volume of women receiving abortions. The argument of the dominant conservative Japanese political party, the LDP, is that no woman today should be able to justify the economic reasons clause when pursuing an abortion. Therefore, they argue, The Economic Reasons Clause should no longer exist as an option(Komatsu、2005).

In light of Japan’s economic prosperity, the dramatically high rate of abortions, and the impracticality that women are still using The Economic Reasons Clause to legally justify these abortions, the LDP has been making concerted efforts for several decades to repeal The Economic Reasons Clause and reduce the accessibility of abortions in Japan. Changes have been slow but gradual in restricting abortions over the past decades, and the LDP was successful in their attempts to define and limit the maximum abortion period to twenty-two weeks of gestation (Komatsu、2005). The LDP was also successful in requiring a consent form prior to an abortion from a woman’s husband or lover, or her parents, in the case of a minor (Toyoko, p.219).

Suigimoto finds that, an estimated thirty-four thousand or more women each year report abortions in Japan. Though he also point out that this figure is speculative at best, for “women normally pay abortion costs in cash because the national health insurance does not cover [abortions], and for taxation purposes many doctors do not report all cases of abortion” (p.167). This confounded situation is convenient both for tax-evading doctors and the government. Japanese politicians save international face by ignoring the reality of the abortion epidemic and claiming a lower than realistic statistic. Doctors profit from a system where women are forced to pay out-of-pocket for a high priced-procedure without the government demanding a tax cut. Indeed, women emerge the real losers in this situation, too ashamed by the whole process to demand that their government provide assistance in financing this costly procedure, and ignorant to the illegal financial dealings of their health care provider.

A practice unique to Japan, is that 90% of all abortions are performed with the patient under full anesthesia, rendering the woman unconscious for the entirety of the procedure (Toyoko p.218). Within the international medical community, anesthesia is generally regarded as an as unnecessary risk factor when providing most abortions. In Japan anesthesia is provided more so as a “psychological service” to Japanese women, who doctors feel are unable to withstand the distress of actively experiencing an abortion procedure. Most women however, are not made aware of their options about undergoing anesthesia, nor are they informed of the greatly increased risks and complications which are associated with unnecessary anesthesia. The medical community is taking advantage of women’s status and power in Japanese society by transforming abortions from a simple clinical procedure into a surgery necessitating hospitalization. (Toyoko p.218) Aside from drastically increasing the health risks, anesthetizing a patient increases the costs associated with an abortion. An abortion is Japan can currently cost anywhere between 70,000 yen (US $700) for the simplest procedure, and upwards of 120,000 yen (US $1,200) for a later term, or more complex procedure (Toyoko, p.219). Yet again Japanese doctors are lining their pockets with the blood money of misinformed women.

The Japanese government has a long history of controlling and restricting women’s reproductive freedoms. It wasn’t until 1999 that the birth control pill was legalized in Japan; thirty-nine years after it was legalized in the United States. (Yoshiko, p.162). The pill, which is a safe and effective means of preventing pregnancy, was long banned by Japan’s ministry due to opinions that “Having freed women from the fear of unwanted pregnancy, the pill would encourage them to liberally engage in sexual activity and thereby undermine the ‘respectability’ of the Japanese family system” (Suigimoto, p.166). This attitude is a testament to the sexist oppression of the conservative and male-dominant government in Japan. In effect, an inexpensive and efficient means of preventing unwanted pregnancy, and possibly reducing abortion rates, was banned simply because of an outmoded, chauvinistic, and bigoted fear that giving women freedom and liberty might be a catalyst of social change.

Though the pill is now legalized and can be obtained from any pharmacy with a doctor’s prescription, it remains relatively unpopular and unused. Because the pill was illegal for so much time during Japan’s modern development, there is now an inherent stigma of promiscuity attached to taking the pill. Women have thus far continued seeking abortions as a preferred form of birth control, a potentially much more dangerous, emotionally strenuous, and expensive method of birth control (Komatsu, 2005). While the conservative government had set out to prevent social change by banning the pill for nearly four decades, they inadvertently undermined their own legislation by changing the intention of The Economic Reasons Clause from a social service for the poor, into a legal loophole for manipulating abortion into a primary means of birth control.

While Japan has never been considered a religious nation, it does possess a long and respected history of Buddhism and Shintoism. Buddhist and Shinto shrines however, are not without their involvement in the modern political games of the abortion business. In the past decades since The National Eugenics Code was introduced, there have been a rash of misuko jizo temples appearing.

Traditionally, a jizo is a small stone figure which can be purchased through a temple or shrine and acts as a memorial to dead ancestors. The jizo assumes a permanent home at the shrine, and the purchaser can then make pilgrimages to the jizo, offering regular sacrifices of money, food, flowers, etc. on holidays and anniversaries.

The misuko jizo however, is a smaller child-like figure which is purchased to commemorate a woman’s aborted fetus. Not all shrines condone the use of misuko jizo. There are however, a few temples and shrines which stand out as particularly noteworthy due to their deliberate ulterior profiteering or political motives in zealously embracing the use of misuko jizo.

A small plastic misuko jizo costs 5,000 yen (US $50) at the very least, while stone misuko jizo may cost anywhere from 40,000 yen- 150,000 yen (US $400-$15,000.) “With the sizable market in mind, some temples openly advertise the availability of [their misuko jizo] service in newspapers and magazines, specifying costs and fees” (Suigimoto p.167).

The Shuin Temple, located in the Chichibu Mountains was founded in 1971 with the soul intention of marketing misuko jizo. The chief priest of the temple published “A List of Spiritual Experiences at the misuko jizo Temple” and cites miraculous cures supposedly created by the presence of appeased aborted fetuses. The list includes “Teenage neurosis, aggressive childhood behaviour toward their parents, epilepsy, bed-wetting, chronic nasal inflammation, assorted gynaecological conditions, sexual rejection, marital breakdown, breast cancer, lower back pain, heart disease, and shoulder and arm pain” (Yoshiko p.174). The psychological confusion created by this situation is obvious. A woman seeking spiritual healing may instead develop a fanatical fear that her aborted fetus will become an angry and vengeful spirit, reeking havoc on her life and family if she does not pay the temple’s exorbitant fees to properly commemorate her aborted fetus (Yoshiko, p.172). Manipulating the guilt a woman can feel associated with an abortion with spiritual piety, the temple stands to generate great profits in a society with as high an abortion rate as Japan currently fosters.

Another temple with obvious ulterior goals, is the Seicho no Ie temple in Uji, which offers figurative “adoptions” for aborted fetuses, and holds monthly memorial services in the fetuses honor (Yoshiko, p.176). This Shinto sect, founded in 1929 both performs grandiose ceremonies to memorialize aborted fetuses, and also regularly forms campaigns along with the LDP to reform and remove The National Eugenics Code.

Interestingly, the Seicho no Ie sect simultaneously works alongside the LDP in promoting military expansion. The contradictions about how and when the Seicho no Ie sect promotes protecting life, exposes their veiled motive; relegating “All [Japanese] women into [the role of] patriotic mothers who are willing to bear many children for the sake of their nation” (Yoshiko p.178). The Seicho no Ie sect is clearly less interested in saving lives, and more interested in engineering a system where the guilt associated with having an abortion is fuelled into reinforcing oppressive gender roles which limit the freedoms of women. Japanese Feminist writer Miya Yoshiko asserts, “It remains truly sad that there are women who, experiencing an emotional state of contradiction toward their lost child, cannot see through the sham of this black Market in guilt” (p.174).

In Japan, public institutions such as the medical, judicial, and religious systems are actively involved in controlling the ideologies, freedoms, and actions of women’s bodies and sexuality. Women must now fight for free access to abortion, without resorting to outdated justifications and loophole legal fabrications. The LDP has made slow but gradual progress in restricting abortions over the past decades; contemporary Japanese feminists generally fear their eventual success of making abortions inaccessible in Japan unless great movements are organized to protect a woman’s right to choose. (Komatsu、2005). By continuing to confuse reproductive freedom with the current situation where abortions are performed as a dark secret, made possible only by a logistical loophole and lie, women are psychologically minimized in their freedom of choice, shamed, and a subject to social oppression.

As Feminist poet Kora Rumiko so aptly states “The fundamental problem is that individuals in Japan don’t have any sense of their own worth… If one has no sense of one’s own value, then how can one value the life of another individual?” (p. 118). To ensure enduring reproductive rights, to prevent “The Conservative Tiger” from growing sharp teeth with which it could devour a woman’s right to choose, Japanese women must legally assert their own worth, and demand that their reproductive rights be adequately, honestly, and legally guaranteed.