Japanese lawmaker's bizarre comments on women to tackle country's declining birthrate is viral

Japanese lawmaker Naoki Hyakuta is facing severe backlash after making a controversial comment suggesting that women might need to "remove their uteruses" after 30 and help reverse the declining birthrate in Japan. Naoki Hyakuta, Japan's Conservative Party leader made the bizarre claim in a YouTube video where he discussed measures to increase the country's birthrate as part of a broader discussion on the challenges Japan faces due to its ageing population.

According to a report in the South China Morning Post, the leader of the Japanese Conservative Party also said the solution to the nation’s population crisis would be to ban women from getting married after the age of 25. He did not stop there.



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The lawmaker went on to say that women should not be permitted to attend university from the age of 18, apparently so they could focus their efforts on producing more babies. His comments went quickly viral on social media, provoking an immediate and strong response. Many people slammed the minister for his regressive and discriminatory comments, sparking concerns about women's rights and reproductive freedom.

Naoki Hyakuta apologises for his comments

Naoki Hyakuta apologised during a speech in Nagoya on Sunday, claiming that the comments were just “a hypothetical idea” and that he did not personally support the ideas, the report said. He added that he had framed the ideas as a “science-fiction storyline” to help reverse Japan’s declining birth rate, adding that his comments had been “extremely harsh” and that he did not advocate such steps against women.

"I meant to say that we cannot transform the social structure unless we do something that goes that far. I want to retract my remarks and apologize," the lawmaker said.

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Expressing outrage on the matter, Sumie Kawakami, a lecturer at Yamanashi Gakuin University and author of a book on gender issues, said: “I cannot believe that a Japanese politician has said such a thing.”

She told This Week in Asia: “I can only see these comments as a call to violence against women.”

Kawakami expressed concern that the standards of Japanese political discourse were declining in the same way as it has elsewhere in the world, notably in the United States since Donald Trump first announced he was running for president in 2015.

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“He [Hyakuta] has said something and now there has been a strong reaction he has withdrawn it and apologised, but if there had not been a response then he would not have felt the need to claim he was only speaking hypothetically and to apologise,” she said.

When Kaori Arimoto, a senior member of Hyakuta’s party who was with him on the programme, suggested that his comments were inappropriate, even as a “science fiction” scenario, he replied, “I was explaining about the time limitation (faced by women in giving birth) in a plain way”.

Hyakuta previously sparked controversy with remarks denying the occurrence of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese forces in China and describing US air raids on Japan during World War II as “genocide”.