Just curious. I am familar with attitudes in Judeo-Christian cultures, but don’t know how Japanese view this subject. What’s the general range of Japanese attitudes toward abortion and birth control?
Well, obviously I don’t know every Japanese person out there so I can only offer up a couple of stories that my SIL has suggested are suggestive of feelings about BC and abortion.
1st - When my SIL got to Canada she quizzed me extensively about the birth control pill, safety, convienence, etc. - the pill is not available in Japan - the reason she gave is that the govt. believes no pill = less HIV infection.
Condoms, however, are A-OK.
As to abortion, Japan has one of the highest rates of abortion in any industrialized country for the above reason. Anecdote #2 is SIL’s friend had an abortion and after the procedure the physician had a picture of the fetus which he thrust in her face and said something like “Look at the baby you killed, you’re bad, etc. etc.” My SIL didn’t think this was outrageously unusual.
So, in broad terms, generally birth control is OK, provided it’s a barrier method. Abortion is done in high numbers but women who get it are shamed by their physicians in at least some cases. I dunno if that helps at all.
My quick and dirty:
Abortion. If you ask people what they think they will say, “Kawaisou!”, which means “poor” as in “poor fetus!” But they also believe that it should be legal, sometimes it’s necessary, etc.
Christianity is not strong here, and I have never heard of a clinic protest.
Note (and more knowledgeable people correct me if I’m wrong): Abortion is illegal or quasi-illegal (i.e., the powerful doctor’s association is against it) after the 3rd trimester, except for extreme circumstances. Further, I think far fewer abortions are done here–under a million, maybe. The latter fact is iffier.
Contraception. Please avoid the illiterate phrase “birth control” (think about what the words themselves mean, and you’ll see what I mean).
Again, no Xianity here to create qualms. The doctor’s association or the government made the pill unobtainable here until the mid to late 90s. Yeah, the 90s. But condoms have been around forever (ie, at least since I first came here in 1992; I assume much earlier.). I think people here are much more lax about careful use of contraception, but I haven’t slept around here so I can’t speak from personal experience.
Hope that helps!
That should be “1st trimester” for the above.
BTW, I personally think the compromise that exists in Japan (abortion on demand but only for the 1st three months) has done much to defray conflict over the issue, not that there would have been much anyway. I see absolutely no evidence that things here will change either way hereafter.
There is no objection to birth control here. However, you may argue that there is quite a bit of sexism. The primary method of birth control here is the condom. The pill became legal in 1999, after decades of struggle, while Viagra was approved in about six months or so. The medical establishment kept insisting that BCP’s were detrimental to women’s health, even though side effects are very rare with the lower dosage pills. Even today, there is still a stigma attached to taking the pill. Even young women are rather reluctant to take it because it may seem like “they don’t want to have children.”
Abortion is widely accepted, for adult women at least. Japan is still pretty conservative, and most parents would rather their teenage daughters not have sex. Here’s an article on abortion trends in Japan. According to the article, in 1995, there were 289 abortions per 1000 live births. The reported reason for the abortions was “mother’s health” in 99% of the cases.
Mizuko jizo, the little statues placed in Buddhist temples in remembrance of aborted or miscarried fetuses, have become pretty well-known outside of Japan. The mizuko jizo is one manifestation of many of Jizo, a Boddhisattva who acts as the guardian of children, pregnant mothers, and travelers. In the mid 20th century, as the number of abortions increased rapidly during Japan’s fast economic growth stage, temples began performing a ceremony for the aborted fetuses. The woman can buy a small statue and leave it on an altar on the temple grounds. Here’s an example of Jizo statues - if you scroll down, you can find the mizuko.
I’ve been to temples where I’ve seen dozens of these little statues, some wearing little caps or other items of clothing. This practice is a little controversial, because it’s a recent, not traditional, practice and the temples are seen as trying to make money off people’s misery.
This is absolutely true. Before the pill was finally approved, there were all kinds of “experts” going on about how the pill would lead to rampant STD’s and so forth.
I believe the story about the shaming. I went to see a Japanese OB/GYN for a yeast infection. I wrote down that I used the pill on my medical history, and got a weird lecture from him. Basically, because I’m on the pill, I’m going to get STD’s, and he’s going to be seeing me in his office a lot. I guess he thought I was some kind of round heeled strumpet for taking the pill. Granted, he was over 60 years old, but he is the only OB/GYN in my town. I wonder what other stuff he’s told women.
I understood that the government support for condoms was more about economics.
Something about taxes (presumably a duty or sales tax or something that isn’t applicable to medicines), or government interests in the latex industry.
may I ask a related question?
until opening this thread, I had never even thought to ask about Japanese attitudes .But reading this has shocked me–NO contraceptive pills, in a modern, secular nation? In Italy and Ireland , I knew there were problems with Catholic culture vs. the pill.But Japan?–it never would have occured to me.
So now, my question: Why does Japan have such a low birth rate?
Japan has the lowest birth rate in the western world, (there has been a lot of talk about how their economy may collapse in 20 years due to lack of taxpayers).
If the Japanese prefer NOT to have children, then why do they have such a conservative attitude towards birth control and abortion? It seems contradictory.
I can understand why good people(like the Pope) see abortion as murder, and contraception as immoral and promiscuous.But these people usually encourage having large families , too. The Japanese seem to do the opposite.
It’s not contradictory at all. Japanese politicians view contraceptive pills as something that allows unprotected sex and premarital sex. They don’t want to be seen as endorsing such activities.
Also the extremely low birth rate is not desirable. The government wants to see it increase. Though I don’t know if that’s a factor in delaying the approval of the pill.
By the way, birth control pills were available as a medical treatment. It just couldn’t be prescribed for the sole purpose of birth control. I hear it was possible to make up a medical excuse for a pill, and the doctor would prescribe it without asking too many questions, but I have no idea how common this type of deal was.
Disclaimer: I am not Japanese, I just live in Japan. I also don’t speak Japanese at anywhere near a serious conversational level, so my friends and acquaintances are mostly people who speak English fairly fluently and thus not a representative sample of the Japanese population.
Japan does have the pill now, and has for the past five years. Before that, the primary official objections were health-related: fear of both STDs and possible harmful effects to the health of women. The real reasons might have been quite different, as others have suggested above, but that was the story at least.
*Well, I’d guess at least partially for one of the same reasons why many other industrialized nations have low birth rates – it’s just too darn expensive to provide a large family with a respectable middle-class standard of living. The cost of living in Japan is quite high even compared to other industrialized nations, as is the cost of education.
The Japanese also tend to marry late, making for a shorter family reproductive life. On top of this, it’s still unusual for women (with the possible exception of schoolteachers) to continue to work in a profession after they have children. Many mothers have part-time jobs as shopclerks or something like that, but it’s very, very difficult for women with children to have a real career. Faced with this choice, some women choose not to have children at all.
*There is nothing in traditional Japanese culture to discourage large families. It’s quite rare these days for a Japanese family to have more than two or maybe three kids, but I’ve never noticed any disapproval of the exceptions. The only woman I personally know with four kids seems quite proud of this fact, and I’ve heard other people tell her they think it’s wonderful.
And the Japanese don’t have a conservative attitude towards birth control. It took a long time for the Pill to be approved, but condoms are quite readily available and have been for a long time.
Where you missed it, was in the assumption that the issue would be directly based on “religion”, as in theology – when it’s probably more about “culture” as in the traditional “place” of women in the society, which in the West just happens that it’s mostly the churches that bother with its enforcement.
Refer for instance to the stated record of how The Pill was not freely available until 1999, while Viagra was approved within 6 months of its western release.
So, the government and other institutions of officialdom such as the medical association want traditional family values and to bring the birthrate back up to at least stable-replacement levels. While the people are uninterested in having many children, as will happen in a society that is mostly urban, highly industrial/technological, densely populated by people with relatively high education levels, facing a very high cost of living and ultra-tight housing market.
Here is a very interesting article about why Japan’s birth rates are nosediving, among other things.
Apparently they’re just not getting it on very much.
I lived in Japan for a few years in the early 90’s. I think the most simple way to describe the difference between Japanese and “western” culture is that the Japanese have zero christian guilt or societal influences of christian guilt.
To the OP, I had more than a few Japanese colleagues who had had multiple abortions in Japan. In fact, IIRC abortion was one of the most common methods of birth control in the 70’s and 80’s in Japan.
Re the birth rate, I didn’t read the link but it’s absolutely true: people here have horrible sex lives and marriages. I hear of couples that only do it once a month, etc.
As another poster said, it is now “common sense” in Japan that a woman is not going to get married until she’s 28 or so. Well, there go the prime reproductive years. I doubt that any nation can survive in which this idea is in force. Oh yeah: Japanese women then feel they’re old maids at 30, so they only have a 2-year period in which to bag their man. It’s a joke. In fact, you see more and more women who just end up not finding a man and do the office lady (OL) thing well into middle age.
Then (I’m not adding much original material here!) as another poster said, it’s now “common sense” that 2 kids are the max that an urban family can afford, and even then you’re pushing it. Again, any country in whcih this is common sense will die out, as the replacement rate is above 2 kids per couple (one for each parent, and then a little more for those people who are never able or choose to reproduce).
Actually, I was going to write a GD OP about how Japan is totally f***ed as a country. I honestly doubt the nation will exist in 200 years.
My SIL’s sister has 4 children and she and her husband are considering having another - the Govt. gives them a substantal amount of money for each additional child they have, so the economic issues are not as serious as some posters have suggested - the Govt. really wants people have have lots of kids.
I think the low reproduction rate has more to do with culture than $$.
Further, my SIL had no plans to marry, ever, until she met my brother. She has a poor relationship with her father and isn’t that wild about the “typical” Japanese male either. Now, my bro is a Canadian white guy with different views on marriage, child-rearing and whatnot and so he was more appealing. In fact, he did pretty darn well with the ladies while he was in Japan. Here in Canada he wasn’t exactly a chic-magnet - over there he was beating them off with a stick. Hey, dark hair, green eyes, a moustash and a “tall” nose - the ladies couldn’t get enough of him.