Japanese politician sparks outrage with proposal to ban marriage for women over 25

Naoki Hyakuta, a novelist and head of Japan's Conservative Party, discussed these ideas last week in a YouTube video addressing Japan's population challenges.

He suggested that to encourage earlier childbearing, women should be barred from attending university past age 18, restricted from marrying after 25 and required to undergo a hysterectomy after age 30, according to Kyodo News.

Hyakuta later clarified that he did not endorse these proposals, urging viewers to consider them as "science fiction by a novelist."

Kaori Arimoto, a senior party member who joined him on the YouTube program, commented that his remarks were inappropriate, even if framed as a science-fiction scenario.

Responding to the backlash, Hyakuta stated, "I was explaining about the time limitation (faced by women in giving birth) in a plain way."

He later apologized for the remarks after campaigning for a party candidate in a mayoral election on Monday.

"The expressions were coarse and shocking, and some people might take them as even ghoulish," he told reporters, according to The Asahi Shimbun.

However, his remarks sparked immediate backlash.

During the Monday campaign event, attendees requested explanations from him.

Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura, who was supporting a rival mayoral candidate, condemned Hyakuta’s statements, calling them "unspeakably hideous."

Expressing dismay, Sumie Kawakami, a lecturer at Yamanashi Gakuin University, told This Week in Asia, "I cannot believe that a Japanese politician has said such a thing," adding that she viewed the comments as "a call to violence against women."

The Conservative Party, founded by Hyakuta in 2023, won three seats in the House of Representatives in October, meeting the criteria to qualify as a political party under Japanese law.

Japan is experiencing a significant decline in birth rates, with preliminary data from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare indicating 350,074 births from January to June 2024, a 5.7% decrease (20,978 fewer births) compared to the same period in 2023.

The year 2023 recorded 758,631 babies born, a 5.1% decline from the previous year and the lowest number of births since Japan started compiling the statistics in 1899, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry, AP reported.

Despite a slight 0.9% increase in marriages to 248,513 this year, annual births in the country are projected to drop below 700,000 for the first time in 2024.