Women force change on Japan

By FRAN O'SULLIVAN, Assistant Editor


Japan will remain the "Switzerland of Asia" - even though its women are on strike.

That is the view of visiting Japan buff Brad Glosserman, who says the country faces "atrocious demographics".

In New Zealand to address Auckland University's Asian Identities conference, Glosserman said Japanese women had been treated so badly they had opted out.

"They've basically said, we don't like the career choices we have so we're not going to get married.

"If we get married, it's going to be late in life and when we get married we won't have any children.

"We're not going to take care of our in-laws - we don't want to have all the choices taken from us."

Official Japanese statistics underpin his view.

They show that record numbers of Japanese marriages are being dissolved. The average age of marriage for women is at a high of 27.4 years and the number of babies born last year was the lowest since official records began. The national fertility rate is also at a record low.

Glosserman said one of the results would be fewer workers to sustain pension payments for the ageing Japanese workforce.

"The Japanese have for the last 20 years worked on assumptions that no longer prevail," he said. "My sense is we've seen the peak of Japan."

Glosserman is research director of the Pacific Forum think tank, an offshoot of the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies, and a contributing editor for the Japan Times.

He said he had found little consensus in Japan over its place in the world and little willingness to make the changes needed to ensure its economy remained vibrant and vital.

But he noted it was still the world's second-largest economy.

"It will remain very rich," he said. "Japan will be the Switzerland of Asia - opt to be in Asia but not of it.

"It will slip from number two over 30 or 50 years to number six or seven - still extraordinary.

"But it's a question of accepting the scaledown."

Already Japan's regional influence is under strong challenge from the rising power of China.

That was apparent at last week's Seriously Asia forum, which Glosserman also attended, where Japan Foundation president Hiroaki Fujii said the potential for a great-power confrontation between the United States, China and Japan was a question East Asians considered.

Glosserman's view is that the US and China should be able to surmount any difficulties.

A fully fledged trade war was in neither country's interests, he said, and a widely held Asian view that the US was "hegemonic" in its behaviour did not pass muster.