The leader of a Japanese conservative party has apologised for saying the solution to the nation’s population crisis would be to ban women from getting married after the age of 25 and have their uteruses removed at 30.
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Naoki Hyakuta, a writer and founder of the Conservative Party of Japan, also said 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.
Hyakuta’s comments on his YouTube channel on Friday provoked an immediate and strong response, with the outspoken politician apologising 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.
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.
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.”
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She told This Week in Asia: “I can only see these comments as a call to violence against women.”