Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's April 19 National Press Club speech about boosting women's participation in the workforce has been covered extensively in the domestic and foreign media since it signals a sea change in the Liberal Democratic Party's view of women's role in society. He said the government will work to increase the number of day-care facilities and encourage longer childcare leave for women who work. Though the impetus behind this attitude shift is concern over the fate of "Abenomics" ("Utilization of women should be the core of our strategy for economic growth") and whether or not women will vote for the LDP in this summer's Upper House election, the press seemed satisfied that Abe was being sincere.
But most of the foreign reporters overlooked one comment the domestic media emphasized. Abe said he wanted to "support women who returned to work after three years of holding their child as much as they wanted to." Though the comment refers to the government's proposal for getting companies to extend maternity leave to three years, the expression Abe used alludes to a Japanese platitude that says a child should be "held" by its mother until the age of 3, meaning it should be exclusively raised by her.
An editorial in the Okinawa Times found Abe's turn of phrase "cute," but when last year's Lower House election was held the official LDP policy was that children should be reared by full-time mothers, while the stance of its opponent, the Democratic Party of Japan, was that they should be "raised by society." To appropriate Abe's usage, the DPJ thinks that as many people as possible should hold a child until it turns 3, and that includes day-care workers.