Regarding the June 24 article "Lawmaker apologizes for sexist jibe": It was appropriate that Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly member Akihiro Suzuki offered an apology to Your Party assembly member Ayaka Shiomura, the woman he and others heckled a few days earlier when she attempted to discuss the special welfare needs of women in Japanese society.
What does Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's gender equality minister have to say about this blatantly sexist incident? Suzuki admitted he was wrong to shout out to Shiomura during an assembly plenary session, "Why don't you get married soon?"
Shiomura might have made her own reply, but she has way too much class to stoop to his low level of snide manners. Suzuki and his type need to be reminded that in a free society marriage is a personal matter; it has nothing to do with politics or demographics. Suzuki should be awarded some sort of prize for offering the most backhanded apology in recent memory. His wife must be so proud of him.
Shiomura has done a great service to all women in Japan by refusing to ignore harassment from certain crass members of the "democratic" assembly. The idea that women really are equal to men must come as a terrible shock to some guys who grew up with the idea that women should always walk half-a-step behind men and always defer to them.
How bloody feudalistic is that?
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.