Only a few months after a Tokyo lawmaker was heckled by her male colleagues in a sexist incident that made headlines around the world, the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly rekindled the controversy this week as another politician put his foot in his mouth.
"What was in the air was the kind of talk like, 'Why don't you get married?' I would also make that suggestion in private circumstances," Liberal Democratic Party Assemblyman Zenji Nojima said while speaking to reporters Tuesday in describing the sexist heckling of Your Party member Ayaka Shiomura at the assembly in June.
"The problem was that such a remark was made to an individual speaker in a public setting," said Nojima, 65.