Kensuke Miyazaki planned to take a few weeks off work after his wife gave birth to their first child. Some of his colleagues and superiors are unhappy.
It is a familiar standoff in workplaces across Japan, but this time it is playing out in the Diet, where Miyazaki and his wife, Megumi Kaneko, are both lawmakers for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Miyazaki, 35, would be the first member of the Diet to take paternity leave.
"To be honest, I didn't expect such a fuss," a bleary-eyed Miyazaki said in an interview at his office Friday, hours after the baby boy was born in a Tokyo hospital. "We are both working and we're completely equal in status," he said. "I don't think we should stick to the old system where everything was left up to the wife."