Till very recently, the term “office flowers” (shokuba no hana) was still common in Japanese companies: women expected to perform low-skill tasks (such as serving tea) until they would marry in their mid-twenties, leave the company and become a stay-at-home mom.
The women served as a mere decoration to pleasure their male “colleagues” more than anything else, even if they were highly educated. And to serve tea, of course.
Still, even today extremely elaborate cases of sexism are know in Japanese society: in one recent example, it was uncovered that a prestigious medical school in Tokyo (Tokyo Medical University) had been curtailing women’s test scores for at least a decade. Apparently, school officials wanted to limit admission and job opportunities in the field for women, fearing they might quit their positions after marriage:[1]
"This belief that women’s place is at home and [with the] family [originates in] Japan’s pre-war national gender ideology, which was encouraged by the Japanese government."
In another instance of the same phenomenon (only in a different guise), Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi sparked a social media storm because he planned to take a two weeks paternity leave spread over a period of three months.[2]
Apparently, paternity leaves are still a no-go in Japan, and only a small percentage of Japanese men dare to take it — on the one hand due to the social stigma, and on the other hand because their companies obstruct them to take the leave. Still, the numbers are going up, and that is a good thing.[3]
The fact that the new prime minister of Japan — PM Takaichi Sanae — is a woman, might also be pointing toward a more harmonious direction, but since Japan placed 118th out of 148 countries in the 2025 Global Gender Gap Index, clearly a lot of work still has to be done —
“How bad is sexism in Japan ?”
Atrocious, to say the least.
SOURCES: the footnoted sites. Shunga painting by Kitagawa Utamaro.
Footnotes
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