Tag: abortion cw

“The Pill”

nihongokudasai:

This week I’ve been reading up on menstruation and contraception in relation to women’s rights in Japan. Here is what I’ve found interesting.

Firstly, let me preface with some statistics you can read on JT:
“Condoms are preferred by nearly 80 percent of married women in Japan. Only 2.2 percent of women take the pill, while 16.7 percent prefer their male partner to ejaculate externally and 3.6 percent opt for the rhythm method.”
(Jeffrey Hays) “Abortion has been an accepted form of birth control for centuries in Japan. At least one out of three Japanese women has had an abortion. The number of legal abortions has declined from about 460,000, about one abortion for every two live births, in 1990 to 330,000 in 2002.”

“The Pill” wasn’t legalized until 1999 (and the main catalyst for this: Viagra was approved by the Japanese-equivalent FDA in 1998 after only a 6 month review process, while oral contraceptives had been “under review” for almost a decade and had generally been illegal for 4 decades before that.) Before the legalization of an oral contraceptive, there were only synthetic hormone medications prescribed by a doctor (although they were OTC before 1970). 

Because of the drug disasters of Thalidomide (when used as a highly-concentrated form of birth control) Japanese feminists became skeptical of oral contraceptives in general. Some simpler (I guess?) reasons are the perceived side effects and social stigma attached (the pill=promiscuity). Japanese feminists took a negative stance on it, but not only for those two reasons. These are the two big angles:

1. Since oral contraceptives would give political circles reason to try to dissolve “abortion for economic reasons” from the MHA, it would put a virtual ban on abortions. Basically, the approval of the pill is a foundation to banning abortion and was actually perceived as a symbol of political and medical control over women’s bodies rather than liberation and sexual autonomy (like it is perceived in the West). Right wing natalists would use the legalization of the pill as a reason to ban abortions.

2. The longer, more complicated reason that is more pervasive in Japanese mentality is, as Mariko Jitsukawa puts it, “…in their rejection of the oral contraceptive, Japanese women are refusing to have their sacred inside poisoned in the service of male desire.”

This may have you going, “huh?“ 

In the west, reproductive choice is considered specifically a women’s issue and its absence is taken to indicate women’s oppression. Therefore, Western women tend to see Japanese women as passive and submissive. However, Japanese women see Western women as submitting to patriarchal standards of contraception being the woman’s responsibility. In a non-Western sense, women command bodily autonomy “free from artificial intervention.” To Japanese women, the preference of condoms is an expression of trust between partners that reproductive control is to be located in the relationship and not just in the body of the female.

There’s a kind of difficult to explain concept called “uchi” and “soto” in traditional Japanese thought. It’s (sort of) a Shinto ideal, literally meaning “home” and “outside.” Basically, the inside is pure and the outside is dirty. Daily life examples of this is taking off your shoes before entering the house, honne and tatemae, and casual vs keigo.

Many Japanese women see the pill as a medicalization of fertility, i.e. trying to treat or “cure” something that isn’t a disease. They cite the “unnaturalness” of artificially controlling the natural rhythm of menses. One woman expressed the pill as a sign that “the body becomes a disposable and replaceable thing, losing it’s special unique rhythm,” and another woman answered with a question: “Pregnancy is not a disease, is it?”

Also, Japanese culture isn’t rooted in the religious guilt and soma sema (“the body is a prison”) concepts that are so pervasive in the West. Mind-body dualism (the idea that the body is lesser) is a Christian ideal that has stayed with the West for centuries. When Western women see the liberation of reproductive rights, they typically see it in the control over their physical bodies. For Japanese women (and in general in Japan), there isn’t that same divide between the body and the mind. Specifically, many Japanese women say that they value the ability to control the relationship and not the female body only. So, for instance, one woman saying, “Abortion only affects the lower half of the body, but the pill affects the whole body,” kind of demonstrates this attitude in comparison with a typical Western attitude toward oral contraceptives.

In a series of interviews conducted by Mariko Jitsukawa, one woman said: “I don’t want to control my body. Contraception is a man’s responsibility. Women have to have things inside our bodies. That is not good. Men can put things outside their bodies. That is much better.” This also agrees with the idea of uchi v. soto.

For many women, male contraceptive methods give the chance to communicate the need for contraception with partners and practicing it assures that he shares the responsibility.

So, concluding this post (which was meant to be relatively short?) I just wanted to bring up some new perspectives that you may have never thought of from that angle for (in addition to some insight on this aspect of Japanese culture). It’s only a bite from the whole, but I hope you at least found it as interesting as I did. 🙂

Some further reading: