hankyoreh

Graphic provided by jaewoogy.com

Last week, Yoshiro Mori, 83, resigned from his position as chairman of the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games after facing criticism, both at home and abroad, for his opposition to increasing the number of women on the committee. Mori had objected that more female members on the committee would cause meetings to “last too long.”

That wasn’t the first inappropriate remark made by Mori, who held the premiership of Japan from 2000 to 2001. In May 2000, while serving as prime minister, he described Japan as “a divine country centered on the emperor,” prompting criticism that he’d rejected the principle of popular sovereignty in Japan’s constitution.

Mori had also made a series of comments that were disparaging to women. In 2003, while chairing a committee in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) responsible for tackling Japan’s low birth rate, he criticized women who didn’t have children. “It’s strange to spend tax dollars taking care of older women who’ve lived easy lives without ever having a child,” he said at the time.

During a lecture, Mori made a sarcastic reference to how figure skater Mao Asada had lost her footing during a routine in the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, which resulted in her coming in 16th place. “That girl always falls down at the crucial moment,” he said.

But these repeated gaffes posed no obstacle to Mori’s career. He was made prime minister through back-room maneuvering between LDP factions. Even after resigning his post with an approval rating of 9%, he maintained his influence as chairman of Japan’s sports association, and later as chair of its Olympic committee.

In Japan — a country ranked by the World Economic Forum as 121st among 153 countries in terms of gender equality — powerful men have used insulting language and committed sexual misconduct with impunity. When Shiori Ito, a Japanese reporter, alleged that she’d been raped by a senior official at her broadcaster (and a chum of then-prime minister Shinzo Abe) in 2015, she had to endure the indignity of smears suggesting that she’d seduced her boss and complaints that she was ruining the life of a famous person.

In Japan, the #MeToo movement had run into a wall. But this time, Japanese women broke on through.

Just one week after Mori made his latest remark, more than 170,000 people had signed a petition calling for his resignation. Young women on social media have widely shared the hashtags “don’t stay silent” and “wakimanenai onna,” meaning “women who don’t know their place.” This second hashtag flips on its head Mori’s remark that “women on the committee know their place.”

In Japan’s conservative political culture, powerful people are said to gather behind the scenes to hammer out important decisions, while those who “know their place” stay silent during official meetings. But these “wakimanenai onna” are determined to be heard, no longer content to be mere window dressing.

Some argue that Mori’s resignation wasn’t the result of paying heed and taking stock of the opinions of Japanese women, but rather a response to criticism from overseas, and particularly the Western world. The Financial Times opined that, if not for pressure from abroad, Mori would likely have bashed social media and maintained his position.

But even if that’s true, Mori would never have resigned if not for the efforts of Japanese women.

Calls for change in Japanese politics — which has long been dominated by men from the older generation — are louder than ever. Many think that a woman should be named to replace Mori as head of the Olympic committee. At long last, the end is coming for those who have clung to sexist attitudes and used their power to silence women, blind to how the world has changed.

After returning home from Sochi in 2014, Asada held a press conference in which she touched on Mori’s mockery of her as “that girl.”

“I think that his remarks were off base because I didn’t fail on purpose. I think that Mori may come to regret those remarks,” Asada said.

I bet that Mori now regrets not taking her advice to heart.

By Park Min-hee, editorial writer

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]