Women “would have their uteruses removed when they turn over 30,” Naoki Hyakuta, leader of the Conservative Party of Japan, said in a stream on his YouTube channel on Friday.

On the channel, he also said that he would make it law for “women who are single after 25 years old not to be allowed to marry.”

(…)

Later, Hyakuta posted an apology on his X account. “I cannot deny that the expressions were too harsh,” he said. “I apologize for those who were offended.”

      • MentalEdge
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        3 days ago

        Not since last year, when it was raised to 16.

        Even then that was the national minimum set over a hundred years ago.

        In practice it’s 18 in most prefectures, and has been for years, due to local law setting it to something sane.

      • qyron
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        53 days ago

        I would very much enjoy having the reasoning behind that low bar explained to me.

        • MentalEdge
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          3 days ago

          There isn’t one. They are repeating a technically kind-of-true funny ha-ha internet factoid.

          The effective age of consent is higher, as prefectures all have local laws setting it to something sane, but people say it’s 13 because it was the old national minimum on record up until last year.

          And that national law was literally from over a hundred years back, and was finally updated last year to raise the national minimum to 16. Still lower than the 18 in effect in places like Tokyo.

          • qyron
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            13 days ago

            Appeasing on paper but I seriously doubt it is enforced.

            • MentalEdge
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              3 days ago

              That’s a completely different conversion.

              And you might want to check Japanese conviction rates before making assumptions. Their system is damn near “guilty until proven innocent”.

              Now, whether such crimes actually get reported, is again, another, different conversation. There absolutely are vile predators over there, as a judge publicly commented he thought it was weird he could get arrested for banging a 14-year-old.

              But the ensuing scandal is also the reason why that dude is no longer a judge, and why the national minimum finally got raised.

              • qyron
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                13 days ago

                Good to know.

                I had the opportunity to socialize for some time with an immigrant couple in Japan for about 20 years and everything that transpired was essentially against modern liberal egalitarian social norms.

                • MentalEdge
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                  3 days ago

                  Yeah, things aren’t clear-cut. There are several matters in which Japan is painfully behind, and being such a populus country you can find people with views across the board.

                  But a lax justice system isn’t one of them. In fact Japan almost certainly has a huge problem with ostracising and convicting the innocent. You might hear about people losing their jobs just for getting arrested, even if found innocent.

                  And while laws also definitely need improving, it’s happening.

                  The main problem with stuff like age of consent, is going to be communities and groups of people who are behind on these things, and thereby shielding individuals from justice by keeping the bad things happening out of earshot of society at large. Their justice system might be brutally ruthless, but that doesn’t help if it never finds out about the crime in the first place.