"Femicide by the State"
Japanese Women's Rights Organizations Protest the Olympics
You can view or sign the petition calling for the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics here.
Three Japanese women professionals spoke at a press conference for the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan, held in Tokyo on July 12. They outlined their reasons for condemning the decision by the Japanese government, JOC and IOC to proceed with the Tokyo Olympics.
One of the organizers of the Flower Demo protests, Akiko Matsuo, spoke about the economic impact of women as a result of COVID-19, as well as the increased instances of domestic violence and rising suicide rates among women, as evidence of the “hidden cost” to women of the government’s decision to proceed with the Olympics. (A full transcript of her comments can be found below.)
Japan Women’s Association Medical Director Dr. Masami Aoki asserted that the prioritization of the Olympics over human lives must be condemned, and that the cancellation of the Games is necessary in order to prevent deaths and potential new strains of the virus:
“COVID-19 is a pandemic on a scale that humanity has never experienced before. If the Olympics go ahead, Tokyo will become an epicenter of infection. I am perplexed why such a simple thing is not understood by the IOC and the intelligent leaders of the Japanese and Tokyo metropolitan governments and this makes me angry. From the beginning, PCR testing in Japan was completely insufficient. Even today, there is no free access to PCR testing for anyone, anywhere, any number of times that they desire. Now, the number of people who have received two doses of the vaccine has not reached 20%. Japan is not doing even the bare minimum that it should be doing as the host country of the Olympic Games.”
Dr. Yoshiko Maeda, CEO of International Women’s Year Liaison Group and a medical doctor working at Showa Women’s University, said:
“The government is trying to promote telework; however 60% of essential workers who cannot take advantage of telework due to the digital divide are women. Also, 60% of casual workers are women, and it was women who lost their jobs in the COVID-19 pandemic and therefore lack adequate social welfare or guarantees. Suicide among women has also increased sharply in the past year and this is particularly serious among young women. It is women who are being placed on the front lines and impacted by COVID-19. The burden on the medical field of COVID-19 can be said to be the burden on women.”
Interpreted by Mary Joyce
Akiko Matsuo
Organizer of Flower Demo Protests
“We have been organizing online demonstrations every week since June 1st, together with women from different walks of life calling for the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.
The women who have been involved in organizing these demonstrations include health professionals, social workers, teachers, activists, researchers, journalists, people from the disabilities movement, and so on, all together protesting against the games. Before us there were also many organizations and individuals who have been calling on both the Japanese and the Tokyo Metropolitan governments to cancel the games.
As you are likely aware, in a very short amount of time, more than 450,000 signatures were gathered on Change.org against the Olympics being held, but the Japanese government and the Tokyo government as well as the IOC and the JOC and the Japanese mainstream media have all been ignoring these voices. On the 23rd of June there were also massive demonstrations across Japan and other places around the world calling for a halt to the games.
Today we are here to tell you why we are calling for the cancellation of the Olympics and to call on all athletes from other countries, related persons and media personnel to cancel your visits to Japan.
We strongly urge the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics for the reason that the lives and livelihoods of women in Japanese society are now at risk.
Despite the fact that it is the Olympic host country, the Japanese government has done very little to address COVID-19. The doctors will be speaking more about this afterwards, but the number of tests being conducted in Japan is close to the lowest in the world and economic measures are barely in place. In the global gender gap index, Japan ranks out of 156 countries around the world, it ranks 120, and Japan is not a society that recognizes the rights of women. The harsh reality that women in Japan are subjected to on a daily basis has become blatantly evident through the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a result of being forced to stay at home during COVID-19, domestic violence and unwanted pregnancies have increased. There have been a number of continuing cases where teenage girls have been arrested for giving birth in parks or shopping mall toilets and letting the newborns die. In Japan, of those who are casual workers are not subject to support measures, 70% of these are women, and of the employers, one in five are women.
As a result of not being eligible for state support or benefits, more and more women, as soon as they lose their jobs, are therefore also losing their homes, becoming homeless, as well. In November last year, amidst the coronavirus pandemic, there was a woman who was a casual worker in her 60’s, who, after losing her job, was beaten and killed by a man on the street.
What is even more severe is the fact that the number of women who are taking their own lives is also increasing. The number of women who committed suicide in June of this year was 25% more than in June of last year. Particularly women who are involved in care for family members who they are living together with are represented in these numbers of suicide cases and there is an increase in women committing suicide across all generations. In the background of all this are the issues of poverty, discrimination, and so on, and people not being able to see a future.
We will be hearing more today from the medical professionals who will be speaking as well, however, the medical sector here in Japan has already collapsed long ago. Here we are experiencing the situation where people who have severe COVID-19 symptoms are unable to be admitted to hospitals and are passing away at home. 70% of the medical and health workforce are women, and the overwhelming majority of nurses are also women. And yet, even in a time of such medical collapse, there are hundreds of nurses and nursing students who are being recruited for the games.
One thing I would particularly like to emphasize is that since the time of the construction of the Olympic sites, many homeless people were forcibly removed from the places where they had been staying, and many people who were living in municipal flats have also been evicted from their homes. Many of the people who were remaining in these flats, until being evicted, were elderly women. These different cases for the purpose of the Olympics are a situation which is femicide by the state.
In addition, despite the Covid pandemic, there were plans to mobilize students from elementary, junior, and senior high schools, as well as special needs schools, to watch the games as part of their education. With the declaration of the state of emergency, the majority of cities have withdrawn their plan, though there are still some cities that are planning to go ahead with sending children to watch the games. Looking at these reckless plans which ignore the rights of children and send them to watch the games within these circumstances shows us that the Olympics are being held without human lives as a priority.
In the first place, the government’s announcement that the Fukushima disaster, including the contaminated water issue, was under control, was a lie. Since the disaster, even today there are still people living in temporary housing in the disaster-affected areas, and they receive no guarantee of their health impacts under the radiation. Again, we see that the most vulnerable people in society are the ones who are most affected. Experts have repeatedly raised concerns about the possibility of the Tokyo Olympics being held in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the possibility of a new strain of the virus occurring from the Tokyo Olympics cannot be ruled out. What the women who are living in this country will be left with after the Olympics is the pandemic lasting an even longer time. Our voices are not being heard by the Japanese or Tokyo metropolitan governments of the JOC or IOC.
Why should we have to choose the Tokyo Olympics in exchange for precious lives?
We, the women of Japan, urge the world, please, do not come to Japan.”
Following the speakers’ presentation, journalists were invited to come forward with questions. The first question was presented by a reporter from Asahi Shimbun, who asked for the perspectives of women in the medical industry, including doctors, nurses, and caretakers who have been participating in weekly protest demonstrations.
A nurse in the field of psychiatry who was present at the event, Miyako Azusa, stood up to share her experiences. Ms. Azusa described examples of women seeking mental health treatment over feelings of guilt associated with being unable to help their patients, including a nurse who works in a cancer ward but has seen terminally ill patients being neglected due to the burden on the health care system. Another serious concern impacting women’s health involves the measures they are taking to prevent the spread of the virus, including isolating themselves from their friends and even from their families while staying in hotels. Ms. Azusa described how the women receiving psychiatric treatment reported feeling hatred for others who are continuing to socialize and not taking precautions as they sacrifice their personal freedoms to help their patients.
In addition, Miyuki Nagano of the Tokyo Teachers’ Association came forward to condemn the plan put forward by some schools to bring children to the Olympics Games. She described how a typical safeguarding policy involved teachers visiting a site in advance of a field trip in order to check the safety of the facilities for their students. However, there is no opportunity for teachers to protect children in this way. She also explained how the original plan, prior to the pandemic, was to bring schoolchildren, even those who had not yet entered elementary school, to the Olympics in groups of 100 - 300 via public transportation, which Ms. Nagano described as “unthinkable”.
It had also been explained to teachers that students would be prohibited from bringing their own water bottles, and that the reasoning behind this policy was to prevent a threat of terrorist attacks. “We cannot understand why there would be a plan to take children to such a place where there might be a risk of any kind of terrorism,” Ms. Nagano said. She went on to describe the personal freedoms that many children have had to forego to prevent the spread of the virus in school, including being unable to associate with friends and classmates, and wondered why students are being expected to be more cautious each day than is being suggested by their proposed attendance at the Olympics stadium.
Noticeably, none of the reasons discussed for women’s opposition to the Tokyo Olympics at the press conference included the erosion of the definition of the female sex to include males in women’s sports, though it appears that is not a priority for women in Japan, who are grappling with a severe mental health crisis and escalating poverty that is disproportionately impacting women. However, it seems quite obvious that women are suffering from the economic and mental health repercussions of the pandemic not because of how they identify, but because of the systemic nature of sex-based oppression, and because those in power who control access to resources are overwhelmingly men; women held less than 6% of director-level positions in the government during 2020.
This trend is a global pattern that has been extensively reported by the media and by government statistics. Child marriage, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, femicide, women’s unemployment — all have been increasing during the pandemic. Domestic violence cases in Japan reached a record high of over 130,000 reports in 2020, more than 350 reports per day. The situation of women committing suicide resulted in the government appointing a “Minister of Loneliness”, Tetsushi Sakamoto, who is already tasked with addressing the declining birthrate, and encourages women to marry and have children. Indeed, the man responsible for alleviating women’s psychological burdens, rather than addressing male violence and systemic inequality, promotes their continued subordination in the service of increasing the national labor pool.
It is therefore doubly insulting that Western nations have decided to redefine women on the basis of male delusions and to force this view on Japan, and on every other nation that intends to participate in the Olympics, at a time when a global surge in violence against women and increased poverty is taking place, and women are overwhelmingly those sacrificing themselves on the frontlines of the medical establishment.
The decision to proceed with the Olympics mirrors the entitlement displayed by the men demanding to compete in sports against women, and indeed, even demanding a right to misappropriate the female identity. Both attitudes suggest that certain men in power are willing to sacrifice the safety and health of women and children to get what they want.