# Association of Corporate Executives Group on the Next Generation

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2002-10-10T08:25:57Z


8am meeting at Okutani-san's office...This is the "young" group of the Association of Corporate Executives which is probably the most prestigious association of CEO's in Japan.

We started out talking about the rights of women. One of the men said that all of the women he asked didn't want a career and that it was just a few professional women who were trying to push their agenda. I said that it was like the abducted Japanese in North Korea saying that they didn't want to go back to Japan. They either didn't know better or they didn't want to say... I remember when Shima-san, the former chairman of NHK was told that most people in the company didn't like him. He went around asking people if they liked him and everyone said, "yes". He told me, "so obviously the survey is wrong."

We're talking about the ageing population problem in Japan. Taxes in Japan for inheritence are very high and crush families. Someone mentioned that monogamy from the view of some women is a system that allows weak men to get their fair distribution of women and don't give women enough choice. The idea is that maybe women should be free to choose who they get their seed from and that society should support all children. Japan has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. If Japan culturally accepted divorce or single women and allowed them to have children and society helped support this, maybe the people would have more kids.

I told everyone that someone who was visiting from the US asked me if Mizuka and I were planning to have kids. When I said, "not yet," she said to Mizuka, "you know you can have kids without his approval. I have some left in my freezer if you want any."

Interesting thoughts, but probably not something the elders of the Association of Corporate Executives would understand.





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Reforming Japanese Democracy