The Women

"The saddest thing in life," runs an old Japanese proverb, "is to be born a woman." In the feudal days before MacArthur, it contained more than a grain of truth; Japanese women then were the merest chattels, they had no civil rights whatever, and their menfolk seldom bothered even to address them by name. But in one sweep of the pen, the U.S.-dictated constitution of 1947 swept aside the centuries of tradition and placed the women of Japan--legally at least--on an equal footing with men.

Last week 800 Japanese women met in Tokyo's cavernous Hibiya Hall to consider their lot under the new dispensation. Grey-haired oldsters in kimonos and obis, bobbed-haired college girls in sweaters and skirts, aggressive feminists in slacks, gabbled enthusiastically and glared in frosty disdain at the few men present. They pointed with pride to some of the advances gained by their sex since the constitution: divorce, women's suffrage, the acceptance of women in an ever expanding range of jobs (as legislators, police officers, taxi drivers, even judges), increased coeducation, the spread of women's clubs, and a general increased freedom for women to speak their minds.

Even as they talked, one woman who always speaks her mind, Birth-Controller Margaret Sanger, became the first American woman ever to address members of the Japanese Diet. Armed with a load of information about new drugs and contraceptives, she urged the scientists and statesmen of rapidly expanding Japan (population increase: 1,000,000 yearly) to redouble their efforts to ease at least one of woman's burdens.

By and large, the women in Tokyo agreed that the principal problem still facing Japanese women is men. In many rural districts, they pointed out, Japanese fathers are still selling their daughters into slavery, often for as little as $15. Japanese husbands still prefer the company of geisha girls to that of their wives. Women still get only half the pay of men for the same jobs, and more than half of Japanese marriages are still arranged by contract without regard to the bride's choice. Nevertheless, doughty Socialist Diet Member Ichiko Kamichika told her sisters, "The Japanese woman of today is beginning to see things in their reality." "Our material gains have not been large," said Woman Lawyer Shigeko Tanabe, "but one thing they cannot take away: we are now recognized by both our husbands and the law as human beings."

At least one oldster was in hearty agreement. "Before I came to this meeting," said a grey-haired widow from Kyoto, "I was planning to commit suicide. Now I have definitely made up my mind to wait a while."

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