Taking Leave

In 1992, in what was widely publicized as the first incident of a man taking child care leave from a private company in Japan, Mutsumi Ota took 3 months off from his job and wrote about his experiences for Japan Quarterly, a defunct publication of the liberal newspaper Asahi Shimbun. He wrote that colleagues laughed at him, saying he would have a three-month “vacation,” but instead, he found himself isolated at home, stared at in public, and shunned by women pushing baby carriages in local parks. On the positive side, he also wrote about his increased interest in local community activities, and his role in maintaining a web page for a group devoted to gender rights and child-raising issues (Ikujiren).

Ota reported (in 1996) that a miniscule 0.16% of men took child leave in Japan. Yet almost 15 years later, only 2% of eligible fathers in Japan have taken child care leave. So why haven’t more men in Japan taken advantage of the law to help raise their children?

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Although I had already talked with the jinjigakaricho about child care leave, I resisted approaching the head of the English department, Professor K, until the middle of November. One reason was that I felt that waiting until a less stressful time of the semester might make things easier. Another was that I wanted him to see how hard I was working for the department, particularly after spending an entire weekend being the MC for a speech contest.

When the time came, I simply had to visit his office…directly across the hallway from mine (yes, avoiding this talk for half a year may have reduced stress for Professor K, but may also have increased mine!).

As I raised the topic, I could sense his concern…

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