21/06/10 18:32:56.47 rES/oZCU0.net
Several weeks ago, I chanced to get acquainted, on the introduction of my friend working in Japan, with the rather smart Japanese woman.
She was graduated from a famous national university and is quite familiar with Western culture and languages (e.g. English, French and Latin). I was jolly amazed to hear that she had read Seneca and Tacitus in original.
However, of those which I learnt in the conversations with her, what shocked me most was that the Japanese men, at large, were so possessed by sexism that they thought quite light of learned women.
The company of which she is a clerkess has never taken her learning into account both in salary and in rank, and moreover, forces her to be engaged in the same work as other highschool graduate girls.
One day, when the party (so-called "nomikai") was held, she began talking of the grammatical comparison between English and French, but her boss got somehow angry and stopped her talking.
He seemed, she guesses, to want women to be more ignorant than men. For my part, if I see in the bar a girl familiar with arts (say) history, linguistics and literature, I will chat with her till the bar closes.
At all events, considering how many female scholars (like Mrs. Curie) have contributed to the scientific progress in the West, sexism in Japan is a serious loss to its development.
In fact, however, as shown by PM Suga's unnatural dismissal of scholars, it may not be only female intellectuals that are despised in Japan,