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The story
It was revealed on the 16th that Mayor Shoko Kawada (36) of Yawata City, Kyoto Prefecture, gave birth to a baby girl on the evening of September 15th while on maternity leave. Known as Japan’s youngest female mayor, Kawada has been on roughly four months of maternity leave since July 20th, in what is believed to be the first time a sitting head of a local government in Japan has taken such leave. On 5ch threads, critics argued “if city government runs fine without her for four months, maybe the mayor’s post itself is unnecessary,” while defenders countered with “there’s value in setting a precedent” and “the real problem is a society where it’s hard to take childcare leave.” The discussion also spread to how her salary is handled during leave and comparisons with parental leave among politicians abroad.
9/16 (Wed) 12:55 JST
Asahi Shimbun
Yawata City in Kyoto Prefecture announced on the 16th that Mayor Shoko Kawada (36), currently on maternity leave, gave birth to a baby girl on the evening of the 15th. Kawada, Japan’s youngest female mayor, has been on roughly four months of maternity leave since July 20th. Her taking maternity leave as a sitting head of local government is believed to be a nationwide first, and had been drawing attention.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Seriously, do we even need a mayor?
Exactly this.
She didn't even name someone to cover for her, so I'd say the post's just unnecessary at this point.
No idea what she's even doing.
You just don't notice it, but all kinds of work quietly piles up.
A few years from now it'll show up as "why haven't we done that," "why don't we have this," "why is this problem getting worse" compared to neighboring towns.
It's less about testing society and more about setting a precedent.
In a way you could even call that politics.
If even a mayor can take maternity/childcare leave mid-term, maybe it'll become normal for everyone in the private sector too.
I'm honestly in favor.
Kids and workers don't just spring up out of the ground.
Management during the Employment Ice Age (Japan's brutal job market of the 1990s–2000s) worked their own staff to the bone on the cheap and never let them take leave, then just hired fresh young workers someone else had raised and burned through them too.
That's exactly why we've got a labor shortage and a birthrate crisis now.
Guess it really was a planned pregnancy then.
Impressive that it worked out right away.
I struggled with infertility before my first child, so no matter what the intentions were here, I still feel like a baby is a blessing you're given, not something you engineer.
Got a feeling she'll roll straight into childcare leave next and never show up at city hall again for the rest of her term.
Just quit already.
Just so you know, she's about to go on two years of childcare leave from here.
She's 36, right at the edge of the fertility window — cut her some slack.
Makes you wonder: did she just get caught up in the high of winning the election and it happened, or did she deliberately plan the pregnancy to set a precedent of a mayor conceiving and giving birth mid-term, and it worked out perfectly?
Either way, a child really is a blessing, so I'm just glad mother and baby are both doing fine.
Looking forward to seeing this new style of politician.
So she started trying for a baby right after getting elected…
She's the mayor — couldn't they have passed an ordinance capping her pay during leave at welfare-level amounts?
Otherwise isn't she just collecting a paycheck for nothing?
Actually, births are free under welfare, so that might end up being the better deal for her.
which is exactly why the population keeps shrinking.
Nah, that's fine for a job like teaching where someone else can cover for you, but people entrusted her with running the whole city.
She should be working her butt off for the roughly four years of her term.
Foreign politicians tend to have bigger builds and more stamina to begin with.
You can't really compare them to Japanese people.
This is a matter of systems and culture, not physical build.
"Room to breathe" lol.
If good vibes alone fixed the country, we wouldn't have any problems.
Better to formally build a system that runs without a mayor.
That way we could scrap whatever parts of the system don't suit women too.
Maybe every mayor and town head nationwide should just be doubled up with the vice-minister of finance.
Calling maternity/childcare leave "irresponsible" — you've got way too little slack in your own life.
Do the math between her election date and the due date.
It's blatantly irresponsible.
You wouldn't get that in the private sector.
Honestly just a flaw in the system.
She was elected to work for the citizens,
but instead she's taking leave for the sake of her own one child.
In cases like this it's usually the husband who takes it instead.
I see.
As a politician she should be fulfilling her responsibilities.
Just shows how politically immature Japan still is.
It says her maternity leave is scheduled to run until November 8th,
but is she going to take childcare leave on top of that too?
She might end up pregnant with a second child during childcare leave and roll straight back into maternity leave…
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Maternity and childcare leave are legally available to heads of local governments too, but how substitute arrangements and salary are handled depends on each municipality’s own ordinances, and nationwide precedent is still thin. The thread’s disagreement splits into two main camps. One is an institutional argument: “if the local government runs fine without her for four months, maybe the position itself is unnecessary.” The other is a supportive view that “setting a precedent has value in itself,” with some linking it to Japan’s low rate of childcare-leave uptake in the private sector as a point in her favor. One easy point of confusion: whether her full salary continues during maternity leave depends entirely on the municipality’s own ordinance, and the original article doesn’t specify how Yawata City is handling it in this case. Some comments also criticize the timing between her election and the birth, but whether it was planned or coincidental is something only she herself could know, so those claims remain speculation.
*This article is compiled and summarized from excerpts of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Kyoto] Yawata Mayor Shoko Kawada gives birth to a baby girl, currently on four months of maternity leave.”
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