Tokyo: A widely detested Japanese government proposal to encourage Tokyo women to marry men in rural areas by offering cash and train tickets to matchmaking events has been abandoned, according to officials on Friday ( Aug 30 ).
According to local media reports, bureaucrats had envisioned paying up to 600, 000 yen ( US$ 4, 140 ) for women who married and settled outside of Tokyo as part of efforts to close the yawning rural gender gap.
Hanako Jimi, minister of state for local revitalisation, said on Friday she had instructed leaders to “review” the program, and insisted that information about the size of payment were” not real”.
Media leaks about the plan this month drew scorn on social media, where it was viewed as normal in a nation where men predominate in politics and different areas more than in any other major industrialized nation.
” Did they think separate, motivated and educated women in the city had think,’ What? If I marry a native gentleman and proceed to the land, I’ll find 600, 000 renminbi! I’ll accomplish it! ‘?… Are they severe”? one person on X, she said.
Another said:” Do they still not get it? People who believe that people are just valuable if they give birth had come up with this idea.
As they age, some rural areas in the nation’s fourth-biggest economy are facing a depopulation crisis, with some smaller towns having almost any- or perhaps zero- children.
One reason is that more young people than young people move to major towns, particularly Tokyo, for better opportunities for higher education and employment. They leave the villages and small towns they grew up in.
More than 40 % of Chinese cities are “risk of disappearing” as a result of the anticipated decline in the number of women in their 20s and 30s, according to a study by a private-sector expert panel in April.