Status, stigma, and Japan's role in international society

A rich body of constructivist literature shows how international organizations and social activists, often Western in origin, have pressured countries around the world to adopt international norms, centering on liberal modern values of peace, prosperity, and progress (e.g., Finnemore and Sikkink, Reference Finnemore and Sikkink1998; Risse, et al., Reference Risse, Ropp and Sikkink1999; Johnston, Reference Johnston2001; True and Mintrom, Reference True and Mintrom2001). Japan scholars, too, have shown the range of ways that international norms have put pressure on Japanese elites to change domestic politics and foreign policy to meet international standards of appropriateness (e.g., Leheny, Reference Leheny2003, Reference Leheny2006; Chan-Tiberghien, Reference Chan-Tiberghien2004; Hirata, Reference Hirata2004; Cortell and Davis, Reference Cortell and Davis2005; Blok, Reference Blok2008; Flowers, Reference Flowers2009; Mello and Strausz, Reference Mello and Strausz2011). Yet a recent challenge to the constructivist literature points to the ways that international norms not only produce conforming behavior through socialization, but the ways that they can also produce feelings of shame, embarrassment, and dishonor by drawing negative attention to behavior that does not fit the ‘norm’ (Zarakol, Reference Zarakol2014). International norms can thus result in state stigmatization. Drawing from the literature on social psychology, particularly the work of Erving Goffman, stigma is the notion that one is, or could be, discredited on the basis of a particular attribute in a given context. For individuals, stigmas might include being fat; having a mental illness or physical disability; or membership in a racial or class group seen in a negative light. As applied to international relations, stigma is frequently expressed through designations such as ‘not being of the “West”, being behind the “West”, not being modern enough, not being developed or industrialized or secular or civilized or Christian or democratic enough’ (Zarakol, Reference Zarakol2011: 4). As norm entrepreneurs apply these designations, international norms not only socialize states, but also generate inequalities and stratification in international society.

Social psychologists have found that in response to stigmas, individuals and groups respond with a high degree of variability: some individuals brush off the identity threat, while others experience great stress and feelings of vulnerability; some individuals strive harder to meet the normative standard, while others withdraw from competition, say, at a workplace or in school (Major and O'Brien, Reference Major and O'Brien2005). States, too, vary in their responses to international stigma. Adler-Nissen (Reference Adler-Nissen2014) argues that states have a choice of three different strategies to handle the stigma of being different. First, states may accept the stigma of being different and try to assimilate to the norms of international society (the ‘try harder’ strategy). Second, states may reject any notion of stigma and try to pass as ‘normal’ (the ‘deny the problem but affirm the norm’ strategy). Larson and Shevchenko (Reference Larson and Shevchenko2003) relatedly argue that to maintain self-esteem discredited states may try to reframe debate around a status-marker they do better at or try to change the reference groups of comparison (the ‘deny the problem by choosing a different norm or way to shine’ strategy). Third, states may engage in counter-stigmatization, finding pride and honor in the stigma attached to them, flagrantly and explicitly rebuking the norms of international society (the ‘deny the norm to maintain self-esteem’ strategy) (Adler-Nissen, Reference Adler-Nissen2014; parenthetical monikers are mine). What is notable about the range of strategic options in response to stigma is that they show: First, the causal impact of norms cannot be understood without reference to the intervening agency of states in interpreting the norm. Second, norms can have an (indirect) causal impact even when full compliance is not the final outcome.

Stigmas depend on situational cues that bring negative stereotypes from the background to the fore; they are not relevant at all times, but rather context-dependent (Major and O'Brien, Reference Major and O'Brien2005). In international relations, stigmas are likely to become salient in situations in which norm entrepreneurs campaign to mobilize and shame discredited targets; when discredited actors behave in ways perceived to reinforce negative stereotypes; when states compare, or are compared, according to metrics of highly desirable or undesirable traits; and when collective memories are constructed and mobilized that recall past discredited behavior. In this paper, I call ‘triggers’ those situations and events that increase the salience of a stigma at a particular time. These triggers may be international, transnational, or domestic in origin. Just as one finds evidence of the existence of norms through the behavior justifications they elicit and ‘trails of communication’ they leave (Finnemore and Sikkink, Reference Finnemore and Sikkink1998), stigma triggers should be evident when an actor, especially one regarded as powerful, authoritative, or highly legitimate, calls attention to discrediting behavior or negative stereotypes regarding a less-powerful entity.

Countries have different propensities to be stigmatized and different material and social psychological resources to cope with challenges to identity, as do individuals (Major and O'Brien, Reference Major and O'Brien2005, on individuals). Given that international organizations and standards of international society have arguably been influenced most strongly by norms originating in Western Europe and the United States, one might expect that non-Western countries are more likely to experience stigmas in international society than Western-identified countries. Zarakol (Reference Zarakol2011) argues that the defeated empires of Japan, Turkey, and Russia alike, caught between ‘East’ and ‘West’ in a stratified international social system, struggle to maintain self-esteem and pride in national traditions. This is all the more difficult, Zarakol claims, when modernization is such a totalizing experience, centered on Western cultural norms. Starting in the Meiji period, to build up national power, the Japanese emulated everything from military organization to school curriculums, selectively adapting foreign institutions and customs to meet a Western-defined ‘standard of civilization’ – and to fit their own evolving needs (the ‘try hard to meet the norm’ strategy). Zarakol (Reference Zarakol2011) notes a common refrain in Turkish, Japanese, and Russian debates is one of not being given credit for all the hard work they have done in aligning with international norms – a defensive response. When a powerful country with a settled ‘Western’ identity such as the United States, for example, is confronted with discrediting behavior, it is more likely to brush off the criticism and not see it as fundamentally a challenge to its position in international society. Given this power dynamic, we might predict that in contexts in which Japan's identity is threatened as not being sufficiently ‘modern’ or ‘Western’ or ‘developed’ enough, that strategic management of the stigmas will be oriented primarily toward Western audiences, as opposed to audiences in China, Korea, or developing countries (see Leheny, Reference Leheny2003; Mello and Strausz, Reference Mello and Strausz2011, on development and international norms).

This paper argues that the puzzle of Japan's Womenomics diplomacy can best be understood as fulfilling three important goals for Abe and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) as a stigma management strategy. First, it deflects attention away from the ‘comfort women’ issue by emphasizing Japan's forward-looking contributions to help women in conflict situations. Second, and relatedly, it emphasizes Japan's ‘proactive contributions to peace’ and reaffirms Japan's identity as a humanitarian contributor to the world through its efforts to promote women's empowerment in developing countries. Reinforcing a humanitarian identity through foreign aid is particularly important as the Abe administration revises its defense policies to allow for collective self-defense and debating new security legislation in line with the revised US–Japan Defense Guidelines to create a more ‘normal’ military and more ‘equal’ alliance. Third, Japan's Womenomics diplomacy flips the typical script of Japan as a laggard on women's empowerment by creatively crafting a new narrative of the country as a trailblazer and leader of a global movement to empower women. Japan may evaluate its economic development and military power with reference to Western countries, but in its Womenomics diplomacy MOFA portrays Japan as a leader when it comes to developing countries, even when it is actually behind many developing countries on major international indexes of gender empowerment. The sleight of hand is that MOFA defines leadership in women's empowerment in terms of Japan's ODA contributions to benefit women, as opposed to leading or teaching others how to attain parity between men and women in political, economic, and social spheres.

This paper proceeds in two parts. First, it explains two kinds of stigma facing postwar Japan: the perception of Japan as unrepentant violator of women's rights due to its handling of the ‘comfort women’ issue after the Second World War, and its low ranking on international indexes of gender equality. The paper finds evidence in public discourse for awareness of international stigma through terms such as ‘shame’, ‘honor’, and for references to public disapproval, embarrassment, or loss of reputation due to Japan's deviation from international norms. Second, the paper explains Womenomics diplomacy initiatives as a strategic response to two event triggers that require an adaptive response to the stigma: the 70th anniversary of the Second World War, conjuring up still-fresh memories of the plight of the ‘comfort women’, and legislative debates on collective self-defense needed to implement the new US–Japan Defense Guidelines that also call up memories of Japan's wartime past and which critics use to cast doubts upon its trustworthiness today. At a time that Japan is becoming a more ‘normal’ country in developing more muscular military capabilities and collective self-defense, a ‘humanitarian’ Japan that promotes gender equality helps ease perceptions of the transition.

Japan's gender stigma

Japan's Womenomics diplomacy cannot be understood without reference to Japan's perceived still-tenuous position in international politics and challenges to its foreign relations due to the legacy of its entry into the international system in the nineteenth century, its colonization of Korea and Taiwan, and its full-scale war and aggression against China, the United States, and many others in the Second World War. Postwar Japan, of course, adopted a pacifist constitution and an exclusively defense-oriented defense policy that put its security largely in the hands of the United States through acceptance of American forward-deployed bases and a mutual security treaty (Katzenstein, Reference Katzenstein1996; Berger, Reference Berger1998). It has a record of peaceful relations that one could justifiably be proud of. While there is good reason to see Europe as the ‘dark continent’ of the twentieth century due to its pervasive struggles with fascism and communism, not to mention multiple industrial-scale wars and genocide (Mazower, Reference Mazower2000), and while the United States has a recent record of destabilizing war entanglements that ranks second to none (Bacevich, Reference Bacevich2009), Asia seems to have inspired more doubts about threats to international order, especially regarding China's rise (Mearshimer, Reference Mearsheimer2010; Friedberg, Reference Friedberg2011) amidst Japan's gradual loosening of postwar security constraints (Green, Reference Green2003; Pyle, Reference Pyle2007; Hughes, Reference Hughes2009; Samuels, Reference Samuels2011). Japan's record of long postwar peace has also not fully eroded stigmas about whether the country can use military force responsibly and whether the country's leaders fully understand and appreciate the pain and suffering its wartime leaders and people inflicted on others. Germany has largely rehabilitated its image as a responsible player in international politics, embedding itself in NATO and European region-wide institutions the likes of which cannot be found in Asia (Hemmer and Katzenstein, Reference Hemmer and Katzenstein2002). But stigma is power-laden and context-dependent, and Japan, consequently, faces persistent doubts about its status and role in international society.

This section looks at two postwar stigmas that foster the perception of the Japanese: the comfort women issue as a symbol of the Japanese state's (past) propensity toward violence against women, and low rankings on international indexes of gender equality. Japanese elites and public have put forth competing stigma management strategies in response to Japan's lack of alignment with international norms. The Japanese left often aligns itself with international human rights regimes to use synergistic approaches of pressures from international organizations and to induce progressive change under universalistic notions of ‘human rights’ (the ‘try harder’ approach) (e.g., Chan-Tiberghien, Reference Chan-Tiberghien2004). The Japanese right, however, typically favors a strategy of ‘passing’ (the ‘deny the problem but affirm the international norm’ approach, along with ‘change the reference group of comparison’ strategy), which exemplifies Abe's Womenomics diplomacy agenda.

Abe & womenomics: universally shining women for japan

In Abe's second term in office, he rolled out Womenomics, a program to promote women in the workforce, as well as to launch women into 30% of leadership positions across societies. This high-profile initiative was built on the backs of previous efforts of the Gender Equality Council in the Cabinet in setting targets (Hasunuma, Reference Hasunuma2014; Hasunuma, Reference Hasunuma2015), and the 30% target itself reportedly originated as an ‘international yardstick adopted at a UN conference in Nairobi in 1990’ (Daily Yomiuri, 2003). The highest-profile political commitments are support for legislation mandating that companies with at least 300 employees create non-binding action plans on women's empowerment, and to eliminate waiting lists for daycare completely by 2017 by creating an estimated 400,000 new spots (Coleman, Reference Coleman2016). Along with the new domestic social policy agenda, Japan's Womenomics diplomacy would include new foreign aid for women in developing countries and conflict zones, publicized in newspaper op-eds, speeches at the United Nations, and in television commercials around the world.

What had lit the spark under Abe in his second term as prime minister were the two stigmas which affect the country's status in international society. When Abe became prime minister for the second term in late 2012, he was ready to pursue not only an ambitious economic agenda to revive the flagging economy, but also an ambitious security agenda to revise the interpretation of Article 9 in the Constitution, the ‘Peace’ clause, to allow for collective self-defense; to revise the US–Japan Defense Guidelines; and to pass new implementing legislation for both of the former. Yet one of the biggest diplomatic challenges for Abe in advancing his defense agenda and winning support for it internationally (and to some degree domestically) has been his personal views on the Second World War, particularly the hot button issue of ‘comfort women’ – which had attracted so much negative attention for Abe in his first term in office – as well as overall questions about the legitimacy of the war. With the 70th anniversary of the Second World War on the horizon, and with gathering movements in the US and Europe hoping to persuade Japan to accept legal and moral responsibility for the ‘comfort women’, commentators worldwide were eager to hear what Abe might say to commemorate the war anniversary and whether, in particular, he would uphold a series of past apologies and the Kôno declaration that admitted Japan's direct and indirect responsibility for the system. Abe had strongly hinted that he might turn his back on the Kôno declaration at the appropriate time; in February 2015 Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide said the government would ‘review’ the statement and its academic merits (Morris-Suzuki, Reference Morris-Suzuki2015). Yet Abe's second term response was subtler. What is important to note is that Abe and his right-wing supporters are not rejecting human rights norms, but rather reframing Japan's past actions as ‘normal’ and passing the bar, and its present and future actions in Womenomics diplomacy as exceeding the bar, being a leader.

Japan's domestic Womenomics agenda is about trying hard to meet the normative standards and erase any stigma about its poor performance on indicators widely used as measures of women's empowerment and gender equality. In Abe's (Reference Abe2014) speech, he explained his Womenomics initiatives explicitly in terms of meeting an international normative standard: ‘We cannot say that today's Japan is a “straight-A” model student in appointing women to executive positions. The proportion of women among members of the National Diet remains low, at 11%. That is why we must act now’ (Abe, Reference Abe2014: 14). He promoted a record number of women to Cabinet positions, and though the appointees were sometimes explicitly opposed to Japan's recent gender-equality initiatives, what Japan acquired for itself was long-sought recognition for empowering women. The UN Women's Chief, for example, proclaimed that Abe's choices set a positive example for the world (McGee, Reference McGee2014). In a May 2016 interview with the Tehran Times, Abe's wife Akie said she was looking forward to the day when ‘people outside of Japan’ would commend the country for ‘Japanese women's active role in society’ (Tehran Times, 2016).

Abe's Womenomics diplomacy, couched within the government's broader national security strategy, also shows Japan as a leader in contributing to international peace, prosperity, and stability by helping women. Abe's Cabinet issued a new national security statement adopting a policy of ‘Proactive Contribution to Peace’ in December 2013. A key pillar of this policy is to ‘improve the global security environment’ by ‘strengthening the international order based on universal values and rules’. Specifically, ‘Japan will also engage proactively in diplomatic issues on women, cooperating with the international community to implement measures to empower women in conflict prevention and peacebuilding, and promote their social advancement’ (Cabinet Office of Japan, 2013: 32). As part of Japan's new ‘proactive contribution to peace’, women are being used as avatars of a Japan that takes an international leadership role consistent with highly legitimated humanitarian objectives. Although realists have argued that Japan's actions in foreign policy and defense have been oriented around reassuring Asian neighbors not to balance power against Japan (Midford, Reference Midford2002), the status-based explanation advanced in this paper argues that the United States, ‘Western’ countries, and international organizations are the primary audiences for Japan's international humanitarian overtures.

Abe chose prominent international stages to publicize his efforts on Womenomics diplomacy and frame it as a leadership role. At his UN speech in 2013 Abe explained that Japan's ‘Womenomics’ actions are designed with the aspiration that Japan would ‘remain a leading member of the international community’. He stressed that he would work with UN Women as an international partner, especially to help women who become victims of sexual violence in times of armed conflict (the ‘deny the problem but affirm the norm’ strategy): ‘Japan will do everything possible to prevent such crimes against women and to support both materially and psychologically those people who unfortunately become victims of such acts’ (Abe, Reference Abe2013). Abe affirmed that Japan would submit a draft resolution on women in natural disasters at the next session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. To support women, Japan would help launch start-up businesses in Africa, as well as support greater aid for health and medical care for women worldwide. Japan, Abe proclaimed, would contribute $3 billion in ODA over the next three years toward this purpose. It would also push for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, ‘which calls for addressing the special needs of women and girls during and after military conflicts in repatriation and resettlement, rehabilitation, reintegration, and reconstruction’ (MOFA, 2014a: 7). In 2015, again before the UN, Abe (Reference Abe2015a) pledged, ‘This year, we will increase the amount of our contribution to UN Women to ten times what we did the year before last.’

When Japan's press narrated the purpose and context of the 2013 UN speech to domestic audiences, they widely quoted government officials, explaining that the country's Womenomics diplomacy initiatives were strategically designed to improve Japan's international image. In this view, with a new focus on women's rights, Japan could move from the defensive crouch of the historical ‘comfort women’ issue to a more positive present- and future-oriented message of empowering women (Mainichi Shimbun, 2013; Fuijkawa, Reference Fujikawa2013; Nagasaki Shimbun, 2013; Mori, Reference Mori2013; Takeuchi, Reference Takeuchi2013). The Nishi Nippon Shimbun quoted Abe's deputy chief cabinet secretary Sekô Hiroshige, who complained that ‘part of the Western media has been spreading a mistaken image’ about Japan's past, but argued that ‘Japan is being transformed into a society where women are active on the front lines’ (Nakanishi and Sakamoto, Reference Nakanishi and Sakamoto2013). The paper further reported that, in the view of government officials, this reputational work was particularly necessary because Japan was mistakenly seen as a country that looked down on women (josei keishi), precisely because of longstanding controversy over the ‘comfort women’ issue.

The United States is a key partner with Japan in its Womenomics diplomacy, reflecting how closely Japan continues to hew to US practices in the provision of humanitarian ODA for reasons tied, arguably, to both strategy and status identity. When in the early 2000s Japan started responding to OECD DAC calls to provide more humanitarian aid, rather than aid mostly for the benefit of Japanese firms, Japan's ODA to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa and Asia adhered to the principles behind the US faith-based initiatives, such as denial of the needle exchange programs to combat disease transmission through intravenous drug use, despite recognition by nearly all other countries of the effectiveness of the program (Burns, Reference Burns, Leheny and Warren2010). After the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Japan provided ODA to help build schools for girls as part of US-led reconstruction efforts (Tanaka, Reference Tanaka, Leheny and Warren2010). Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro strategically used this effort to empower women and girls through ODA to pave the way for further humanitarian contributions in Iraq, led by the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) themselves (Tanaka, Reference Tanaka, Leheny and Warren2010). Under the Womenomics banner today, the US and Japan are building on this legacy by cooperating on an international girls’ education initiative. With a commitment of over $345 million in ODA over three years, the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers, a counterpart of the US Peace Corps, will implement girls’ education programs. The rollout for this initiative featured a high-profile event with US First Lady Michelle Obama, US Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, and Japanese First Lady Abe Akie, emphasizing the US commitment to Japan's Womenomics diplomacy – and, implicitly, the Abe administration's overall security agenda (Sekiguchi, Reference Sekiguchi2015).

Abe's team held the WAW! 2014 conference, World Assembly for Women, at Keidanren headquarters in Tokyo in September 2014, modeled after the World Economic Forum in Davos. The WAW! conference was explicitly designed to ‘disseminate Japan's efforts and progress on its growth strategy in and outside Japan’ and raise domestic awareness about issues related to women's work opportunities in Japan (MOFA, 2014b). This framing tied the issue of Japanese women's employment and participation in society, an identified stigma, directly to overseas perceptions of Japan's economic growth potential. The event featured high-profile speakers such as IMF Managing Director Christine Legarde in a keynote address and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by video conference. At the Tokyo WAW! 2014 conference, Abe mentioned $1.8 billion of the $3 billion in ODA was already implemented, with Japan looking forward to helping build girls’ schools in Pakistan and increasing its contributions to UN Women fivefold. Abe also noted that UN Women would open a Japan office the following year. Notably, the list of invited foreign participants included women from developing countries such as India, Indonesia, the Philippines (Bangladesh, Togo, Somalia, El Salvador, along with women from many Western countries – but no women from China or Korea, a move that could be interpreted as trying to keep away critics most likely to raise the stigmatizing issue of the ‘comfort women’ – Coleman, Reference Coleman2016). The 2015 theme was ‘WAW! For All’ and featured an apparently progressive agenda to discuss everything from Japan's long working hours to single mothers and women in non-regular work positions to revising the gendered division of labor (Abe, Reference Abe2015b).

MOFA has also used Womenomics as part of Japan's international public diplomacy via mass media campaigns. With a run of television commercials on CNN from March–May 2015, airing in North America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, MOFA sought, in the words of the Yomiuri Shimbun, to ‘counter the increasingly fierce anti-Japanese propaganda from China and South Korea over issues related to historical perceptions’ (Yomiuri Shimbun, 2015). This admission directly ties the ‘comfort women’ issue to Japan's Womenomics diplomacy. Two commercials were aired, one on Japan's postwar economic contributions to peace and prosperity in Asia; the other, titled ‘To Make Women Shine’, showed Japan's contributions to empowering women in developing countries. Noting the success of the CNN commercials in ‘galvanizing public opinion in the international community’, MOFA expanded the use of commercials to other international television networks (Yomiuri Shimbun, 2015).

MOFA's content on its Womenomics diplomacy is available on the ministry's YouTube page. The focus is on women's economic empowerment and help for women in conflict zones. One MOFA (2015) promotional video features JICA officials in the Philippines helping women in agricultural business, as well as a project in Bangladesh that describes how women learned to sew to make a living, supported by Japanese aid. The Philippines actually ranks ninth in the 2014 World Economic Forum global gender gap index, and is the only Asian country to make the top ten; Bangladesh ranks 68th; Japan, in contrast, ranks a dismal 104th (World Economic Forum, 2014). Yet the promotional video ends with the tagline and MOFA's desired takeaway: ‘Japan Strives to Create a World Where Women Shine’. MOFA is using Japan's status as an advanced industrial country capable of giving generous ODA to promote women's empowerment to depict the country as a ‘leader’ in gender empowerment. Women in developing countries, in turn, are being used strategically to construct an image of an empowering, leading, humanitarian Japan. Japan's more ‘advanced’ level of economic development allows MOFA to portray it as a leader on gender equality and women's empowerment, even as it still lags internationally in the measure of difference between men's and women's lives.

The most explicit linkage between the Womenomics agenda and Japan's attempts to change the wartime stigma of the ‘comfort women’ can be seen in Prime Minister Abe's own words. In an op-ed for Bloomberg Worldview in April 2015, Abe (Reference Abe2015d) explained, ‘In the 20th century, women's honor and dignity suffered profound harm in various places when conflict broke out. This is still the case around the world. We must not avert our eyes from this reality, and Japan intends to do all it can to address the plight of women endangered by conflict.’ The language is nearly identical to Abe's speech on the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Avoiding all mention of ‘comfort women’, Abe (Reference Abe2015c) instead cast a forward-looking response tied to his Womenomics diplomacy, covering the Japanese military's sexual wartime practices under the banner of the universal experience of war in the twentieth century: ‘We will engrave in our hearts the past, when the dignity and honour of many women were severely injured during wars in the twentieth century. Upon this reflection, Japan wishes to be a country always at the side of such injured women's hearts. Japan will lead the world in making the twenty-first century an era in which women's human rights are not infringed upon’.

Given the history of Japan's ODA programs, there is a certain irony in the use of Womenomics diplomacy as a public relations strategy to deflect attention away from the stigmatizing ‘comfort women’ issue. Japan's ODA program began as an ‘analog’ to war reparations to countries occupied by Japan, in a way that would also assist its own economic development by facilitating Japanese exports, primarily via yen-denominated loans (Arase, Reference Arase2005: 18). While Japan might be applauded for shifting a portion of its ODA policy away from bilateral aid designed to benefit Japanese firms to multilateral aid for humanitarian purposes, bringing the country more in line with OECD DAC aid norms, this case study of Japan's Womenomics diplomacy suggests that a more nuanced evaluation of its ODA shift is warranted. Japan's genuine attempts to make the world a better place for women may come at the cost of renewed resentment in East Asia for burying the ‘comfort women’ issues once again, under the rug. Arguably, it also may lead to the mistaken impression that other developing Asian countries are ‘behind’ Japan regarding women's empowerment, when, in fact, they may have a better track record on gender parity in the public sphere, but do not receive such recognition in the context of Japan's Womenomics diplomacy only because they are poor.