A growing number of young graduates are shocking their parents by taking up part-time work that gives them more freedom. The past few years have seen a rash of scandals surrounding bureaucrats who gave favours in return for trips to hostess bars, surgeons who killed patients by leaving implements inside their bodies, and police who continued with mah-jongg drinking parties rather than respond to urgent calls for assistance. Confusion and turmoil have been most apparent in education. Amid record levels of violent juvenile crime, teachers are warning of a breakdown in classroom discipline and falling academic standards. Psychologists say that up to a million teenagers are withdrawing from society, holing up in their rooms where they feel more comfortable relying on their parents and playing with a computer than making friends and fending for themselves.
Women have the most to gain from the changes taking place in Japan.
In recent years, however, they have put off marriage and children and been more inclined to divorce. As a result, Japan's birth rate has plunged to 1.34 for each woman, one of the lowest levels in the world. The gerontocracy of the LDP has been slow to realise that women's bargaining power has increased sharply because Japan needs them to make up the gap in the workforce and to have more children. Women voters, however, have noted the change. We've become a powerless people with no one to follow.