Tokyo Last-Train-Home Culture Under Fire as Abe Backs Women
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One morning in February, Japan’s government personnel department began an experiment in a nondescript building in a Tokyo residential area that could end up rewriting the rules of the nation’s powerful bureaucracy.
For the first time, it invited 19 women from different ministries to an all-female training course designed to groom them for senior government positions. The four-day program inspired a 30-page blueprint, submitted to Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, on how to fix a system that keeps government staff at work till late at night, sacrificing family life.