Gender inequality accelerates Japan's rural depopulation

Gender inequality accelerates Japan's rural depopulation

toggle caption Anthony Kuhn/NPR

Families in the U.S. and around the world are having fewer children as people make profoundly different decisions about their lives. NPR's series Population Shift: How Smaller Families Are Changing the World explores the causes and implications of this trend.

AKITA, Japan — Young men in traditional festival clothes balance heavy bamboo poles up to 40 feet high on their heads, hands, hips and shoulders. Crossbars on the poles carry dozens of candlelit paper lanterns.

Part ritual, part festival and part competition, kanto is a centuries-old display of strength, skill and culture unique to Akita Prefecture, in northern Japan's Tohoku region.

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Traditionally, only men are allowed to touch the poles. Women play flutes and drums.

Kanto practitioners believe that women cannot participate because, according to Japan's Shinto religion, women's blood from menstruation and childbirth is considered impure for the purpose of religious rituals.

Some Japanese women accept Kanto's gender divisions as part of the culture, or simply refrain from criticizing them. College student Mayaka Ogawa, for example, says, "We can't really argue against tradition and religious reasons."

Kanto is emblematic of both Akita's cultural splendor and its conservative rural society.

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