Hiratsuka Raicho
If your coworker hurls rocks at your house and still you don’t stop drinking
Thinker | 10 February 1886 – 24 May 1971

The proportion of women over 40 who regularly consume alcohol is increasing.

According to a survey by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the percentage of women in their forties who drink frequently (meaning more than one unit of alcohol on three or more days a week) has seen a drastic rise in the last 20 years. It now stands at 15.6%—an increase of 5.7% since 1996. On the other hand, the percentage of men in their twenties who drink has dropped to less than a third of what it used to be, falling from 36.2% to just 10.9%.

Surely a result of women’s social advancement and diversification of interests, if you actually go to a bar and do a quick visual survey, you will instantly notice the multitude of lively women present there. Then, almost as if to prove the results of this survey correct, if you go and read the comments on forums discussing this news, you will find numerous young men saying things like, “Alcohol just tastes bad.”

But while it is none of anyone’s business what anyone else drinks or does not drink, you still come across comments saying things like, “What are you aunties doing, drinking alcohol? And you call yourselves women?” Apparently, it does bother some people.

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Nakahara Chuya
If your coworker tries to hit you with a beer bottle
Poet | 29 April 1907 – 22 October 1937

The Heisei era, which began on January 8th, 1989, has now ended.

One doesn’t often stop to really think about it, but the fact is that we have literally just run past an era in time. The Lost Decades, the Aum Shinrikyo Incidents, the Great East Japan Earthquake… These phenomenon of the past thirty years shook people’s sense of values, and they changed the way in which we live our lives.

Meanwhile, in the world of sports, perhaps one of the more significant incidents during the final Heisei years was sumo grand champion Harumafuji’s alleged beer bottle assault and his subsequent retirement.

While there is no excuse for violence under any circumstances, really the main reason why this incident in particular attracted so much attention may have been because of how shocking the initial reports were.

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