Having a newborn is said to be one of the greatest joy anyone can experience and when a Japanese Lawmaker, Kensuke Miyazaki wanted to take a month long paternity leave, Japan loses its mind. While there are certainly many whom support his decision, the critics are the ones whom share the loudest opinion, many of which believe that he should not be considered a "worker" because of his profession. To find out why many people are upset about this, let's learn a little bit about Japanese law and customs in Japan.Believe it or not, Japan has an impressive law regarding paternity leave, in fact if one were to choose to take paternity leave, they could earn 60% of their salary for 14 weeks (although some reputable news sources say months we believe it's a typo). If one were to take paternity leave, they may be required to work at their company for many months with a pay cut to avoid people taking advantage of the system. However, only about 2.3% of men took advantage of paternity leave in 2015.The reason why new fathers didn't take advantage of paternity leave may be because of a few reasons. Traditional corporations in Japan tend to frown upon paternity leave and expect their employees to be thankful that the company is allowing them to work there, and while that seems like a pretty reasonable way of thinking, it's likely not how you may be perceiving it. It's certainly true that everyone should be thankful for their job and do what is needed to keep the job (doing your best for instance), but these companies essentially want you to always work, don't take breaks, don't take vacations, sweep the floor during your breaks even as an engineer, etc... Sure, they may not outright say some of these things for legal reasons, but they pressure their employees in such a way that if they were to do the opposite such as taking a sick day, they would lose their job. While Japanese companies may not be as difficult to work for as Chinese companies, Japan has it rough which may explain why they have one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Another reason why paternity leave may not have been used is because it wasn't financially viable to do so. While technically yes, about 60% of the employee's salary is paid during the leave (legally), it wouldn't be financially viable for most companies to pay so much into the leave, which is why often times these leaves are taken from sick and vacation pools or a % is doctored off their salary for a certain period of time once they return.While there may be other reasons why these new fathers did not opt for a paternity leave, Japanese Lawmaker Kensuke Miyazaki will be taking a month's leave making many angry that a lawmaker, a person in the position of passing laws with his single vote may sway the outcome of debated laws next month. Perhaps they are right, a person of that power shouldn't take so much time off but at the same time, if we don't allow people to take the time to be human, then what are we? All people are human, yes, even lawmakers.

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