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It’s tough being a mother in Japan. Politicians routinely urge women to pop out babies to counter the country’s declining birth rate. Yet women say, once they do become mothers, they get little support from society. In some cases, they’re subjected to outright abuse. (And for heterosexual couples, the husbands are usually no help.)

In some cases, that lack of support can be deadly. That’s why a group of women in Japan and a legal organization are coming to one Vietnamese woman’s defense after she was convicted in the wake of a stillbirth.

The woman is 23-year-old Le Thi Thuy Linh, a technical intern from Vietnam. Linh came to Japan in 2019 to work as a trainee on a mandarin farm. After a year and a half, she became pregnant.

Fearing she’d be sent back to Vietnam if she told anyone, Linh kept her pregnancy secret. Her fear wasn’t unfounded. Foreign workers in Japan’s technical trainee program often have stringent and, in some cases, ridiculous stipulations attached to their work. Several forbid trainees from having relationships at all. According to writer Yasuda Koichi, he’s even seen some that forbid workers from owning cell phones.

In November 2020, she gave birth to twins early at home around the eight-month mark. Both were stillborn.

Not knowing what to do, she wrapped the dead babies in a towel and sealed them in a cardboard box. She gave them names and wrote a farewell note, telling them “I’m sorry” and “rest in peace”.

Linh’s supervisors saw her condition and took her to the hospital. Once she told staff she’d given birth, they involved the police. Linh was arrested on suspicion of unlawful disposal of human remains.

The charge itself is strange in this case, as Toyo Keizai notes. Linh hadn’t “disposed” of her children – their bodies were still in her apartment. It had been no more than 30 hours since she’d given birth that police charged her.

Technically, under Japanese law, this is “unlawful disposal” because it deprives family and others who would mourn a deceased person of the closure of a proper goodbye. But it’s a charge most often used in murder or manslaughter cases. In Linh’s case, preserving her children in this matter was her way of saying goodbye to them[1].

In other words, Linh’s actions appear to have zero malice. They were borne out of fear and confusion.

Linh was initially convicted and sentenced to eight months in jail and three years probation. An appeal upheld the ruling but reduced the sentence to three months in jail and two years probation. In the appeal, judges ruled that Linh had intent to “hide” the bodies of her children because she had them in a taped cardboard box under a table.

However, a legal organization representing Linh is fighting to have her exonerated completely. And she has some support.

Asahi Shimbun and other local news orgs reported this week that the organization has filed some 127 appeals from people in Japan asking the court to find Linh not guilty. The appeals come from women like Watanabe Sayuri, a 36-year-old mother whose pregnancy required a cesarean section and left her unable to walk for weeks[2].

Watanabe says she wrote in defense of Linh while recalling the trauma of her own pregnancy and the support she had at that time – and how Linh was all alone. “It must’ve been an unbelievably tough situation. You’d panic and your mind would go blank.”

Watanabe argues that Linh’s actions are those of a mother who sought to mourn and care for her children even after death. She and others also point out that this is hardly the first time a woman in Japan has been driven to desperation due to a lack of support.

Asahi lists four other major cases in which a woman was convicted of disposing of her children after she gave birth in secret. In one, a woman’s boyfriend insisted she get an abortion and said he wouldn’t recognize his child or pay a dime in support.

She disposed of her child’s body in a coin locker and then went on Twitter to find someone with whom to form a suicide pact. She never went through with her plan and was ultimately sent to jail for two years with three years probation.

One factor driving such cases is the lack of emergency contraception. In Japan, levonorgestrel – the “morning after pill” – still requires a physician’s prescription. It’s also a fairly costly medication. Women’s rights advocates have fought for it to be made an over-the-counter medication like it is in many other countries. However, they’ve run into opposition from men who insist that Japanese women “can’t be trusted” with that decision. (I wish I was kidding.)

Unfortunately, overturning Linh’s conviction will be an uphill battle. In 2021, 1,852 cases were appealed in Japan. Of those, a mere three cases – 0.2% – resulted in a conviction being overturned.

View all posts by Jay Allen | Website

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