COLUMN ONE : Equality Evolving in Japan : A new law is gradually loosening the hierarchical grip of older men. Critics say the changes are cosmetic, but optimists say peer pressure and a cultural bias against shame will make them significant for women.

Earlier this year, a random sampling of “women only” classified job postings in major Japanese newspapers was limited mostly to low-end positions for nurses, housekeepers, textile workers and food-service employees.

“We need many more women,” proclaimed one railway noodle stand company in the March 18 edition of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

“We need women under 25,” said a more specific posting for secretaries in the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper.

“We welcome homemakers,” said a third, for a cleaning job.

In recent weeks, however, advertisers have dropped most of that discriminatory language and instructed their recruiters not to hire, at least officially, on the basis of sex or appearance.

These are among the most visible signs of recent legal changes here designed to raise the status of women, loosen the hierarchical grip of older Japanese men and improve the nation’s tarnished reputation at home and abroad as a laggard on social equality issues.

In recent months, Japan has enacted a Gender Equality Law that sets broad new principles for Japanese society. And it revised its Equal Employment Opportunity and Labor Standard laws. For the first time, the government sets out a definition for sexual harassment, outlaws workplace discrimination against women and puts companies on notice that their behavior will be monitored.

On paper, this seems like a sea change for Japan, a society long known as a man’s world where the kabuki stage, the sumo ring and leadership of the imperial family are still off limits to women, and where, earlier this century, wives still commonly walked behind their husbands in public.

Critics, however, argue that the latest steps still amount to little more than a cosmetic make-over.

Japan’s “Minister of Gender Equality” is a man who has himself been accused of sexual harassment. The official, Hiromu Nonaka, suggested to a female Cabinet member that she should get married and, by implication, become pregnant, thereby setting an example that would help reverse Japan’s low birthrate.

Furthermore, critics add, the language contained in the new laws is vague, calls on companies only to “endeavor” to change and includes no punishment for those who flagrantly disregard its provisions.

“It’s very suspicious,” said Chizuko Ueno, sociologist at the University of Tokyo.

“Japanese in general are very afraid of bureaucrats,” said Saitoh Chiyo, the editor of Agora, a women’s journal. “It will have some effect.”

Companies for the first time are held accountable for offensive behavior at work and are urged to establish and follow clear anti-discrimination policies. Women can now work late and take most dangerous jobs once reserved for men, although they’re still forbidden from holding positions involving heavy lifting or those involving certain chemicals.

And administrative complaints over sexual harassment--known here as seku hara--are now more difficult to squelch. Previously, companies could veto any complaint brought against them, which helped to explain why fewer than a dozen cases were even ruled on between 1986 and 1998.

Optimists say strong peer pressure, an extreme cultural bias against shame and Japan’s more indirect system of dispute resolution still make the changes significant, if not ideal.

A few recent high-profile cases also suggest that people’s views are changing. A 21-year-old reelection worker on Osaka Gov. “Knock” Yokoyama’s campaign grabbed headlines earlier this month when she filed suit against the governor for allegedly groping her in a van for 30 minutes. He denied it.

Even a year ago, such a case probably would have been silenced before it went public. This time, 81 lawyers throughout the country have publicly backed the plaintiff in a nation where group support is a strong determinant of social opinion.

In another recent case, a prominent television producer was arrested on charges of molesting a 19-year-old woman on a subway, behavior that has long been tolerated here. The woman filed a complaint, and the producer was jailed for two days and forced to resign from his job in shame. “Men need to realize this is a crime,” a police official told local reporters.

Other signs of change range from the substantive to the symbolic: Mazda recently announced that it would promote 500 women into supervisory positions; Sapporo Breweries Ltd. is calling its army of female promoters “wine persons” rather than “wine ladies”; and Nippon Life Insurance Co. has changed the name of its “Nissei ladies” to “total partners.”

The media have also gotten into the act with several articles on how to navigate this new social minefield, hints on do’s and don’ts in today’s office environment, and even some speculation on whether it’s time for a men’s liberation movement.

“Women are not the only ones,” screamed a headline in Aera, a weekly trend magazine. “Men feel sexually harassed (too).”

And corporate executives are now telling employees to take down the sleazy calendars even as their public relations departments tout their newfound responsibility and harassment prevention policies.

Among the guidelines issued by one government agency: “Don’t force a woman to sing karaoke with you,” “Don’t coerce her into dancing” and “Don’t peep into her locker room.”

Society Has Deep Patriarchal Roots

Behind this pressure for change, meanwhile, is a society with deep patriarchal roots. In prewar Japan, education was completely segregated by gender, with women effectively forbidden from voting or going to four-year colleges.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s postwar writing of the Japanese Constitution officially elevated women to equal status, but it was years before de facto change took hold.

The birth control pill was approved only in June. Japanese women still hold just 9.3% of professional positions--compared with 44.3% in the United States--and aren’t allowed to keep their own distinct last name after marriage.

Even during the debate over passage of these latest equality bills, several members of parliament reportedly complained that the Japanese family would fall apart if Japanese women started working en masse.

Japan has often found itself on the wrong end of international publicity with such views--with shame providing an impetus for the recent changes, women’s groups say. Bureaucrats returned from the 1996 international women’s conference chagrined after realizing how far behind Japanese society was. And Japanese corporations got their own wake-up call that same year when Mitsubishi Motors and Mazda Motors were the subjects of high-profile U.S. sexual harassment lawsuits.

Recent international comparisons rank Japanese women 19th in a 23-nation survey on their status in the workplace, while a United Nations study on their role in parliament places them 38th out of 102.

“Japan is no better than a developing country,” said an editorial on the parliamentarian issue in the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. “There can be no doubt that Japan is still dominated by men.”

Turning around deeply ingrained male mind-sets in Japan will take far more than a legal change or two, concedes Yuki Kobukuro, deputy counselor of gender equality in the prime minister’s office.

Thirty-seven-year-old landscaping employee Yasue Terada readily agrees. She says male colleagues have ogled her, touched her body, rated her breasts and slapped female co-workers’ backsides.

“To Japanese men in their 40s or 50s, it doesn’t really mean that much,” she said. “They may not even have a bad intent. But the result is that women, including myself, are frequently harassed.”

Recently, however, Japanese women have been more willing to confront their antagonists. Sexual harassment complaints to local governments rose to 7,019 last year from 968 in 1995. And attorney Yukiko Tsunoda, who pioneered sexual harassment lawsuits in Japan, won a record $62,500 in a recent case involving a graduate student and her professor.

‘Human Rights Not American Ideas’

Some say all the new regulations and the more guarded social environment leave Japan at risk of being overrun by brash, legalistic, American-style values at odds with its traditions.

“If you take every action out of context and define it as harassment, it’s radical,” said Mariko Fujiwara, research director at Hakuhodo Life Institute, an advertising agency. “I think the Americans are the grand champions of this.”

Others, like Women’s Solidarity Foundation Vice President Mariko Mitsui, a former Tokyo assemblywoman, argue that nationality has nothing to do with it. “Human rights and sexual rights are not American ideas,” she said. “They’re a concern of human beings.”

In the end, however, even those most in favor of change here acknowledge that Japan rarely moves quickly on social issues. By these standards, they say, the new laws are a step in the right direction.

Added Mitsui: “If you’re not an optimist, you can’t be a Japanese feminist.”

Etsuko Kawase in The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.

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Japan’s Opaque Ceiling

Japan has far fewer women in administrative and managerial jobs than do most major industrial nations. Percentage of such jobs held by women in 1997:

United States: 44.3%

Britain: 33.0%

Germany: 27.1%

Australia: 24.0%

Japan: 9.3%

Source: International Labor Organization