45 "Nadeshiko Brands" Honored This Year

Welcome to another episode on what's happening in/on/to Japan. I'm your navigator, Nathan Shiga. This episode has to do with a flower and a group of 45 corporates honored by virtue of "living up to its charms".

Some of you friends of Japan may recall our women's soccer team is named "Nadeshiko Japan". Nadeshiko is a popular flower in Japan, a plant of the family Caryophyllaceae, and a term to praise unadorned, clean beauty of a Japanese woman. Or others may remember a 1996 anime "Martian Successor Nadesico (Nadeshiko)".

Right. So, let it be that Nadeshiko is loosely a synonym for "woman"

Now, today March 16, a group of 45 companies were handpicked and awarded "Nadeshiko Brand" Prize by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and Tokyo Stock Exchange. The prize is awarded annually to companies having actively promoted female workers. Candidates are selected from among companies with high percentages of female workers in managerial positions or companies with advanced systems for caring for child-rearing working mothers.

The prize-awarding ceremony was held in Tokyo on March 16 and Mika Morimoto, scriptwriter for NHK's morning TV drama "Morning Is Here", handed certificates to the 45 feminist corporates - most ever since 2012 when the project started.

A survey done by the ministry shows the percentage of female staff about section chief has risen from 8.1% in 2011 to 9.8% last year and that above corporate executive officer and director from 1.4% to 2.8% over the same span of time. Roughly half, however, have no female directors.

Director of Econo-Social Planning Hideaki Fujisawa of the METI comments:

"Women's advance links to corporates' competitiveness. Challenges are most welcome by way of coordinating working style and introducing changes in personnel system."