Why Icelandic Dads Take Parental Leave and Japanese Dads Don’t

Earlier this month, the 38-year-old Japanese environment minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, did something that would not make national, or even local, news in many industrialized countries: A couple of days before the birth of his and his wife’s first child, he said he planned to take time off from work to care for the baby. The hype around Koizumi’s minimal leave reflects the disconnect between his country’s official parental-leave allowances and how things work in practice: Japan offers one of the most generous paternity-leave packages in the world (a full year), yet the rate at which eligible fathers working in the private sector take leave is quite low (about 6 percent). For a host of reasons, Japan’s government would like that rate to be much higher.