Japanese golf clubs bar women

Press, 1 June 1985, Page 14

Japanese golf clubs bar women

NZPA-Reuter Tokyo A woman politician has denounced Japan’s exclusive golf clubs as elitist after she was barred from playing in a tournament because of her sex. Mayumi Moriyama, aged 57, the Parliamentary ViceMinister for Foreign Affairs, and a long-time campaigner against male domination in Japan, protested in an open letter

addressed to “the so-called prestigious golf clubs of Japan.’* She said the Koganei Country Club on the outskirts of Tokyo refused to let her play in a competition recently between foreign diplomats and leading Foreign Ministry officials. A club official said the no-women rale would hold good even for Britain’s

Queen Elizabeth, or Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. “There is no rational reason for this,” Mayumi Moriyama wrote. “Is it because women are poor golfers? There are women golfers better than average male golfers. “Is it because women are slow? I move faster than male companions.” The club had in the past on week-ends

“even a convicted person just because he is a man.” The club’s membership includes many eminent political figures, among them former Premier, Kakuei Tanaka, who was convicted in 1983 of accepting a ?4.4M bribe while in office. It also has four princes in its membership. “But in the past we have turned away even Japanese princesses or week-ends,” the club sai«S