The difficulties facing women seeking to break into Japan’s male-dominated political world have been underlined by two recent incidents that critics say demonstrate Abe’s ambivalence towards women’s empowerment.

Yua Funato was repeatedly beaten and starved, but the pleading messages she left her mother and step-father have shaken a nation that used to pride itself on the importance of family and community.

In Malaysia when our mothers and certainly our grandmothers were young, traveling alone as a woman was literally unheard of. In many traditional cultures, unmarried women are not allowed to roam around unchaperoned.

South Korea said Wednesday a 2015 deal intended to end a festering dispute with Japan over Tokyo’s wartime sex slavery was faulty, reopening a historical wound as the two countries try to rein in North Korea.

Tokyo has withdrawn its ambassador to Seoul after a new statue in honor of “comfort women” is placed outside its Busan consulate. There are also fears that the political turmoil in Seoul would jeopardize the 2015 deal.

Fewer and fewer Japanese find their way to the altar. 37-year old Haruna has found her own solution: She has married herself. An agency in Kyoto makes it possible.

Romantic interaction between man and machine – that’s what dating sims offer.