Japanese Politician Receives Death Threats For Wanting Menstrual Pads In Public Toilets

The lawmaker made her case on 'X', formerly Twitter, where she wrote: "I was caught off guard by my period and was in trouble as there were no sanitary napkins in the restroom... I hope menstrual pads can be provided like toilet paper."

Around the world, there has been a long discourse about the presence of menstrual hygiene products in washrooms, be it in offices or in other public spaces. It just makes things simpler for menstruating people by giving them accessibility to sanitary pads, tampons, etc., in moments of emergency. But in Japan, a politician's call for the availability of menstrual products in public restrooms ruffled some feathers, with the said politician receiving death threats by thousands. According to news reports, the politician received approximately 8,000 emails with aggressive content -- mainly death threats -- after she made her statement about menstrual products in public restrooms.

The 27-year-old politician named Ayaka Yoshida, who is a local assembly member in central Mie prefecture filed a formal police complaint recently, regarding the emails she had received. The death threats reportedly came after Yoshida talked about her own experience on social media recently of not being able to find sanitary napkins inside a city hall washroom.

Yoshida purportedly wrote on 'X', formerly Twitter: "I was caught off guard by my period and was in trouble as there were no sanitary napkins in the restroom at Tsu City Hall. I hope menstrual pads can be provided like toilet paper."

While her statement made sense, it did not go down well with some people, who proceeded to send her death threats over emails. According to a report in the local Kyodo News, Yoshida -- a member of the Japanese Communist Party -- received the emails last weekend, between 8 pm on Friday and 3.50 pm on Monday, at one-minute intervals. Apparently, thousands of emails were sent from the same email address.

Japanese daily The Mainichi mentioned one of the many threatening emails as saying, "I will kill assembly member Ayaka Yoshida who doesn't bring emergency napkins with her while being old enough to know better."

Another email addressed to the politician had a mocking undertone: "At her age, she should know how to carry emergency sanitary napkins."

The lawmaker later said during a press conference that she is "very scared".