TOKYO – A Japanese travel agency has cancelled a service offering in-flight lectures from “beautiful” female university students after a barrage of online criticism accusing the firm of sexism.

HIS travel firm dropped the in-flight package Wednesday, its intended launch day, with a message saying sorry after its website was overrun with a deluge of complaints from angry netizens.

“The company offers a sincere apology that the campaign caused unpleasant feelings to many people,” said a statement titled “Apology” on its website.

Japan is no stranger to allegations of sexism in the workplace. Efforts to boost female workforce participation have floundered, with a lack of childcare facilities, poor career support and deeply entrenched sexism blamed for keeping women at home.

HIS’ proposal to titillate – and educate – male clients is not the first time a Japanese company has offered up women for innocent company.

Men can pay to snuggle with a beautiful woman at “cuddle cafes”, shell out for an innocent walk in the park or spend an evening at “snack bars” where female companions are hired to chat, sing or light her date’s cigarette.

HIS’ service offered travellers a chance to sit next to a “beautiful girl” from Tokyo University, Japan’s equivalent of Harvard or Oxford, and receive a “fun lecture” about their area of study.

According to the HIS website no premium had to be paid for the chance to sit next to a companion, instead the campaign appeared to be aimed at driving reservation traffic to the agency.

The campaign’s site posted photos of young women advertising what they could do for customers.

An ad for one of the women, apparently an urban engineering student, promised to entertain a traveller with a lecture on the development history of the flight’s destination.

HIS’ Twitter account was bombarded with complaints the campaign was “sexist”, accusing the company of treating the women like “hostesses”, a reference to females who work in bars.

“The campaign was not necessarily ‘unpleasant’ but simply sexist,” read one tweet.

“The apology is nothing but unpleasant,” it added.

The students who appeared in the ads belong to a university club intended to change the stereotypical image of its female scholars as “nerds always studying and not having fun”, the group’s website said.

Indonesia has lodged a “strong protest” with Singapore for demanding that Indonesia-based companies suspected to be linked to the region-wide haze explain measures they have taken in tackling fires on their land, a Foreign Ministry spokesman disclosed on Thursday (May 12).

“In reference to some cases where Indonesian businessmen were interrogated… we have expressed our strong protest through our ambassador there,” spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir told reporters.

“We stress that the law by Singapore essentially should not harm trade and good co-operation between the two countries,” he added.

Errant pulp and paper companies have been blamed for causing forest and peatland fires in Indonesia that led to thick, choking haze throughout the region in September and October last year.

Since then, the National Environment Agency (NEA) has given notices to six of these Indonesia-based companies, asking them to outline the steps that they are taking to put out and prevent fires on their land.

Indonesia president Joko Widodo cuts short US trip due to haze

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AFP, Reuters

In the latest move, the NEA said on Wednesday that it has obtained a court warrant against the director of an Indonesian company who failed to turn up for an interview with the authorities in Singapore despite being served a legal notice to do so when he was in the country.

The director, who has since left Singapore, may be detained if he tries to enter the country again, “for the purpose of investigations”, an NEA spokesman said, without naming him or his company.

The NEA said the move was in accordance with Singapore’s Transboundary Haze Pollution Act, passed in Parliament in 2014, which allows the authorities to punish those causing or condoning fires that result in unhealthy levels of haze in Singapore.

Mr Arrmanatha reiterated that the Indonesian government is not in favour of the law.

“From the beginning, our government has conveyed our objection to the law in Singapore,” he said.

“We will continue to consult, and are still consulting, the Singapore Government so that the application of the law will not be detrimental to Indonesian companies as well as trade co-operation between the two countries in general,” he said.

Schools in Singapore shut as regional haze reaches unhealthy levels

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AFP, Reuters, The Straits Times

This article was first published on May 12, 2016.
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