On: A mayor in Japan announced her maternity leave - and got the whole country talki

The news arrives not as a shock, but as a minor correction to the ledger of human error. A woman in Japan, Shoko Kawata, has announced she will cease her duties to bear a child. The country, that vast, humming machine of polite compliance, is in uproar. They call it a scandal. I call it a relief, for it proves that even in the most disciplined of cages, the animal remembers it has a body.

I sit here, in the third-floor office, watching the dust settle on the edge of the desk. The air is still. There is no heat today, only the grey, indifferent light of a Tuesday that feels like a century. I read of her pride. She says she loves her job. This is the lie we all tell ourselves to make the chains bearable. She loves the work because the work is the only thing that keeps the void at bay. But the void is patient. The void is the baby, the blood, the inevitable decay that waits in the dark room of the womb.

The other self, the one who does not care, notes that the headlines will fade. The outrage will be filed under ‘Miscellaneous’. The mayor will return, or she will not. It matters as much as the rain on the pavement outside. I look at the window. The street is empty. A tram passes, silent and ghostly. It carries no one who is pregnant. It carries no one who is alive in any way that matters to the universe.

We are all waiting for something to happen. The mayor is waiting for a child. I am waiting for the ink to dry. The child will come. The ink will dry. The self will split again, and the observer will take notes. This is the only truth. The rest is noise. The rest is the applause of fools for a woman who dared to be human in a world of clerks.

I close the paper. The room is quiet. The silence is loud.