VIDEO – NO MORE SAKE –
June 11, 2025 – Shino Usui, a pharmacist and organiser of an alcoholism recovery peer group can attest to the fact that the ratio of female drinkers in the country is rising at an alarming rate. As someone who used to hit the bottle daily, she saw that combating alcoholism as a woman in a society where men are normally seen as the heavy drinkers has become a shameful topic.
Health experts said that due to hormonal influences, women are more prone to becoming alcoholics in the short term.
Alcoholism is socially stigmatised as a male disease in Japan, and there are few recovery programmes designed to address the concerns and experiences of women.
According to the health ministry, the number of outpatients with alcohol dependency was around 108,000 in the 2021 financial year. The percentage of those who drink in amounts that increase the risk of lifestyle-related diseases was 14.1 per cent for men and 9.5 per cent for women in 2023. The ratio for the latter increased over a decade.
On a recent day at Sanko hospital, a facility for addiction treatment in the port city of Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku, a group of women attending one such programme raised paper cups of green tea in a toast.
