Many thanks for this.

As for the 68% that PM Abe cited in his WSJ essay
(http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230
3759604579091680931293404)--not the 73% in the same piece that the JT used to lead us all on a wild goose chase--it covers the 25-54 age group that the OECD used for an international comparison. Click through from here (http://www.gender.go.jp/about_danjo/whitepaper/h25/zen
tai/html/honpen/b1_s02_01.html) to find the relevant cvs files (most conveniently http://www.gender.go.jp/about_danjo/whitepaper/h25/zent
ai/html/zuhyo/zuhyo01-02-02.html).The 15-64 age group is usually used in Japan, for which the correspondent figure in February 2014 was 64.9% according to my arithmetic.

The 15-64 cohort is widely used. It is unrealistic for contemporary advanced economies. 25-54 or 25-64 is much more realistic.

The 73% (likewise the rest of the numbers in the table) in Kathy Matsui's article refers to the ratio of female/male labor force participation, which theoretically could be higher than 100%.

I had guessed that this was the case, but I did not think even Kathy Matsui could be dumb enough to think that this was a good indicator. Since it is (female labor force rate) / (male labor force rate), you could "Improve" the stats for women by discouraging guys from working, clearly a dumb policy in general and dumber still in the context of a shrinking work force.

There are countries in the World Economic Forum stats with ratios over 100%. It looks like one way to achieve this is to have a large fraction of the males dead from HIV.

EHK