The Society for Japanese Studies

Gender Inequality in Contemporary Japan

Author(s): Robert J. Smith
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Winter, 1987), pp. 1-25
Published by: The Society for Japanese Studies
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ROBERT J. SMITH
Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary Japan
It has been
suggested recently
that the time has come for those who have
focused too
narrowly
on the
position
of women in
Japanese society
to re-
cast the terms of their
inquiry
as the
study
of
gender.
Such a shift will
broaden and enrich our
understanding
of
Japanese society
and
culture,
it is
claimed,
because
"gender
is a relational
concept
and
considering gender
. . .
requires
that all domains be examined for the relational structures
they
embody."
'
It is indeed the case that the focus on "women's roles" in
Japan
has led to an
emphasis
on the domestic and
familial,
on
exceptional
fe-
male-dominated domains such as those of the
geisha
and bar
hostess,
and
on the few women who
compete successfully
in male-dominated domains.
While I would never dismiss that literature as
unimportant,
I
agree
that it is
time to move on to broaden areas of
investigation
to include the educa-
tional
system,
labor
market,
and law. In these as in all other domains of the
culture,
men and women
may
or
may
not be
differentially
defined and dealt
with in
very
different
ways.
Therefore,
to describe the situation
only
of one
sex is to
imply something
about the other and therein lies a
problem,
for the
implication may
be wide of the mark.
Reports
on women in the
Japanese
labor
force,
for
example,
often in-
clude the
finding
that few even asked about
starting wages
or
salary
before
accepting
the
job.
That
depressing figure
is offered as evidence that women
Earlier versions of this
paper
were
presented
at Duke
University,
the
University
of Illi-
nois,
Ohio State
University,
the
University
of
Iowa,
McGill
University,
and the
University
of
Washington.
I am indebted to all those whose
searching questions
forced me to rethink certain
issues and to the
anonymous
reader of the
manuscript
I
originally
submitted to the Journal
of
Japanese
Studies.
1. Theodore C.
Bestor,
"Gendered Domains: A
Commentary
on Research in
Japanese
Studies,"
Journal
of Japanese
Studies, Vol.
11,
No. 1
(1985), p.
284. This is a
report
of a
workshop sponsored by
the Joint Committee on
Japanese
Studies of the American Council of
Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council.
Journal of
Japanese
Studies,
13:1
? 1987
Society
for
Japanese
Studies
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Journal
of Japanese
Studies
enter the labor market at so
great
a
disadvantage
and with such
poor pros-
pects
that it is not even worth their while to ask about
pay
because
they
will
in
any
case have to be content with whatever
they
receive. I know of no
study,
however,
that asks male workers if
they inquired
about
starting pay.
I have asked several
people
that
question myself
and checked with re-
searchers who have some
knowledge
of the situation. Without
exception
their
guess
is that men are
only marginally
more
likely
than women to
know what their
starting wage
or
salary
will be.2 In this domain and with
respect
to this
particular
issue, then,
gender
is irrelevant. The relevant cate-
gory
is that of workers
entering
the labor force
where,
for men and women
alike,
alternatives are few.
In the domain of
language
an
analogous
situation exists. As Jorden3 has
pointed
out,
in
linguistic
studies of the
Japanese language
there is a lot of
material on what is called feminine
speech,
but
rarely
do we find a
separate
treatment of
anything
called masculine
language.
"The
implication
is that
masculine
Japanese
is . . .
part
of the
language proper
and that feminine
Japanese
is a deviant
variety
which
departs
from the norm."4 Even more
relevant to the discussion at hand is her
description
of what is
usually
called feminine
language:
Feminine
language
can be described in terms of features that occur almost
exclusively
in the
language
of females and features that
are,
qualitatively
or
quantatively,
more
typical
of the
language
of females in a
given
context.
But more
frequently,
feminine
language
is characterized
by
certain features
which occur in a
particular
context or with a marked
frequency.
The most
striking example
is the feature of
politeness.
Given the socialization
pro-
cess which trains
Japanese
women to be
polite
and subservient to
men,
it
follows that the honorific and formal varieties of
Japanese language
are
used more
frequently by
women. This does not mean that the forms them-
selves are
feminine,
but rather that their
frequent
use and their occurrence
in certain social situations are
typical
of female
usage. Thus,
a
polite
form
that would be used
by
a man
only
when
talking
to a
person
of ex-
2. For a discussion of this and
many
related issues see Glenda S.
Roberts,
"Non-Trivial
Pursuits:
Japanese
Blue-Collar Women in the Lifetime
Employment System" (Ph.D. diss.,
Cornell
University, 1986), especially Chapter
4. Bandfo observes that "Even
though young
employees
are
given poor
status and low
pay,
if
they persist
with the
organization, they
will
gradually
be
promoted
and their
salary
increased. The
company
and the
employees
calculate
lifetime
earnings,
not initial
salary."
See Bando Mariko
Sugahara,
"When Women
Change
Jobs," Japan Quarterly,
Vol.
33,
No. 2
(1986), p.
177. As Roberts
conclusively
demon-
strates, however, pdto
make the transition to the status of
regular employee
so
rarely
that
they
seldom advance
significantly
on the
wage
scale however
long
their service to the
company.
3. See Eleanor
Jorden,
"Feminine
Language"
and "Masculine
Language,"
Kodansha
Encyclopedia of Japan (1983),
Vol.
2,
pp.
250-52 and Vol.
5,
pp.
124-25, respectively.
4.
Jorden,
"Masculine
Language," p.
124.
2
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Smith: Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary Japan
tremely high position might
be used
by
a woman in
talking
to a casual
acquaintance.5
So we
may agree
that
gender
is a relational
concept.
And
yet, many
years ago
the British social
anthropologist
Evans-Pritchard wrote: "Ulti-
mately
the
[issue
of
the]
status of women
goes beyond
the
scope
of social
analysis.
It is
fundamentally
a moral
question."6
I endorse that
judgment
wholeheartedly, yet surely
social
analysis
still has its
place.
If it serves no
other function it does at the
very
least lend
credibility
and
plausibility
to
whatever moral
position
one
may
in the end
adopt.
What follows is a dis-
cussion of the
position
of women in
Japanese society broadly
defined,
touching
on several
domains,
and
drawing gender-based
contrasts and
similarities where these are warranted.
Japanese society
is not at all unusual in the
explicitness
of its
expecta-
tion that men behave like
men,
women like women. From
early
childhood
the words otokorashii
(manly; masculine)
and onnarashii
(womanly;
femi-
nine)
are
applied
to
demeanor, activities, interests,
and
preferences.
The
unstated but
quite
clear
implication
is that what is deemed
appropriate
to
one sex is
by
definition
inappropriate
to the other. In this and
myriad
other
ways
the
complementarity
of male and female
competence
is
presented
as
the ideal. As we shall
see,
neither sex is viewed as
totally helpless
or in-
competent;
both men and women are accorded
equal respect
for the effec-
tive,
accurate
performance
of their
respective gender-specific
roles.
Yet,
viewed from the
standpoint
of
society's requirements
of its
members,
women are conceived to serve an
auxiliary
function,
albeit a
crucially
im-
portant
one,
for it has been defined as their
responsibility
to offer the kind
of
private,
domestic
support
that enables men to make their
way
in the
pub-
lic world of affairs. Neither can
manage
alone;
marriage, therefore,
is a
partnership, matching
two
people
of
very
different abilities
regarded
as
necessary
to the creation and maintenance of the
family
unit.7
In terms of
status, however,
it is
overwhelmingly
the case that men out-
rank women. This cannot be
universally
true,
of
course,
for in
Japan
there
are female
company presidents
and section
chiefs,
a few
princesses,
and
some
powerful
women in the art world and demi-monde.
Nonetheless,
5.
Jorden,
"Feminine
Language," p.
251.
6. E. E.
Evans-Pritchard,
"The Position of Women in Primitive Societies and in Our
Own
(1955),"
in
Evans-Pritchard,
The Position
of
Women in Primitive Societies and Other
Essays
in Social
Anthropology (New
York: Free
Press, 1965), p.
56.
7. See Walter D.
Edwards,
"Ritual in the Commercial World:
Japanese Society Through
Its
Weddings" (Ph.D. diss.,
Cornell
University, 1984), especially pp.
179-80 and
185-89,
for a discussion of
marriage
defined as a
partnership
of two
persons
of
unequal
status and
"
complementary incompetence."
3
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Journal
of Japanese
Studies
given
a
hypothetical
encounter between a man and
woman,
any Japanese
can
predict
with reasonable
certainty
that the
speech
forms
used,
seating
arrangement,
and
style
of interaction all will demonstrate the
superiority
of the male and subordinate status of the female. Both men and women
share that
expectation.
So
pervasive
are these markers of
gender inequality
that
they provide
the
ground upon
which the behavior and attitudes of men
and women toward one another
ultimately
are based. For the
exceptional
woman is
just
that-a
person
who
by
virtue of
position, power,
or accom-
plishments
cannot be dealt with
routinely.
One solution to the
ambiguity
of
relative status thus
posed
is to treat her as
sociologically
male.
Given the irreducible
inequality
of the
sexes,
it is
important
nonethe-
less to see that as members of
Japanese society they necessarily
share a
great
deal. One of the features of that
society
both must deal with is that
the individual is offered few
options
in life.
Writing
of the
hiring
of male
university graduates by Japan's large companies,
for
example,
Jolivet
points
out that the candidates interviewed fall in the narrow
age-range
of 22 to 25.
The
process,
which
begins
in
July,
is
completed
when an informal mutual
commitment is made on the
following
November first. "The
peculiar-
ity,
then,
of the
Japanese system
of
hiring
was the limitation in
period
and
age group;
there was no chance of
employment
outside this
framework,
and students' choices were
guided by
what was
possible,
not what was
dreamed of. "8 It is
conceivable,
of
course,
that a
Japanese
student of mine
was
right
when she observed some
years ago
that after
living
in the United
States for a while she was convinced that
Japanese
have more
options
than
they
think and Americans fewer. However that
may
be the fact remains that
the sense that
options
are limited reinforces the notion that men and
women alike should
prepare
themselves to make the best of what life has to
offer. Lebra's book on
Japanese
women bears the
apt
subtitle "Constraint
and Fulfillment."9 It has
always
seemed to me
that,
although
men's lives are
somewhat less
constrained,
they
too are
required
to seek fulfillment within
the narrow confines of a limited
range
of
possibilities.
Many
discussions of the
place
of women in
Japanese society begin
with
an assessment of how far
they
have come. The
assumption,
whether
explic-
itly
stated or
merely implied,
is that however far that
may
be,
it has been a
slow
journey.
Those who wish to show that
Japanese
women
today occupy
8. See the
report
of a talk
presented
at a
meeting
of the Asiatic
Society
of
Japan by
Muriel
Jolivet,
"The
Impact
of the
University
on the
Hiring
Process and the Promotion
Sys-
tem within
Japanese Companies,"
Bulletin
of
the Asiatic
Society of Japan,
No. 4
(1986), p.
3.
More detailed information can be found in Muriel
Jolivet,
L'universite au service de I'econo-
miejaponaise (Paris: Economica, 1985).
9. Takie
Sugiyama
Lebra, Japanese
Women: Constraint and
Fulfillment (Honolulu:
Uni-
versity
of Hawaii
Press, 1984).
4
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Smith: Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary Japan
a far more
advantageous position
in their
society
than was the case in the
past
will,
of
course,
stress the
great changes
that have taken
place
since the
end of World War II. Those who lament the
disadvantaged position they
are
seen to
occupy
still
ordinarily employ
one of two
strategies.
The first of
these is to
argue
that women in
prewar Japan
were
severely oppressed-
and remain so. The second
strategy
is to maintain that the
oppression
of
women in
prewar
times was not so
great
as has been
alleged,
but that
they
have nonetheless made little
headway
in the
past forty years.
There
have,
of
course,
been
many far-reaching changes
since
Japan's
catastrophic
defeat in 1945. The
following
incident I think
points up
the
character of some of the more fundamental ones as well as the reaction of
younger Japanese
women to them. In the late 1950s I was on a tour-bus on
the island of
Kyushu.
It was still a time when bus drivers were male and the
attendants-called
bus-girls-were young
women. It was the kind of
job
much
sought
after
by
the
daughters
of farm households between
graduation
from middle school and
marriage,
for it was
light
work and considered re-
spectable enough
for a
young lady intending
to
marry
soon. As our bus
passed places
of
note,
this
teenager
informed us of their local or historical
importance,
filled the intervals with stories and
songs,
and otherwise enter-
tained the
passengers. Demurely
dressed in the uniform and
cap
of the
company,
she
employed
an
extremely polite
level of
speech.
Just as
my
attention was
beginning
to
flag,
the bus took a turn onto the
coastal
highway
and the
girl
directed our attention to a small island
lying
a
few hundred
yards
off shore. "This is called Amadake
Island,"
she in-
toned,
"on which there is a shrine to the
deity
of the local fishermen. Until
about ten
years ago
women were not allowed to set foot on it because of its
sacred character and their
inherently polluting
nature. Now that the restric-
tion has been lifted women
go
there to
worship
and
gather
mussels." Fair
enough,
I
thought,
and almost missed her
concluding comment,
delivered
without
any
noticeable
change
of tone:
"Nothing
untoward seems to have
occurred as a
consequence
of the
lifting
of the ban."
There were hundreds if not thousands of such
places
in
prewar Japan,
where it was felt the mere
presence
of a woman
might bring
down the
wrath of the
gods. By
the time I took
my
bus-tour the
gods
themselves had
been
brought
down and the whole structure of
indigenous
belief shaken to
its foundations. Women had set foot on Amadake Island after centuries of
being
barred from
it,
yet,
she was
saying,
there had been no tidal
waves,
the fish had not all
died,
the
village
fleet had not been lost at sea. It had
turned out-almost
certainly-that
the
presence
or absence of women in
such a
place
had
nothing
whatsoever to do with the cosmic order.
If that is what she
thought,
I submit that in all likelihood her mother
and
grandmother
had observed the ban on women in full faith that the men
5
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Journal
of Japanese
Studies
were
right
to
monopolize
the rites and
grounds
of the
deity.
I think it
equally likely
that both women had since
gone
there to
worship
and
gather
mussels for their
family's
table. Some traditions fade
very quickly
in
Japan.
As we shall
see,
others do not.
Let us consider the
legal position
of women in
Japan
in the
period
from
1870 to
1945-roughly
from the restoration of
imperial
rule
following
the
overthrow of the
Tokugawa shogunate
to the surrender of
Japan
at the end
of World War II. It
clearly
derived from the low estate to which women of
the warrior
class,
which had ruled the
country
in the
preceding period,
had
fallen. In the Confucian view it was both natural and virtuous that a woman
throughout
the course of her life
obey
three men in turn: her father in her
youth,
her husband in her
maturity,
and her
son,
as head of the
household,
in her old
age.
Women were
incompetent,
barred from
carrying
out
legal
acts without the
permission
of their husbands. A husband had the
right
to
administer, use,
and retain the
profits accruing
from
any property brought
to the
marriage by
the wife.
The
household,
as embodied in the Civil Code of
1898,
was a
legal
entity
headed
by
a
male,
save for interim
periods
when a woman
might
hold the
position
until such time as an
appropriate
male head could be
found. The head of the household exercised extensive
authority
over the
lives of its
members,
for it was he who decided on the
family's
domicile,
gave
permission
for its children to
marry,
and sent back sons' wives who
failed to meet the
requirements
of his house. The chief cause of the rou-
tinely early
divorces of the
period,
of
course,
was that the woman had
failed to bear a child who could
carry
on the
family
line into the next
gen-
eration of succession to the
headship. Contrary
to
popular impression,
a
woman also could secure a divorce under terms of the
code,
but
only
with
great difficulty.
The crime of
adultery
was
grounds
for
divorce,
for ex-
ample,
but for the husband it was
required only
that he discover the act of
adultery.
For the wife to obtain a divorce on these
grounds,
the husband
had to have been convicted of the crime in a court of law.'0 There are
innumerable
examples
of such
gender disparity
in the
legal position
of
individuals.
Small wonder then that for
many years prior
to the surrender in 1945
liberal elements in
Japan
had been
attempting
to revise the civil code. Re-
cently
I came across a
poignant
comment on the
meaning
of the household
system
for women of the time. Nakano
Takashi,
one of
Japan's leading
soci-
ologists,
has
published
a book that is an annotation of one
year's
entries in
10. See J. E. de
Becker,
Annotated Civil Code
of Japan,
Volume III
(Yokohama: Kelly
and
Walsh, 1910), pp.
73-75.
6
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Smith: Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary Japan
a
diary kept by
his mother. The
year
is 1910.11 In the introduction he writes
of the
many
occasions,
before her death at the
age
of
88,
on which
they
had
discussed the contents of the
diary.
She had at first been
uneasy
about his
plans
to
publish
it,
but he
reports
that one
day
she
said,
"Go ahead. Per-
haps
those who read it will understand how
severely
women were
op-
pressed by
the old household
system."
Although
no law differentiated men from women with
respect
to educa-
tional
opportunity,
the de facto differences between them were
very great.
In
place by 1900,
the modern school
system
offered
roughly
the same cur-
riculum to
boys
and
girls through
the four
(later six) years
of
compulsory
education. After
reaching
that
level, however,
their
paths diverged
dramati-
cally.
Most
girls
did not
go on,
while
boys
entered either a
five-year
middle
school or vocational school. Those
girls
who did continue
might
enter a
four- or
five-year higher
school with a curriculum
heavily weighted
toward
what Americans used to call home economics. Above these levels were
several
others,
but few women attended them and almost none entered a
national
university.
Behind this obvious discrimination
lay
the
quite
ex-
plicit
dictum that
"learning
is
unnecessary
for
women,"
12 and the clear rec-
ognition
on the
part
of
parents
that an over-educated
daughter
would fare
poorly
in the
marriage
market of the times. In the
Meiji period
the
proper
role for the adult woman came to be defined as the dual one of
good
wife
and wise mother-a
slogan
that does
not,
as is often
assumed,
represent
the survival of a
sturdy
Confucian
principle,
but rather is the
Japanese
ver-
sion of the
nineteenth-century
Western cult of female
domesticity-a
di-
rect
borrowing
of the 1880s and 1890s.13 A clear
exposition
of the
ideologi-
cal
position
is
given by
Baron Kikuchi
Dairoku,
at one time Minister of
Education and President of both
Tokyo
and
Kyoto
Universities:
11. Nakano
Takashi, Meiji yonjusannen Kyoto:
aru shoka no wakazuma no nikki
(Tokyo:
Shin'yosha, 1981).
12. Kikuchi
Kan,
novelist and founder of the renowned
literary periodical Bungei
shunju, wrote,
"Cases are
extremely
rare in which
learning
alone is demanded of a woman."
Acknowledging
that education is essential for a woman who wishes to become an
attorney,
teacher,
or member of an office
staff,
he
suggests
that
"good sense, tact, care,
gentleness,
and
generosity
are . . . much more useful in a housewife than
learning." Concluding
that "even
the
girls'
school
today
stresses
learning
too
much,"
he
urges
women's educational institutions
to teach them "how to create a
happy
home life." See Kan
Kikuchi,
"Women and
Marriage,"
Contemporary Japan,
Vol.
9,
No. 1
(1940), pp.
55-60.
13. See Sharon L.
Sievers,
"Feminist Criticism in
Japanese
Politics in the 1880s: The
Experience
of Kishida
Toshiko," Signs,
Vol.
6,
No. 4
(1981), pp.
602-16,
and Robert J.
Smith,
"Making Village
Women into 'Good Wives and Wise
Mothers,"'"
Journal
of Family
History,
Vol.
8,
No. 1
(1983), pp.
70-84.
7
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Journal
of Japanese
Studies
Our female
education, then,
is based on the
assumption
that women
marry,
and that its
object
is to fit
girls
to become
"good
wives and wise mothers."
The
question naturally
arises what constitutes a
good
wife and wise
mother,
and the answer
requires
a
knowledge
of the
position
of the wife
and mother in the household and the
standing
of women in
society
and her
status in the State. . ..
[The]
man
goes
outside to work to earn his
living,
to fulfill his duties to the
State;
it is the wife's
part
to
help
him,
for the
common interests of the
house,
and as her share of
duty
to the
State,
by
sympathy
and
encouragement, by relieving
him of anxieties at
home,
man-
aging
household
affairs,
looking
after the household
economy, and,
above
all,
tending
the old
people
and
bringing up
the children in a fit and
proper
manner.
14
Lest the reader
imagine
this statement
represents
a
hopelessly
outdated
sentiment,
I offer in evidence for
my
claim that it is
very
much alive
today
a
passage
from a
speech given by
the
president
of an
apparel company
to its
assembled
employees,
most of whom were
women,
in 1985:
Thinking
of
Japan's past,
when we ask who was
greater,
men or
women,
it
is true that it was the men who were in the
foreground, engaged
in activi-
ties such as
politics, economics,
and education. But in the
background
there were
always
the women
who,
with firm
hand,
maintained the house-
hold and
brought up
the
children,
encouraging
their husbands and
sharing
their
hardships.
. . . The
post-war recovery,
which
required
tremendous
strength,
is also due to such women.
However,
when I came to this realization I
began shaking
with fear. Nowa-
days,
women have
totally changed.
The women who had a wonderful tradi-
tion and
extraordinary strength
have now
begun
to fall.
[long pause] They
no
longer
maintain the household.
They
dislike
raising
children. That is
what it has come to. And
women,
just
like
men-perhaps
more so-
have become lost in amusements.
Today,
who is
going
to maintain the
household?
Azumi is a
company
founded with the
grand purpose
of
making
women
beautiful,
but
beauty
is not
only
a matter of form. A
splendid
heart and
beautiful
spirit
are even more
important.
I want to make this
anniversary
an
occasion to instill this kind of
thinking
firmly
into the women of Azumi.
[In
the
past],
as
fitting complements
to such
splendid
women,
there were
great
men.
However,
when the women
changed
the men
began
to fall as
well. Men no
longer
have
strength.
There are few
manly
men
nowadays
and
I feel that is the result of this kind of
[modern]
woman.
"
14. Dairoku
Kikuchi, Japanese
Education
(London:
John
Murray, 1909), p.
266.
15.
Roberts,
"Non-Trivial
Pursuits," pp.
199-200.
8
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Smith: Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary Japan
His
employees
received this
message
with mixed
emotion,
for most of
them work because
they
have
to,
find it difficult to
manage
both domestic
and
job requirements, worry
about the
children,
and feel
they
work hard
for their
wages.
These women blue-collar workers found a certain
irony
in
being
told
by
their
employer
that woman's
proper place
was in the
home,
looking
after her husband and children.
Despite
the
prevalence
of such sentiments in the late nineteenth and
first half of the twentieth
centuries,
Japanese industry
found an essential
place
for women who had
completed
their education but were not
yet
mar-
ried. The
country's growth
as an industrial
power simply
would not have
proceeded
as
rapidly
as it did without the
large
labor force of
young,
un-
married women who worked in the textile factories and other
light
indus-
try.
As the
population
was still
largely rural,
the
majority
of these
young
women came from farm
families,
as did the
young
men who made
up
the
conscript military
forces. The
factory girls
worked in
generally poor
con-
ditions for
very
low
wages
that often went
directly
to their households or
into the
pockets
of the labor recruiters.
They provided
an inexhaustible
stream of
readily
controlled,
generally compliant operatives
whose em-
ployment
histories were
short,
for women were
expected
to leave to
marry
in their
early
twenties.
Working
conditions did
improve
over the
period
in
question
and there can be no doubt that
many
farm
girls
found life in the
factory
far less
rigorous
than that in the
fields,
but one central fact re-
mains.
Although large
numbers of women in
prewar Japan
held
jobs
at one
time or another
during
their
lives,
with the rarest of
exceptions
none ever
had a career.
In
sum,
prewar Japan
was a
highly
androcentric
society
in which
women lived out their lives at a
disadvantage
that was not
merely legally
defined.
Marriage
meant
being separated
from their natal families and
going
into another with the chief
requirement
that
they
bear children. Work
meant short-term
employment
in dead-end
jobs. Security,
which
lay
in
conforming
to the ideal of
good
wife and wise
mother,
was to be found
only
in the domestic realm. Divorce rates were
very high,
and those who
failed to achieve domestic
security
were
likely
to meet a
very grim
fate
indeed.
Underlying
all this is the
prevailing
sentiment held
by
those who
constructed and
operated
the
political,
economic,
and social
systems.
In
their view the
good
and virtuous woman-mother and
wife,
be it remem-
bered-was nonetheless a limited
being.
Women were
thought
to be less
intelligent
than
men,
more emotional and so less
rational,
less
reliable,
vindictive,
potentially dangerous
if not
rigorously disciplined,
and worst
of
all,
silly.
It is a
major irony
of that
system
that the
rearing
of the men
who made it was
largely
entrusted to women and that the harsh
discipline
9
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Journal
of Japanese
Studies
thought
so
necessary
in the
training
of a
young
wife was administered al-
most
exclusively by
her mother-in-law.
Ella Wiswell and I
recently
have offered a
picture
of rural women in
Japan
in the 1930s that seems to stand in
sharp
contrast to the one I have
just presented.16
The women of the
farming village
of
Suye
in
Kyushu
were
far less docile and
acquiescent
than the
picture given
above would
appear
to
suggest. They
left or divorced their husbands and remarried with
great
fre-
quency,
sometimes
taking
their children with them
despite
the
general
view
that
they belonged
to their father's household.
Nevertheless,
a close
reading
of the book will
show,
I
submit,
that male dominance was the rule and that
even those
strong-minded
women lived out their sometimes colorful lives
in the interstices of the
system. Stronger by
far than the
stereotype
of the
good
and virtuous
(read, obedient)
woman of
prewar Japan,
it is neverthe-
less the case that no one would ever mistake the women of
Suye
for
village
matriarchs or even
suggest
that there was
anything
like
gender equality
there.
After
1945, then,
did it all
change?
Much of it
did,
as a matter of
fact,
and much that
happened
was the direct result of
pressure
on the
Japanese
government by
the American
occupation
forces. We need not under-
estimate the
courage
and dedication of those
Japanese
women who had
striven so
valiantly
before the war to
improve
their condition in
society
in
order to see that had it not been for
Japan's
defeat and
surrender,
women
would never have come as far as
they
have done in the last
forty years.
Article 14 of the 1947 Constitution reads: "All the
people
are
equal
under the law and there shall be no discrimination in
political,
economic,
or social relations because of
race, creed, sex,
social
status,
or
family
ori-
gin."
The
postwar
constitution of
Japan,
it would
seem,
requires
no
Equal
Rights
Amendment. Article 24 reads:
"Marriage
shall be based
only
on the
mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained
through
mutual
cooperation
with the
equal rights
of the husband and wife as a basis. With
regard
to choice of
spouse, property rights,
inheritance,
choice of domi-
cile, divorce,
and other matters
pertaining
to the
family,
laws shall be en-
acted from the
standpoint
of individual
dignity
and the essential
equality
of
the sexes." This
single
article
required
extensive revision of the civil
code,
for the
legal
basis of the old household
system
had been
swept away.
Surely greater
assurances of
equality
before the law could
hardly
be
asked for. It is a measure of the extent to which behavioral and attitudinal
changes lag
behind statute that one can
say
without
any
fear of
responsible
contradiction that women's
position
in
Japanese society today
is still
very
16. Robert J. Smith and Ella
Lury Wiswell,
The Women
of Suye
Mura
(Chicago:
Univer-
sity
of
Chicago Press, 1982).
10
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Smith: Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary Japan
far from the
equality long guaranteed
them.
Indeed,
so
clearly
is this the
case that in
1985,
after extended and acrimonious
debate,
an
equal employ-
ment
opportunity
bill
finally passed
the Diet. The intent of its authors had
been to
guarantee
equal
employment opportunities
to men and
women,
but
the bill's
many
critics
charged
that in its final form the law is far more
favorable to the interests of
employers
than those of
employees.
There can
be no doubt that it fails to
provide
effective sanctions
against
those who
violate its
provisions,
but it is too
early
to assess the
impact
of the
Parity
in
Employment
Law
(Danjo Koyo
Kinto
Ho),
which went into effect on
April
1,
1986.
It was further the concern of the Americans to
improve
educational
op-
portunities
for
women,
an aim subsumed under the
general program
of re-
form
designed
to overhaul the
Japanese
educational
system
from
top
to bot-
tom. Article 3 of the Fundamental Law of Education reads: "All
people
shall be
given
the
opportunity
to receive an
equal
education
corresponding
to their
ability.
There shall be no discrimination in education because of
race, creed, sex,
social
status,
economic
position,
or
family origin."
In
1984 a
slightly higher proportion
of
girls
than
boys
advanced from middle
school to
high
school
(the figure
for
girls
was 95
per
cent and for
boys
92.8
per cent).
In that same
year
32.7
per
cent of female and 38.3
per
cent of
male
high
school
graduates
went on to attend
college
or
university.17
This
apparent parity
masks a
significant
difference in the kind and
quality
of education available to the two
groups,
however. For in 1980 men
accounted for 82
per
cent of all
four-year college
students;
women ac-
counted for 90
per
cent of all
junior-college
students. Put another
way,
two
of
every
three female
high
school
graduates continuing
their education
went on to
junior college,
while nine of
every
ten males
going
on headed
for a
four-year college
or
university.'8 Furthermore,
more than half the
courses offered in the
junior colleges
are
essentially
in home economics
and education. It is with considerable
justice
that
they
are called modern
versions of the old schools for brides.
Surveys
of the attitudes of women
enrolled in
two-year colleges repeatedly produce
the
finding
that
they
see
themselves as
preparing
for
marriage. They plan
to work until
they marry
17. These
Ministry
of Education statistics
appear
in
Report
on
Working
Women
(Tokyo:
Ministry
of
Labor, 1984).
Between 1975 and
1984,
while the
proportion
of females
going
on
to
colleges
of all kinds rose
very slightly
from 32.4 to 32.7
per cent,
that for males
actually
declined from 43.0 to 38.2
per
cent.
18. Thomas P.
Rohlen, Japan's High
Schools
(Berkeley
and Los
Angeles: University
of
California
Press, 1983), p.
85. For a review of
changes
in school enrollments from 1920 to
1980 see
Ushiogi Morikazu,
"Population
Growth and Educational
Development," Population
of Japan, Country Monograph
Series No. 11
(New York: United
Nations,
Economic and So-
cial Commission for Asia and the
Pacific, 1984), pp.
174-86.
11
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Journal
of
Japanese
Studies
or have their first
child,
and then take
up
the role of homemaker for a time
before
reentering
the labor market. Some of
Japan's
most
highly
educated
women,
many
of them with doctorates from
foreign universities,
can find
teaching positions only
in these
institutions,
where
they
endure a
high
level
of frustration and
discouragement.
What of the small
proportion
of women who do attend the coeduca-
tional
four-year colleges
and universities? Not
surprisingly,
the
great
ma-
jority
of them are in the humanities. There are as well several excellent
women's universities where
emphasis
is on
giving
the students an education
fully equal
to that offered in the better coeducational institutions. Never-
theless,
it is difficult to
disagree
with the assessment of the future of
women's education offered
by
Okamura:
As
long
as
society
continues in the traditional belief that
girls
must sooner
or later
marry,
leave their families and be absorbed into their husband's
family,
become
dependent
on
him,
and find their
happiness
in
being
mar-
ried to a man of
high
social and economic
standing-as long
as these con-
ventional beliefs remain
prevalent,
so will the current
system
of
educating
women
persist.
9
Let me now turn to the two most fundamental
changes
of the
postwar
period-those
in
family
law and those that have occurred in the labor mar-
ket. The
promulgation
of the new Civil Code of 1947 marked a shift of
major proportions
in the former. Most fundamental of all was the total
elimination of the
household;
in the
law,
at
least,
Japan
became a land of
families
in which men and women alike were
guaranteed equal rights.
They may
hold
property separately
and both
spouses
are
fully
competent
legally.
The
right
to seek a divorce is
granted equally
to
both,
and
although
adultery
is no
longer
a
crime,
it is
grounds
for divorce for both husband
and wife. Parental
authority
in such matters as
permission
to
marry
is rec-
ognized only
insofar as the
parents
are the adult
guardians
of their minor
children. Whereas the old code
required impartible
inheritance,
the new
one does not. Should there be a division of
property
on the death of the
family
head,
females have the same
rights
in it as do males. In
short,
there
no
longer
exist
any legal
distinctions based on
gender
that
deprive
either
males or females of their
rights.
Nonetheless,
there are formidable barriers to a woman's full exercise of
those
rights
in the face of familial
opposition, just
as a wife still finds it
difficult to contest her husband's demand for a divorce. Under the current
civil
code, anyone qualifying
as a
potential
heir to a
portion
of an estate
19. Masu
Okamura, Changing
Japan:
Women's Status
(Tokyo:
International
Society
for
Educational Information, 1973), pp.
81-82.
12
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Smith: Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary Japan
may
renounce his or her share in favor of another claimant. The records of
the
family
courts reveal that more than twice as
many
women as men re-
fuse their share of a
parent's
estate.2"
Clearly,
the assets are
going
to their
brothers,
with one notable
exception.
It
may happen, upon
the death of the
father,
that the widow and children
gather
to
agree
on the settlement of the
estate. The widow is
eligible
to receive
one-half,
the children to divide
the remainder. In some cases all the children but one and the widow will
renounce their claims after it has been
agreed
that one of the children will
accept
both the assets and the
responsibility
for the care of the mother in
her old
age.
For that
reason,
in these
times,
the heir
may
well turn out to be
a
daughter.
In the matter of divorce we need
only
look at the
figures
on the distri-
bution of the
types
of divorce in
Japan.
There are two-consent and
judi-
cial. Divorce
by
consent
requires only
that a
simple
form, impressed
with
the
personal
seals of both
spouses,
be submitted to the authorities. Judicial
divorce involves either
third-party
arbitration or a trial. In
1900,
99.7
per
cent of all divorces were
by
consent;
in 1980 the
figure
was still
just
under
90
per
cent.2'
In this statistic lies
yet
one more bit of evidence of the
glacial
character of fundamental
change
in the
conjugal relationship.
Divorce
by
consent,
it is well
known,
makes it
notoriously easy
for a husband or his
family
to
force
a woman to
agree
to an action she does not seek. Con-
versely,
it is difficult for a wife to
press
her husband to
accept
a divorce he
does not want. The
high
percentage
of divorces
by
consent
may
be taken as
a
handy
index of female
powerlessness
in
Japanese society.22
The second
major change
in the
postwar period
has occurred in the la-
20.
Joy
Larsen
Paulson, "Family
Law Reform in Postwar
Japan:
Succession and
Adop-
tion"
(Ph.D. diss.,
University
of
Colorado, 1983).
Between 1954 and
1961,
when records in-
dicated the sex of those
requesting
renunciation of share of an
estate,
two-thirds of those
making application
were women.
Furthermore,'between
1949 and 1980 there was a decline of
70
per
cent in the number of
requests
for renunciation
(148,192
to
44,549 cases),
suggesting
that the matter
increasingly
is
being
settled
informally.
I see no reason to doubt Paulson's claim
that the
Family
Court commissions were constituted in such a
way
as to intimidate the
young
and females
(although
there
probably
was no intention to do
so);
I assume that informal means
for
settling
estates
equally operate against
their desires and interests.
21. Jinko d6tai tokei (Statistics on
population trends) (Tokyo:
Kiseisho
[Ministry
of
Health and
Welfare], 1981), p.
279.
22. See Taimie L.
Bryant,
"Marital Dissolution in
Japan: Legal
Obstacles and Their Im-
pact,"
Law in
Japan,
Vol. 17
(1984), pp.
73-97,
especially pages 94-97,
where she dis-
cusses the
prevalence
of the
practice
of one
spouse submitting
divorce
papers
without the
knowledge
or consent of the other. Such fraudulent "consent divorces" are
easily
obtained,
for
only
the
impress
of the
personal
seals of both
parties
and two witnesses on a form is re-
quired.
The form
may
be sent in
by
mail or delivered
by
a third
party
to the
appropriate
ward
office,
which does not have even to
notify
the
principals
that the document has been
processed
(p. 95).
The
interpretation
advanced in the
text,
that this
system operates chiefly
to the dis-
13
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Journal
of Japanese
Studies
bor force and women's
place
in it.
Any
consideration of this
complex
issue
must
begin
with a discussion of two critical matters. The
first,
of
course,
is
the nature of
Japanese employment practices,
the structure of
wages
and
salaries,
and the character of the labor market. The second
matter,
by
far
the more
important
of the two in
my
view,
is the current status of the fam-
ily-and by
extension the related issues of
marriage, divorce,
child-
rearing,
and above all the
tendency
of the
Japanese
to divide the world into
two
domains,
that of women on the one hand and men on the other.
Japanese
women,
although protected by quite
advanced
legislation,
en-
ter the labor market under massive
handicaps. They
are so
great
that it is no
exaggeration
to
say
that while most women at one time or another in their
lives hold down a
job,
it is still
exceedingly
rare for a woman to
pursue
a
career outside the home. It is
only slightly
less rare for a woman to find a
rewarding
or
challenging job,
and for the work
they
do,
they
receive some-
what less than 60
per
cent of a man's
income, just
as in the United States.23
Still,
more than half of all
Japanese
women above the
age
of 15 work
outside the home
today. Typically they
enter the labor market
upon
com-
pleting high
school,
junior-college,
or
university.
Until
recently they
tended to work for a few
years-in
effect,
until
they
married at
age
24 or
25. In
1980, however,
12.6
per
cent of women between the
ages
of 25 and
39 had not
yet
married;24
nevertheless,
the
employer typically expects
a
woman to
resign
her
position
when she
marries,
or when she has her first
child,
or at
age
30,
whether or not she is
planning
to
marry.
There are sev-
eral
advantages
to this
system.
The most obvious is that the
employer
can
keep taking
on
young
female school
graduates
at low
wages,
advance them
slowly
if at
all,
and ease them out without further commitment to them. For
their
part,
women save from their
wages
and salaries so that
they
can
bring
some
personal
assets to their
marriage-often
referred to as a woman's true
career. The
beginnings
of
change
can be seen in the
tendency
of
women,
advantage
of
women,
is
my
own.
Bryant
discusses the
complexities
of the situation in ex-
haustive detail.
23. For a
stimulating analysis
of the situation in the United
States,
see Victor R.
Fuchs,
"Sex Differences in Economic
Well-Being,"
Science,
Vol. 232
(1986), pp.
459-64. His
major finding
of interest in this context is that the economic
well-being
of American white
women did not
improve
between 1959 and 1983
despite
all the
positive changes
in the labor
market and labor
legislation, principally
because
they
still bear
primary responsibility
for
raising
children. The situation
among
black women is even more bleak.
24. See Yoko
Sato,
"Work and Life of
Single
Women of the Post-War Generation" in
Yasuko
Muramatsu, ed., Proceedings of
'83
Tokyo Symposium
on Women: Women and Work
(Tokyo:
International
Group
for the
Study
on Women and Kuala
Lumpur:
Asian and Pacific
Development
Center, 1983), pp.
199-216. For statistics on
per
cent of women married
by age
cohort,
see Statistical
Bureau,
Prime Minister's
Office,
1980
Population
Census
of Japan,
Vol.
2,
Table
5, p.
80.
14
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Smith: Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary
Japan
especially
in the last
decade,
to
stay
on the
job longer,
even after
they
have
married and have children.
For women and their work
prospects, probably
the most
important
fea-
ture of the
Japanese employment system
is the
nenko-seido,
the
age-
seniority system.
Firms with more than 300
employees usually
have this
system
which,
put simply,
bases a worker's income on his
chronological
age
and
years
of service to the
company.
It offers the workers
something
close to
permanent job security
if
they
will be
patient
about
advancement,
predictable pay
increases on which to base their
plans
for the
future,
and
company housing
and several kinds of
fringe benefits,
all in return for the
worker's
loyalty
and commitment to
stay
with the
company
until he retires.
Insofar as this
system applies
to
anyone
in the
Japanese
labor
force,
it
ap-
plies
to the so-called
regular
workers,
almost all of whom are
male,
and
with whom the unions are almost
exclusively
concerned.
There are also
temporary
and
part-time
workers. The nenko
system
does not
apply
to
them,
nor are the unions interested in them. Because the
temporaries,
women and men
alike,
can be cut loose at
any
time,
they
are
not
expected
to demonstrate such
profound degrees
of
loyalty
to the firm as
are the
regulars.
When
they resign
their
relationship
with the
company
is
completely
severed. Should a woman return to work even at the same firm
after a
lapse
of ten or fifteen
years,
as
many
in their forties and fifties are
doing,
with rare
exceptions
she will start at the
beginning,
for there is no
accrual of time
spent
in
previous
service,
which means that her
wages
and
job responsibility
alike are held to a minimum. The distinction between a
woman's
job
and a man's career could
hardly
be drawn more
sharply.
It is often remarked that far more women between the
ages
of 35 and 54
are now in the labor force than ever before. That is true of the absolute
numbers,
for the
Japanese population
has
aged very rapidly
and there is
a
greatly expanded pool
of women in that
age range compared
to the
past.
However,
the
participation
rate of women in the labor force has not
changed
all that
dramatically
between
1960,
when it was 59
per
cent,
and
1983 when it reached 63.9. In 1984 over 60
per
cent of women in their
thirties and two-thirds of those in their forties were
working (their
average
age
was
41.8),
one of the
highest
rates of female labor-force
participation
in the
capitalist
world.25
Indeed,
the
percentage
of women over
forty
who
are
working
is almost as
high
as that for
not-yet-married
women,
and it is
their
entry
into the labor market that has
produced
a
steady
rise in the num-
ber of women in
temporary (pdto) jobs.
In
1984,
90
per
cent of all such
workers were housewives.26
25. Labor Force
Survey (Tokyo:
Prime Minister's
Office, 1984).
26.
Japanese Ministry
of
Labor,
Basic Statistical
Survey
of the
Wage
Structure
(Tokyo,
15
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Journal
of Japanese
Studies
Several factors account for the
change
in the labor market for women.
The first is the
shortage
of
young
labor that occurred in the
1970s,
the re-
sult of the
sharp drop
in the birthrate
following
the
passage
of the law
legal-
izing
abortion and the increased rates of attendance of the
young through
high
school.
Employers
were forced to turn to older women who could be
hired on an
equivalently
low
pay-scale.
The second factor is the combined
effect of the consumer boom and an
ever-increasing push
toward
higher
levels of education for one's children. Most married women who have been
propelled
into the labor market to
supplement family
income tend to seek
jobs
convenient to home so
they
can continue to
discharge
their domestic
duties as well. Because their role as wife and mother remains undiminished
in
importance, they
are concerned to find
employment
that offers conve-
nient hours and is located close to home. Work is not an alternative to
homemaking;
it is an extension of the domestic role.
The
Ministry
of
Labor,
through
its Bureau of Women and Minors
(it
goes
without
saying
there is no Bureau of
Men),
has tried to enforce com-
pliance
with the
law,
particularly
that
provision guaranteeing equal pay
for
men and women
doing
the same work. It has had some
success,
for
today
the
starting
salaries of men and women are
nearly
the same.
They
soon
diverge,
however,
as the mechanism of nenko comes to affect the
young
men but not their female
counterparts.27
Employers,
who have a
ready
rationale for their treatment of female
workers,
offer five
major
defenses of their
policies:
1. Women have less
physical strength,
less
intelligence,
and less com-
mitment to work.
2. Married women
carry
the burden of
housework,
and therefore have
less
energy
to devote to their
jobs.
3. Women's short
working
life makes it uneconomical for
employers
to
invest in their
training.
1984).
Pato are defined as workers whose hours do not exceed 35
per
week. Of the women in
the
paid non-agricultural
workforce,
only
22.1
per
cent are
pdto; however,
95
per
cent of all
pato
are women.
27. In
1983,
in the
age group 20-24,
women's
earnings
were 87.7
per
cent of men's. The
comparable figure
for those
aged
40-44 was 50.4
per
cent.
However,
a note of caution is
required
in
interpreting
these
figures,
for the educational level of
young
women
today
is far
higher
than that of their
counterparts twenty years ago.
But see the detailed data in Shino-
tsuka
Eiko,
Nihon no
joshi
rodod
(Japan's
women
workers) (Tokyo: Tokyo-
keizai
shinpo
sha,
1982), p.
186,
which shows nevertheless that at
every
level of educational attainment and
number of
years
of service to the
company,
the income of female
employees
is lower than that
of males. The New York Times
(April
8, 1984) reports
on a
study by
the International Labor
Organization
that reveals that in the decade
ending
in 1983
Japan
was the
only
advanced na-
tion where the
wage gap
between male and female industrial workers had
widened, largely
because of
growth
in the service
industry
and because
Japan's booming
electronics and semi-
conductor factories
employ
women almost
exclusively.
16
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Smith: Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary Japan
4.
College graduates
are the worst risk because
they
enter the firm at
about
twenty-two
and leave it in three or four
years
to
get
married.
5. Since women are not
trained,
they
cannot rise in the
wage
scale
by
taking
on more
demanding
tasks.28
A common
expectation
of the
young
women hired
by
a firm is that
they
will
provide
tea for
everyone
(in
addition to
performing
other
duties)
and
maintain a demure and
pleasant
manner toward all. Preference in
hiring
is
given
to those who
may
be described as
suitably
ornamental. In a
recently
uncovered
personnel department memorandum,
a
major Japanese
firm was
found to recommend
against hiring
several
categories
of female
applicants.
The
long
list,
which
speaks
volumes for an attitude still
very prevalent
in
the white-collar and service
sectors,
includes the
following:
Be
wary
of
young
women who wear
glasses,
are
very
short,
speak
in loud
voices,
have
been
divorced,
or are
daughters
of
college professors.
It would be a serious
error,
however,
to
imagine
that such factors are never taken into account in
the assessment of male
job
candidates and
employees.
In
discussing
the
situation in
large companies,
Jolivet29
says
that the
qualities sought
in the
hiring process
are those that also determine chances for
promotion
after
the first ten
years
with a firm: "character traits were
all-important-so-
ciability, dynamism, obedience,
adaptability,
the
ability
to
inspire
confi-
dence,
tenacity, leadership capacity."
She observes that male
employees
"must also live
morally upright
lives,
not tainted
by scandal,
and make
a
good marriage."
When a choice had to be made between candidates
equally qualified otherwise,
some of the factors
weighing against promo-
tion were
taking
all the vacation time to which one is
entitled,
having
"an
aggressive, gloomy
or soft
nature,"
or
taking
"a too academic
approach."
Let us turn now to the second and more
important
of the two issues in
the
postwar period
that I have
already
referred to-the
Japanese family
and
the
ways
it has
changed-and
focus on
only
some of its
aspects
that are
relevant to the
topic
at hand. One of the most fundamental distinctions in
Japan
is that drawn between uchi and soto. Uchi is that which is
within,
inside,
private,
"ours." Soto is the
outside,
public
world. The
prime
ex-
ample
of uchi is of course the
family
unit.
Indeed,
the word itself is often
used to mean
exactly
what Americans mean when
they say "family."
Uchi
no hito is a
person
of our
family.
Uchi is the house itself. It
is,
above
all,
the domestic domain
thought properly
to be controlled
by women,
who are
responsible
for its
day-to-day operation,
the care of its
children,
and the
management
of its
budget.
The domain of men is outside in the world of
28. Alice H. Cook and Hiroko
Hayashi, Working
Women in
Japan: Discrimination,
Re-
sistance, and
Reform (Ithaca:
New York State School of Industrial and Labor
Relations,
Cor-
nell
University, 1980),
p.
28.
29.
Jolivet,
"Impact," pp.
4 and 5.
17
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Journal
of Japanese
Studies
work and
public
affairs.
Typically,
it is
said,
the woman rules the
home,
while the man is the breadwinner.
It is this distinction that has had such a
profound
effect on the
pres-
ent
position
and future
prospects
of women in the labor market. Suzanne
Vogel
3( has described what she calls the role of the
professional
housewife:
When a woman
marries,
she takes on a fulltime
lifelong
commitment to a
job, specifically
the
job
of
taking
care of her
husband,
their
children,
and
often other kin as well. And
though
some women
attempt
to combine the
career of housewife with a career outside the
home,
the difficulties
they
encounter
only
serve to underscore the fact that the
overwhelming majority
of women still adhere to the basic and traditional idea of the
good
wife and
wise
mother,
and consider their
family responsibilities
to be their life-work
and their
profession.
In contrast to that of the American
housewife,
the
Japanese
wife's
job
is more
clearly
focused and does not include a
good
many
of the roles an American housewife
plays,
such as
hostess,
conversa-
tionalist, entertainer, wage
earner,
keeper
of
worldly
wisdom,
nor even sex
object
or lover. ...
In
short,
the married woman's duties and
responsibilities
are
clearly
set
out and as
clearly
delimited. It is the far more diffuse character of the du-
ties of the American wife that often causes
Japanese
married women
newly
arrived in the United States to
express pity
for American
women,
of whom
they
feel too much is
expected.
Needless to
say,
however,
feminists have
argued
that
Vogel's
view of the housewife's career is identical to that held
by
Japanese
men,
but not
by
women,
who want more freedom. Yet it would be
unwise to overlook that most
signal
of virtues
traditionally
ascribed to the
Japanese
woman,
one in which she is trained
by
her mother from an
early
age.
That is the virtue of
making
the best of what life
gives. Endurance,
forebearance,
and
development
within the constraints
imposed by
one's life
are also
expected
of men-how much more so for women.
My
own
guess
is that
Vogel
is
right
in
thinking
that the
majority
of women still adhere to a
conservative view of
proper conjugal
roles.
What kind of
authority
do women exercise in the domestic realm? In
many ways
it is
considerable,
for to an extent unfamiliar to most Ameri-
cans the roles of husband and wife are
remarkably complementary-sepa-
rate,
but each
highly dependent
on the other. Husbands
expect
to accord
their wives a
great
deal of
power
and
autonomy
within the domestic realm.
Although
the
pattern
is said to be less common than it was
only
ten
years
ago,
a white-collar worker or
professional
is
quite likely
to turn over his
30. Suzanne H.
Vogel,
"The Professional Housewife,"
in
Merry
I. White and Barbara
Molony,
eds., Proceedings of
the
Tokyo Symposium
on Women
(Tokyo:
International
Group
for the
Study
of
Women, 1978), p.
150.
18
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Smith: Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary
Japan
entire
salary
to his wife. I know men in their 40s and 50s who do not even
know how much
they
make,
for
they
have asked their
employer
to
deposit
their checks
directly
to the
family
bank
account,
which is
managed by
the
wife. She is
responsible,
then,
for
budgeting
and
saving-up
to and in-
cluding providing
a
generous spending
allowance for her husband. This
practice
is said
by
some to be
eroding slowly,
but the evidence is incon-
clusive.3' Whatever the
degree
of its current
prevalence,
Lebra reminds us
that it is incorrect to
say
that even the emblematic role of
wife-as-money-
manager
is in fact
gender-determined.
The two financial
responsibilities
of
earning
and
managing
are
clearly distinguished
and the latter is
normally
assigned
to the wife. But in the rare case where the husband is
incapaci-
tated and therefore housebound and the wife works
outside,
it is he who
manages
the domestic finances.32
It is
important
not to overlook one of the
major
reasons that women are
accorded such a
degree
of
authority
and
responsibility
in the home. It is
because men do not wish to be concerned with what is defined as the
woman's
world,
and wives
commonly discourage
their husbands from ex-
pressing
too much interest in such matters.
Thirty years ago
I knew
many
older
Japanese
men who did not
carry money
or wear a watch and who
subsequently
never bothered to learn to drive an automobile. It was the
wife's
duty
to
pay, keep
track of the
time,
and serve as chauffeur. What
must not be lost
sight
of is that this
dependency
of the husband on the wife
is the outcome of two
very
different,
again complementary perceptions
and
strategies.
Women know that their
greatest security
lies in
rendering
the
husband as
dependent
on his wife as can
possibly
be
managed. Japanese
women are
extremely adept
at this tactic. The man who cannot care for
himself must look to his wife to do so for him. This situation
goes
a
long
way
toward
explaining
the low rates of
divorce,
for
marriage,
which occurs
very
late,
is seen as a mutual commitment made
by
two
people
of
comple-
mentary competence.
The man commits himself to
providing
for his fam-
ily,
the women to
maintaining
a comfortable home for all.
But,
be it
noted,
when
push
comes to
shove,
the
power
of the male
proves infinitely greater
than that of the female. The brutal fact is that should a husband decide to
withdraw financial
support,
the
carefully
crafted career and vaunted do-
mestic
authority
of the
professional
housewife will fall in ruins. The auton-
omy
of the married woman is
wholly contingent.
What has been said for
31. In an interview with Sahashi
Kei,
president
of an all-female
marketing consulting
firm,
for
example,
we are told that 74
per
cent of all
Japanese
husbands still hand over
pay-
checks to their
wives,
but in the same article it is
reported
that
surveys
conducted in 1973 and
1982 showed a decline in this
practice
from 67
per
cent to 55
per
cent. See
Kittredge Cherry,
"Breaking
New
Ground,"
PHP
(February 1984), pp.
10-11.
32.
Lebra, Japanese Women,
p.
135.
19
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Journal
of
Japanese
Studies
the United States is
perhaps
even truer for
Japan:
most women are
only
one
man
away
from
poverty.
We are
brought,
then,
to the final-one
might say
the
ultimate-issue,
that of the character of
conjugal
relations. It is a
subject
on which the out-
sider comments
diffidently
and in full
recognition
that he
may
have
got
it
all
wrong. Modesty
is
required
of the
analyst
of this matter in
any
so-
ciety-how
much more so when
dealing
with the
Japanese,
who are a
very
private people.
Let me start at the
beginning.
Do the
Japanese marry
for
love? Some do. It
may
well be that an
increasing proportion
of first mar-
riages
are based at least in
part
on love. Yet a
significant percentage
of mar-
riages
are still
arranged,
so difficult is it for
young
unmarried women and
men to socialize
casually
with one another once
they
are out of school.
Does
Japanese marriage
lead to love? Indeed it
may.
After
all,
the
prime
symbol
of
conjugal felicity
is the
elderly couple
whose mutual affection
has
grown thoughout
their married life
together.
It is
commonly
remarked
that after the children are married and
gone
from home comes the time
when a husband and wife
may
enter into a
period
of
genuinely compan-
ionate
marriage,
based on mutual
affection,
respect,
and
understanding.
Not all
couples
are so
fortunate;
in this
Japan
is
very
like
many
other so-
cieties,
perhaps.
Indeed,
the number of divorces
sought by
women over the
age
of
thirty-five
has risen
steadily
since the end of World War II.33 There is
little chance that
they
could
remarry
even if
they
wished to do so. And
widows,
who are more
likely
than divorcees to be able to
remarry
success-
fully
if
they
choose to do
so, generally
do not. One reason for
remaining
unmarried after
being
widowed is summarized in the
pithy phrase
zenkon
de
korita,
best
loosely
rendered as "I had it with
my
first
marriage."
In
Japan,
casual association with members of the
opposite
sex was not
easy
for members of
my generation
and no
period
of
courtship preceded
marriage.
The
psychological
unease that seemed so much a feature of in-
teraction between the sexes has
diminished,
apparently, among
the
younger
generations,
but an
apposite story
is told
by Angela
Carter,
a British novel-
ist who lived in
Japan
in the 1960s. She introduces it
by saying
that
Japa-
nese men seem to find women who cannot be
categorized easily
as either
wives or mothers
something
of a
threat,
and continues:
A
foreign girlfriend
of mine once had an affair with a
Japanese
man.
They
had a rather tormented first five months when he would do no more than
occasionally
touch her foot under the table and then retreat. And
then,
fi-
nally,
he told her he had dreamed of
her,
he had dreamed
they
had
gone
to a
33. Yuzawa Yasuhiko, "Sengo
kazoku hendo no tokeiteki kansatsu" in Fukushima
Masao, ed.,
Kazoku: seisaku to ho: 3.
Sengo
nihon kazoku do doko
(Tokyo: University
of
Tokyo Press, 1977), p.
38.
20
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Smith: Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary Japan
beach at
sunset,
and
they
had made
love,
and then he had cut off her head
and swum out to sea
holding
it and drowned himself. She said to
me,
"You
know,
that's the first time I realized he was
really
interested in me."34
In a recent
book,
the
only genuinely
informative one in
English
on the
subject,
Coleman deals with the
complicated
matter of
family planning
in
Japanese society.35
His discussion centers on the
relationship
between hus-
band and wife and its effect on such matters as
opting
for
abortion,
choice
of
contraceptive
device,
and sexual
activity.
His conclusions are
sobering:
The
aggregate
effects of women's status on
Japan's family planning
scene are
minimal . . . because
Japanese
women have a much lower status in their
society
than do women in the West.
Education,
for
example,
has less over-
all
impact simply
because the
proportion
of women in
Japan enjoying
a
higher
educational
background
is much smaller than in the West.36
Coleman further finds
extremely high degrees
of
passivity
and
compliance
among Japanese
married
women,
despite
the brave talk about a new
gener-
ation of New
Women,
and a marked
tendency
on the
part
of
young
married
women to see in motherhood the ultimate
legitimater
of marital sexual
activity.37
The women interviewed
by
Coleman were well aware of all
this,
and
what is
important
for our
purposes, they
wished it were otherwise.
They
spoke
of a desire for
display
of
greater empathy
on the
part
of their hus-
bands;
they
wanted to share more activities and
decisions;
they gave every
indication of
wishing
that their
marriages
were
precisely
what
they
were
not-companionate
unions of
equal partners. Among
these
younger
mar-
ried women there was no trace of that sentiment embodied in the durable
Japanese saying
that the best husband is
jobu
de
rusu-healthy
and out of
the house.
It is clear
enough
that the
legal
basis for
gender inequalities
of an ear-
lier
day
has been eradicated and that other kinds of
inequalities
are much
reduced. But the
position
of women in
any society,
I need
hardly
remind
my
readers,
does not
necessarily
reflect their own
perceptions
of what it
ought
to be nor is their
standing
in the law
necessarily
an accurate
guide
to
the treatment
they
receive. The
position
of women in
any society
is in
large
34. From an interview in Ronald
Bell, ed.,
The
Japanese Experience (New
York and
Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1973), p.
31.
35. Samuel
Coleman, Family Planning
in
Japanese Society:
Traditional Birth Control in
a Modern Urban Culture
(Princeton:
Princeton
University
Press, 1983).
36.
Ibid.,
pp.
149-50.
37. For
strong support
of Coleman's
position,
see Masako
Tanaka,
"Maternal
Authority
in the
Japanese Family,"
in
George
DeVos and Takao
Sofue, eds., Religion
and
Family
in East
Asia,
Senri
Ethnological
Studies No. 11
(1984), pp.
227-36.
21
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Journal
of Japanese
Studies
part
the result of the attitudes of men toward
them,
and herein lies the crux
of the matter. It is no secret that the foundations of
gender
identity
are laid
early
in life. Nor is there
any
doubt that in the
contemporary Japanese
fam-
ily
it is the
young
mother who bears almost sole
responsibility
for the rear-
ing
and
training
of the children.
Directly,
then,
and
indirectly through
her
outward demeanor toward her husband and other
men,
as well as toward
other
women,
she communicates a set of
dispositions
to her sons and
daughters
alike.38
Sometimes an event
highlights
with awful
clarity
attitudes so basic that
they
are seldom
openly expressed.
Not
long ago
the wife of a
young Japa-
nese
colleague
of mine at Cornell
gave
birth to their first child. She was
26,
he about 30. When he went to her
hospital
room for the first time she
looked
up
at
him,
eyes
filled with
tears,
and
said,
" Yurushite kudasai. For-
give
me,"
and showed him the face of their
baby daughter.
He told me
they
really
had never discussed the
matter,
but that she had
just
known he would
have
preferred
a son. For their
part,
mothers
routinely say
that
daughters
are easier to raise than
sons,
for
they
can be trained
early
in obedience and
compliance
as a
boy
cannot,
lest it unfit for him for the
struggle
and com-
petitiveness
of later life. Girls trained otherwise run the risk of not
settling
down into the
patterns
of behavior that will recommend them as
prospec-
tive brides. When asked to choose the characteristics most desirable in a
marriage partner,
unmarried women
overwhelmingly
choose
sincerity
(sei-
jitsusa), dependability (tayori
ni naru
dansei),
and
intelligence (rikai
no
aru
dansei), assigning
almost no
importance
to
physical
attractiveness
(bidan gata).
For their
part
men seek
gentle (yasashii), charming (kawaii),
and
staunch,
competent (shikkari
shita
josei)
wives.
Indeed,
in one 1978
survey
men
split
almost
evenly among
three
revealing options
offered
by
the interviewer:
sewa
nyobo
gata (housewife type-a
close 24.6%
approximation
of the
good
wife and wise
mother)
jobu
de
nagamochi gata (healthy
and
durable)
26.1%
yasashii taipu (gentle)
27.0%
The fourth
option, bijo gata (beautiful)
was chosen
by only
3.7
per
cent.39
It follows that the ideal wife is
thought
to be
ill-equipped temperamentally
38.
Writing
from a reformist
perspective, Higuchi
Keiko deals with this
complex
issue
in an
engaging
book entitled Onna no ko no sodatekata
(Tokyo:
Bunka
shuppan kyoku, 1978).
It has been translated
by
Tomii Akiko as
Bringing Up
Girls
(Kyoto:
Shokado Booksellers
Private
Company, 1985); despite
the title one of the book's four
chapters
concerns the
rearing
of
boys.
39. Two such
surveys
are
reported
in Seron chosa nenkan
(Tokyo:
Sorifu, 1979),
22
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Smith: Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary Japan
for the
struggle
of serious
employment
in either
jobs
or careers. What will
fit her for one ideal role
by
definition unfits her for the other.
If further
change
is on the
way,
it is with
respect
to attitudes toward
marriage
and the
family
that it will have to
begin.
Until
very recently
it
could
fairly
be said that in
Japan
almost
everyone
married and that
virtually
all married women bore children. A
change
of
potential importance
is
foreshadowed in the results of some
surveys
conducted in the late 1970s.
Between 25 and 30
per
cent of the unmarried women interviewed
agreed
with the statement "You don't have to
get
married
just
because
you're
a
woman." 40 What
surveys
never tell
us, alas,
is whether or not the
respon-
dents ever act on their
opinions.
Nevertheless,
there is
good
evidence for
the observation that
young
women who do
express
doubts about
marrying
at all see in
marriage
a
profound
commitment to home and
family
that
pre-
cludes
pursuit
of a career. That most women do in fact
marry
is
partly
at-
tributable to their realization that as the
system
is structured
today taking
any
alternative
path
into adulthood is
very risky.
Thus,
the
complementarity
of the roles of wife and husband remains
very
much a feature of the
family, despite
all the contextual shifts that have
occurred. It has been remarked that as a
consequence
of the
increasing
ten-
dency
to live as
conjugal
families rather than in the older
style
multi-
generational
households,
Japanese
women
appear
to have taken on an even
more
demanding
domestic role than
they played
in the
past.
The
young
wife,
as we have
seen,
is the caretaker of the
children,
for
day-care
centers
are few in number and
quite costly,
and husbands are
only marginally
more
involved in the task of child-care
today
than
they
have ever been. The ma-
ture wife has become the caretaker of the
elderly,
either her husband's
par-
ents or her own. There have been some
changes
in this area as well. In
1980,
69
per
cent of those 65 and older lived with a married or unmarried
child,
down from 87
per
cent in 1960.
However,
the
overwhelming
choice
remains coresidence with one's eldest son
(73 per
cent in
1983) and,
con-
trary
to much
press speculation,
the
long-established pattern
for
parent-
child coresidence to
begin
before or at the time of the child's
marriage
still
holds
(82 per
cent in
1983).41
That
is,
it is not
yet
usual for
parents
to live
pp.
563-64 and
590,
and another in the 1980 edition of the
annual,
on
page
121. I am in-
debted to Walter D. Edwards for his assistance in
locating
them.
40. The 25
per
cent
figure
is from a Public
Opinion Survey
on Women in 1979 conducted
by
the Prime Minister's
Office;
the 30
per
cent result was obtained in a small
survey
of an
unspecified sample
in 1976. See
Sato,
"Work and Life of
Single Women,"
p. 212,
and
Cherry,
"Breaking
New
Ground,"
p.
10,
respectively.
41.
Takeji
Kamiko and Michihiko
Noguchi,
"On the Coresidence of Parents and Mar-
ried
Child,"
in
Kiyomi Morioka, ed.,
Family
and
Life
Course
of Middle-Aged
Men
(No place:
The
Family
and Life Course
Study Group, 1985), pp.
163-87. As for those cases where a
23
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Journal
of Japanese
Studies
separately
for a time and
only
later move in with a child in their old
age-
coresidence is a much
longer-term
affair than that. The
government
of
Japan
has been able to
provide
such
meager
social services as it does at
both ends of the life
cycle largely
because of the time and
energy Japanese
women devote to the care of the
very young
and the
very
old members of
that
society.
It is an additional burden borne with remarkable
equanimity
by
women who
increasingly
hold down
jobs
outside the home as well.42
Where, then,
are we left? In some
ways
the
position
of women in
Japa-
nese
society
can be said to have
improved immeasurably
insofar as in-
equalities
based
solely
on
gender
have been reduced. A bit of evidence to
back
up
this claim comes from
surveys
that ask women and men whether
they
would
prefer
to have been born as a member of the
opposite
sex. Be-
tween 1958 and 1980 the
percentage
of women
replying
that
they
are con-
tent to have been born female has risen from 27 to 67. For men who
say
they
are content to have been born
male,
the
percentage
has held
steady
at
about 90.43 These results
may
mean that
today's
women have more to be
content
with;
it
may
also mean that
they
have come to see that the lot of
men is less enviable than their
predecessors thought.
Nonetheless,
I think it would be a
grave
error to overestimate the de-
gree
of
improvement
in the lot of
women;
at the
very
least the
survey
re-
sults show that it has not been
sufficiently
dramatic to
persuade
men that
they
would have been better off had
they
been born female. The reasons for
what I see as the slow
pace
of
change
in so
many
areas of
gender inequality
are not far to seek. Most
Japanese
still
regard
the
family
as the fundamental
unit of
society
on which the future of the nation
depends.
The
family
is
wife does assume
responsibility
for the care of her own
parents,
Kamiko and
Noguchi
offer
the
following
observation based on their
study
of Shizuoka
City
from 1981 to 1984: "coresi-
dence of
parents
and their married
daughter
more often occurs when
parents
have no sons or
when their
son(s)
lives at a
great
distance from them . . .
parents
are more
likely
to live to-
gether
with their married
daughter
when her husband is not the eldest son of his
parents
. . .
when
parents
coreside with their married
daughter,
her husband is more
likely
to
change
his
family
name for hers. In
short,
the coresidence of
parents
and their married
daughters
does
not contravene that social norm of the coresidence of
parents
with the eldest son. It is
merely
a
minority pattern
resorted to
only
in case the
majority pattern
is not feasible"
(p. 175).
42. What is the source of this
equanimity?
An
intriguing
answer is
provided
in Masako
Tanaka,
"Maternal
Authority," p.
236. She
points
out that the moral
authority
of the
Japanese
wife-and-mother is far
higher
than one
might expect
from her low
jural
status and
customary
usages.
She is both
life-giver
and
care-giver
without whom life is
impossible.
Her moral au-
thority, then,
is "related to the structural
position
she
occupies
in the household
connecting
the
past
and
future, by taking
care of
aged parents
and ancestors and
by bearing
and
raising
the children."
43. NKH Hoso Seron
Ch6sajo, ed., Nihonjin
to
Amerikajin (Tokyo:
Nihon hoso
shup-
pan kyokai, 1982), p.
73.
24
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Smith: Gender
Inequality
in
Contemporary Japan
seen
ultimately
as the
product
of the wife's investment of her adult life in
her husband and their children. The concern felt
by many Japanese
about
the
changes
that are
occurring may easily
be inferred. Should women be
encouraged
or
permitted
to stand on an
equal footing
with
men,
they
be-
lieve,
the result would be destructive
competition
between the
sexes,
the
breakup
of the
family
with attendant rises in rates of divorce and re-
marriage,
a
growth
in the number of
single-parent
families and
juvenile
delinquency,
and a host of other social ills. As a
young Japanese
friend of
mine
said,
"We are
desperately trying
to avoid
catching
the American dis-
ease. Women are
important
here,
for it is
they
who will make or break our
society-and they
will do it as the mothers who raise our children and the
wives who
support
us in our effort not to fall behind." In his
view,
clearly,
for women that is reward
enough; certainly
his father and
grandfather
would have
agreed wholeheartedly.
It remains to be seen whether or not his
daughter
and
granddaughter
will see it that
way,
for in all the
polls44
I know
of,
from two-thirds to
three-quarters
of women
surveyed say they
are rea-
sonably
or
very
satisfied with their lives.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
44.
Margaret
Lock has
generously
shared the
preliminary analysis
of the results of a
lengthy questionnaire
she administered to
1,500
women between the
ages
of 45 and 55
(in-
clusive),
in
Kyoto
and its environs in 1984. She asked the
question,
"All
things considered,
which of the
following
best describes
your present
situation?"
("iro
iro na koto o
kangae
awasete
chikagoro
no anata no
jotai
wa
tsugi
no dore ni
gaito
suru to omoimasu
ka").
Of the
1,321
usable
responses
the results were as follows:
very happy
(taihen shiawase
da),
17
per
cent; fairly happy (mama
no tokoro
da),
73
per cent;
not
particularly happy
(amari shiawase
de wa
nai),
7
per
cent;
unhappy (fuko da),
1
per
cent. The Asahi
Evening News, January, 16,
1986,
carried a
report
on a
survey
of
3,000
wives of
wage-earners
in
Tokyo
and Yokohama
conducted
by
a research
group
at
Seijo University
which found that "about 80
percent
of the
respondents
are content with their home
life, husbands,
and children." It
may
be that both
results reflect reluctance on the
part
of women to admit to
being unhappy,
but the
percentages
of those
claiming
to be
content,
happy,
or satisfied are
large enough
to command our
attention.
25
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