sister-in-law maintains a self-
effacing smile even as she scurries to
provide their every material need –
right down to putting a cold beer in
her husband’s hand as he steps out
of his nightly bath. I have a sister-in-
law just like Haruka’s. She loves
cooking for her family and friends,
and thinks nothing of doing dishes,
laundry and daily grocery shopping
all by herself. Unlike many other
Japanese couples in their generation,
she and my brother actually talk to
each other and do a lot of things
together. But even though their chil-
dren are the products of this happy
marriage, my nephew and niece, now
35 and 32, are still unwed.
My nephew is a corporate account-
ant and says he feels no urge to find a
wife, unless he runs into a nice, quiet
woman who would let him do what he
likes to do – read history books and go
fishing. My niece, who recently
opened a pottery shop of her own but
still lives with her parents, says: ‘I
like my work, but most of the men I
meet just want a replacement for
their mothers, somebody to stay home
and take care of them.’
Survey upon survey shows that
Japanese men spend no more than
30 minutes a day on household
chores, mainly simple jobs such as
putting the rubbish out and water-
ing house plants. The average
30-something man spends 24 min-
utes a day on such work. The figure
for women of that age, including
full-time workers, is five hours and
37 minutes.
Small wonder that an interna-
tional survey has found that the
word most often used by Japanese
women to describe married life was
not ‘love’, ‘comfort’ or ‘happiness’ (the
words chosen by women from other
wealthy countries), but ‘endurance’.
For some, peace comes only with
death – it is not uncommon for older
married women to buy cemetery
plots of their own to avoid being tied
to their husbands and in-laws
for eternity.
Even so, marriage has not totally
lost its allure. A series of surveys by
the National Institute of Population
and Social Security Research show
that about 90 per cent of unmarried
men and women still say that they
wish to marry ‘one day’.
The problem, writes Reitaku
University sociologist Terue Ohashi,
is that they just can’t find the right
husband or wife because their
images of an ideal spouse do not
match. While women want to study,
develop careers and achieve eco-
nomic independence, many Japanese
males cling tightly to the old role of
men as breadwinners and women as
homemakers.
Unsure whether they will ever
find a man worth giving up their
freedom for, an increasing number
of women in their 30s and 40s are
buying homes on their own – some-
thing I can rarely remember
happening 10 years ago.
It is now widely recognised that
shoshika is a problem of national
concern. But Japanese political and
business leaders are not doing
nearly enough to reverse the trend.
The first time the cabinet discussed
the shoshika problem was in June
1990, when the declining birth rate
was still a relatively healthy 1.57
children per woman. The then-
finance minister (and later prime
minister) Ryutaro Hashimoto har-
rumphed that the root of the
problem was ‘the trend for women to
be highly educated’. The solution, he
said, might be to end policies that
enabled every student who wanted a
higher education to get one. His
female colleagues in the Diet were
outraged, but the story was quickly
dismissed and forgotten.
Since then, government and pri-
vate-sector bodies have made
recommendations about the best
way to tackle shoshika. These
invariably include more day-care
centres, bigger tax deductions for
dependent children and more flexi-
ble hours for parents. But putting
such ideas into action has been a
slow process.
It was decreed last year that
companies should offer equality in
paternity as well as maternity
leave, but the most recent govern-
ment survey on the subject found
that just 0.55 per cent of new
fathers – about one in 200 – dared
take even a few days off. The health
ministry wants to increase the ratio
to one in 10, but a recent poll by the
national daily newspaper Yomiuri
found that 89 per cent of employees
said the atmosphere at work made
it hard to ask for the time off.
Last year, the government
announced plans to subsidise local
governments to host parties for sin-
gles, though the sort of person who
might submit to government-spon-
sored match-making, or marry
someone who did, remains a mys-
tery to me.
Childcare centres still have long
waiting lists. The few companies that
brought in flexible hours are now
abandoning them because they say
they can’t afford such ‘luxuries’ at a
time of intensifying global competi-
tion. Japan’s tight immigration policy
also deprives working mothers of a
pool of immigrant workers, who are
often an excellent and low-cost source
of childcare in other industrialised
countries. I have raised two children
while working full-time in the US,
after moving here 20 years ago, but I
couldn’t possibly have done so with-
out the wonderful women from the
Philippines, Peru, Portugal and else-
where who were willing to look after
my boys for very reasonable rates.
But when I explain this to Japanese
friends, they look at me as if I am
crazy and ask me, ‘How can you have
a foreigner living in your house?’
The government and the society
don’t make it easy, either, for cou-
ples with reproductive problems
who want to have babies. Last year
the justice ministry refused to give
Japanese citizenship to twin boys
carried by a surrogate mother in
California, using the Japanese hus-
band’s sperm and an egg donated by
an Asian-American donor. To legit-
imise the children, the Japanese
couple have to go through a formal
adoption process.
In another case, a doctor in cen-
tral Japan who helped an infertile
couple have twin boys through in-
vitro fertilisation using eggs
donated by the wife’s sister was
expelled from the Japanese Society
of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in
1998. Meanwhile, abortion in Japan
is still readily available.
What is distressing for Japanese
women who want both career and
family is that nobody in power
seems to take their problems seri-
ously. The government’s ‘gender
equality minister’, Yasuo Fukuda, is
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