My 10 Yen on Japanese Culture Part ll

 Disclaimer: The viewpoint I am about to respond to is my mishmash interpretation of what I think is a common misconception of Japanese culture that is prevalent in NZ and other western countries. I am not claiming that any particular people hold all or any of these beliefs but various comments that people have made over the years lead to me to believe that these ideas are common enough for it to be worthwhile for me to attempt to refute them. Comments, agreeing or disagreeing, are welcome but not of a personal or insulting nature.

It seems to be that there is a common belief in NZ and other Western countries that the Japanese ideal woman is subservient to men. There is a kind of stereotyped idea that some westerners have that Japanese men want their women to be subordinate, meek and submissive. I was horrified on more than one occasion when westerners I met in Japan not only believed in that ideal of Japanese women but were specifically looking for that subservient ideal Japanese girlfriend for themselves. Some indicated that scoring with this Japanese ideal was their primary reason for coming to Japan (I'm hoping that this was at least in part male boasting at work and not genuinely their main reason for travelling to a country). I'll paraphrase the comments and try to get the gist across without the offensive swearing and sexist terminology, but essentially what they hoped to get from their Japanese woman was along these lines: she was beautiful, acquiesced to all their sexual demands (both in terms of the frequency of sex as well as performing certain acts) without expecting any sexual pleasure herself, and then did all the housework for them afterwards.

I was pretty disturbed by this attitude. Was it really a fantasy that existed in men at all? Western or Japanese? Would anyone really want this in this day and age? I was quite shocked. Even in my most cynical moments about the modern male, I had really only thought that some of them were maybe guilty of being unfaithful or shallow and wanting beauty before anything else. It hadn't really occurred to me that some men would actively seek a women without any sexual desires of her own or who would suppress them all meekly. Did they really just want a gorgeous woman who would lie back/bend over and think of the motherland? Was going off to do the dishes really the most desirable post-coital activity?

This was not long after we had arrived in Japan. I found it hard to reconcile this disturbing new insight into the psyche of some men with the fact that Matt and my male friends did not seem to fit the mould of disturbingly sexist-and-uncomfortable-with-their-own-masculinity-to-the-point-where-they-only-want-a-robotic-sex-and-domestic-slave-for-a-girlfriend. Without consciously realising it, I assumed that this ideal Japanese woman was something that Japanese men desired even though it was a British guy and an American that I had heard having the conversation. I guess subconsciously it was easier to project the views expressed onto Japanese men because of the cultural/language difference. I actually found it too scary to consider that apparently normal men that were friendly and polite, and were from cultural backgrounds similar to my own, would actually want this level of subservience from a partner. Besides - Salary-men on the trains had the appearance of dodginess. They were always reading pornographic manga and staring creepily at Japanese school girls adjusting their gigantic socks and short skirts. There are some aspects of Japanese mentality that seem odd when you are a foreigner, for example the panty fetish, so it becomes easy to assume that bad or strange stereotypes about Japanese men are accurate.

However, after I had been in Japan for several months, my opinions began to change. Firstly, the Japanese men I met were always polite and respectful. None of them had problems being taught by women and would happily defer to other female students in lessons. Many of Japanese women I met were well educated, confidently intellectual and whilst they were polite, they never struck me as meek or submissive.

After I had been working at Nova for a while I got transferred to a smaller branch for one day a week. At this branch, there were several women with very good English who came every week around lunchtime. This meant I got at least one lesson a week with them and got to know them very well. Their English was quite advanced and they really only needed to practice their conversation so teaching them was always fun. We had lots of interesting conversations about the differences and similarities between Western, specifically NZ, and Japanese cultures. They were an interesting mix of women.

One of them was a shufu (Japanese housewife), approximately aged around 50, who had a degree in Literature. She hadn't worked since she was married about 20-30 years ago but raised three children and had a broad range of hobbies. She spent most of her days rushing between tennis, English lessons, ikebana, golf and painting classes.

Another was an architect who had recently stopped working as she was pregnant with her first child. She was pretty stoic about the whole pregnancy thing. She came in every week right up to the birth, missed one week and then came back the next week.

The other was a recent university graduate. She held pretty strong feminist views and was forthright about her beliefs.

It is really these women I credit with destroying the stereotyped beliefs I had started to form. The first one was that Japanese women give up their careers when they are married. It seemed to me that many Japanese women were housewives. Of course as a group my students were a slightly disproportionate representation as people with time to take English lessons (during the week) are likely not be working full-time. I assumed that this meant that they were less empowered to work than western women and society forced them to be stay-at-home mothers.

However, I didn't really think about it until my students started questioning me about my marriage and continuing to work. I said that it was common for married women to keep working and many mothers continue to work.

They said that that was true in Japan too. Then they started to question me about if I would stop working when I had children, or did I want to have children and when.

I replied that I wasn't sure about it and I didn't know whether I thought it was better to keep working or be a stay at home mother for the first few years. They were really surprised that I didn't know. I think it seemed to show weakness or a lack of organisation on my part. To them it seemed almost humorous that a woman in her 20s would be married and not know when she wanted to start a family and when she wanted to return to work.

They continued to question me about why I didn't know and I replied that I thought it might be best for the children to have a parent around for the first few years.

They nodded but then Yuki asked me, "but what is best for you? That is most important."

The others agreed. Yes, you must know what is best for you and that is what you do.

This was quite a revelation for me. For them, the decision about working and not working, and motherhood weren't necessarily about what is best for your children or your career, but what is best for you. The woman and the mother. It seemed so much more empowered that such choices were made by and for the mother rather than other factors.

Since then I have spoken to other women in NZ on various occasions about the issue of when to have children and when to go back to work. The answers that frequently come up have to do with justifying it in terms of money, career or children's well-being, and seldom in terms of what is best for the mother as a person.

It was not only the fact that Japanese women made these choices for themselves but also their interpretation of what the role of the housewife is in Japan that destroyed the myth of the submissive Japanese women for me.

I think it is fair to say that in NZ and other western countries we hugely undervalue housework and domestic labour. It is made economically undesirable to be a housewife or househusband in NZ, whereas in Japan larger salaries, lower tax rates and further tax benefits for one-income families make having one partner at home a far more appealing option.

Traditionally in the west, the housewife is not a role that is given a great deal of respect or financial power within the relationship. In Japan the housewife controls the finances. The husband's salary goes into a bank account that she controls and then she gives him an allowance to buy his lunch, pay for his transport and maybe, if she is generous, enough for him to go out drinking with his colleagues. I often heard Japanese salary men joke that their sons were given more allowance from their wives than they were.

As one female student explained to me, "If my husband is boss at work or gets promotion, I'm happy for him. But I'm boss at home."

Apart from a couple of disgruntled salary-men who would like more money to buy drink with from their wives, they generally seem happy enough with this arrangement. The men just have to work - they don't worry about paying bills and maintenance stuff, they are happy to have their wives deal with those hassles.

They do not seem to find being given an allowance an affront to their masculinity as I suspect many western men would at being given pocket money.

I venture out into speculation here but I suspect it comes from the Japanese ideal of womanhood being the Mother.

Motherhood and idealised maternal qualities seemed to be commonly presented as attractive in Japanese media. It was pretty common in commercials in Japan to see a beautiful woman promoting various products as mothers, that is playing with or cuddling some small child. It was a stereotype known as, amongst several western colleagues of mine, the 'yummy mummy'. A woman enjoying motherhood and looking radiant and happy as she has fun with her kids. I think that this image is not-so-common in Western commercials. Sure sometimes they have the 'mother' character advertising the product but it is often undercut with a slightly negative context which makes motherhood seem less attractive option than the carefree, presumably single lifestyles of the super-models who surf and play tennis in the tampon, toothpaste and moisturiser ads. There is often a slightly negative undercurrent - "As a busy mother I need a washing powder that gets out my children's hard-to-clean stains" or "this cleanser-and-toner-in-one product allows me to look good in spite of my lifestyle."

The idealised, glamorised mother image could in some ways be interpreted as a subversive pressure on Japanese women to have kids or at least to behave maternally towards men. There appeared to be a tendency for Japanese women to be indulgent and nurturing towards men, almost as a form of flirting. I often observed even amongst children that the girls would kind of look after the boys - they adopted a half-bossy but half-praising/fawning attitude towards males that left me confused.

That's about 5 yen worth - there's still another 5 yen to come!