Muhler
Imperial Majesty
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- Apr 18, 2010
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I'm so sorry, I thought the laughing emoji meant you were joking! I apologize! From my current reading, the dynamics you describe still operate to a certain extent, although not to the same degree perhaps as in the 80's. I think I've mentioned this on previous threads, but my DH and I had some very interesting conversations last year while we were in Japan with women who described their feelings about their lives and the obligations they undertook when they got married. One of the things they described was the recent phenomenon of women in their 50's who divorce their husbands because once their children are grown and out of the house, they are tired and want to live a less burdened life, and I think that ties in with what the woman in Prisma's article is talking about. If even extending Golden Week for a few extra days for the enthronement seems more stressful than fun, that's noteworthy to me.
Alas, the laugh is on me, for thinking this was in the past.
This really interest me. And I will return later today, with a few more examples, which may shed a little more light on Japanese mentality as it was (hopefully) beforehand and perhaps you can tell us whether it is still the case.
Right, Japanese culture, not least day to day culture fascinate me. - Not that I would wish live like a Japanese..!
Like I explained briefly, back in the 80s, women should preferably marry before they turned 24 and that was the end of their career if they had one. From now on they were homemakers, with sole responsibility for the household, including de facto bringing up the children.
It was you job to ensure that your children were not only well behaved, but also well turned out in their school uniforms. (The idea that it might be more practical to have all school uniforms washed and ironed at a central cleaners was not an option!) Not only that you made sure your children studied, because it was ultimately your responsibility if they did not do well at school. Failing to do so meant that you lost face, your husband lost face as well.
It was also your responsibility to look after the elderly relatives, typically your father-in-law or worse, your mother-in-law.
Apparently it was/still is that in a household your mother-in-law outranks you, even if you are doing all the work.
And it was customary for mother-in-law to nag their daughters-in-laws at every opportunity.
Pointing out every possible flaw or potential flaw. Perfect simply isn't good enough. Pointing out that their precious son would have been so much better off with another wife and so on and so on - you get the picture.
Your son would not put his foot down. Apart from that simply not being socially acceptable there is also the Japanese concept of "giri" Which can be translated to something like honor-debt.
A child is indebted to it's parents for being born and brought up. A Japanese is indebted to Japan for being a Japanese.
Failing to acknowledge and honoring that debt (here by being a grateful, devoted and dutiful son) is a personal loss of face.
So there is no way in this world a son would side with his wife against his mother.
On the contrary. The running of the household is the job of the wife, including ensuring harmony within the household. Bringing up a discord between the wife and her mother-in-law is ruining the harmony.
And even if her husband is sympathetic to her plight, she would not see much of her husband anyway. In a society where working very long hours is the norm and where working even longer hours is pretty much expected, a wife will see a tired husband for at best a few hours in the evening. A husband who is no doubt in no mood to discuss conflicts within the household.
That is if she even see her husband, because if his superior decides they should all go to a bar, everybody goes to a bar!
- There was an article recently where a young man really wanted to meet and date a girl, but he worked long hours, and on the days they go off from work early, his superior usually decided they should celebrate by going to a bar. So our young man rarely meet a girl and dating? Forget it!
So it's hardly a surprise that for Japanese in the early 30s, some 30-40 % have never had intercourse. - That according to a recent study.
That is if our young man can even find a girl willing to marry! because why should they? Marriage = end of career, end of financial and personal independence and a tedious life as a homemaker to a husband who more often than not she will basically only see for a few hours a week.
Apart from that, the vast majority of unmarried adult children live at home, where their mother looks after them, washing, cooking, cleaning. - Why give that up in order to marry a junior executive?
Demographically that is of course a disaster! It has been estimated that the Japanese population in less than 50 years will have been reduced by a third if the current trend continues.
With the current national-conservative government very little is being done to make things easier for families with children.
So men go out with their friends and co-workers (whether they want to or not) and young women go out with their friends and their paths don't really cross - except professionally.
There are bars in Japan, where men who have had a rough day at the office go to. Here a girl will boost their self-esteem by telling them that they are not hopeless at their jobs, that they do have talent, that they are something...
Who else should do it? You can't go home to your parents and complain about your boss being after you again. That would disappoint them. You can't tell your friends, then you would lose face. You certainly can't tell your co-workers!
How about the young women you ask?
Well, if you are pushing 30 or more, and your mother is in despair, because there is no hint of grandchildren in the horizon, and your ovaries are itching, what to do? Well, how about getting married? To yourself...
Everything is there, ceremony, flowers, wedding dress, bride-girls, music. Everything, except the little detail about a spouse...
Okay, admittedly most young women don't go to these extremes. Instead they spoil themselves at the spa with their friends - they can afford it, being financially independent and living at home.
As late as the 80s young women, married and unmarried were often fans of actors or rather actresses.
There is a particular kind of traditional theater in Japan, (can't remember the name) where women play the leading roles of young men. These are young "men" who woo their female counterparts with poetry, romance and attention, something there can be precious little of in the daily life of any women on this planet come to think of it, (?) but perhaps especially Japanese women.
Some of these female fans were deeply in love with the leading actress at these theaters. Not because they were lesbians, no, no, they were not even in love in the actress herself. They were in the love with the character the actress played.
When you on top of that consider that many Japanese don't go on holiday, and most don't go on as much holiday as they are entitled to, there really isn't much room for a little private date, husband and wife. Something that in my experience is so important to maintain the spark in a relationship.
- I could go on, but let me end this post with something that already back in the 80s struck me.
We had followed a younger wife, with her terror of a mother-in-law, in the documentary. At the end she said that she looked forward to the day her son married, then she could take it (all her current frustrations) out on her daughter-in-law.
Well, if you take Masako. An intelligent, well-educated woman and substitute mother-in-law with the senior courtiers - then perhaps it's no wonder she has a depression?
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