Social Science Japan Journal Vol. 12, No. 1, pp 23–44 2009 doi:10.

1093/ssjj/jyp009
Published online May 5, 2009

............................................................................................................................................................................................................

Negotiating What’s ‘Natural’: Persistent Domestic

Gender Role Inequality in Japan
Scott NORTH

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The burden of family work in Japan falls disproportionately on wives, even those who work full time and have
relatively high incomes. Japanese household gender culture shows little of the progress toward equality seen in
other industrialized nations and this is contributing to delayed family formation and low birth rates. This study of
dual-income Japanese families with young children found a degree of increased mutuality in family work being
negotiated. Nevertheless, couples’ actions continue to be oriented strongly to symbols of patriarchal prestige,
such as husbands’ birth order position and breadwinner status. To the extent that they embraced tradition,
respondents’ negotiations were colored by gender displays that preserved the certainties of historically
contextualized gender identities and reproduced their associated unequal family work differentials.

1. How Does Persistent Inequality in the Division of Family Work Matter?

This paper examines how some dual-income Japanese couples divide family work (housework and
childcare). The evidence and interpretations advanced contribute to the larger question of continuity
and change in Japanese gender cultures. The gender equality clause (Article 24) of Japan’s Constitu-
tion and statutes such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Fundamental Law for a Gender
Equal Society seem to represent the post-World War II shrinking of the gender gap seen in other weal-
thy, industrial economies. But despite becoming a great economic power, Japan’s gender practices
continue to manifest the patriarchal orientation inscribed in prewar law and custom through the ie
family system, a venerated template from which Japan’s distinctive ‘pattern of civilization’ (Murakami
1984) is said to have evolved.
Questions about men’s levels of family involvement and persistent inequality in Japan’s division
of domestic labor are of interest for two reasons. First, they reveal an imbalance in our knowledge.
English-language studies of Japanese men overwhelmingly emphasize work (Abegglen 1958; Cole
1971; Rohlen 1974; Clark 1981; Lincoln and Kallenberg 1990; Roberson 1998), while those that
do take up men’s home lives (Vogel and Vogel 1963; Rohlen 1974) are rather dated.
Scholars critical of ‘the salaryman doxa’ have broadened our understanding of the varieties of Jap-
anese masculinities and diverse male motives for living (Mathews 1996; Roberson and Suzuki 2003).
Nevertheless, portrayals of the home lives of mainstream men frequently remain superficial stereotypes
(e.g. Jolivet 1997). With the notable exception of work on involved fathers by Ishii-Kuntz (1993,

............................................................................................................................................................................................................

Scott NORTH is Professor in the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University. Recent publications include ‘Hatar-
aku: Bungy
o o Tegakari ni’ (Gendered Work through Theories of the Division of Labor), in It

o Kimio and Muta Kazue, eds.,
Jend
a de Manabu Shakaigaku [Shinpan] (Studying Sociology through Gender [New Edition]) (Sekai Shis
osha 2006) and
‘Kar
oshi Activism and Recent Trends in Japanese Civil Society: Creating Credible Knowledge and Culture’, in Patricia G.
Steinhoff, ed., Going to Court to Change Japan: Social Movements and the Law (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming).
He can be reached at Osaka University, Graduate School of Human Sciences, Suita-shi, Yamadaoka 1-2, 565-0871 Japan,
or by e-mail at north@hus.osaka-u.ac.jp.

ª The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press in conjunction with the University of Tokyo. All rights reserved.
24 Scott NORTH

1996, 2003), we largely lack what Shwalb, Imaizumi and Nakazawa (1987: 264–265) called for in
their review of studies on modern Japanese fathers: (a) observations of men’s parenting and family life
that would allow us to see cause and effect directly; (b) research on how family structure, social sex
roles and social structure affect fathers, (c) knowledge about how Japanese fathers are adapting to so-
cial changes and (d) understanding of how husbands and wives relate to each other, especially the re-
lationship between motherhood and fatherhood. In sum, we need to know more about how fathers
live and how they feel about their relations with their spouses and children.
Second, what Japanese men do at home is an important developmental indicator. D
ozoku family

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traditions and associated norms for social relations dampened the shocks of rapid industrialization,
promoting high marriage rates and conjugal families, while suppressing divorce. Continuity was a vir-
tue which enabled a smooth ‘fit’ between industrial capitalism and family form without the disrup-
tions seen in other countries (Goode 1963). Japan’s post-industrial family transition (Ochiai 1997)
is also unfolding differently.

2. Japanese Gender Exceptionalism

Practices and policies, such as women’s hours of employment and the availability of parental leave for
men, set national, structural contexts for men’s family work (Hook 2006). Japan’s female labor force
participation declined across most of the 20th century, growing only about 7% since 1970, a period
when other Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations saw average
growth of 25% (Ochiai 1997: 17–18; Danjo Ky
od
o Sangaku Kaigi 2005: 6). Due to a decline in family
businesses and an increased demand for part-time workers, married women workers today generally
work for wages outside the home (Rebick 2005: 114). But while 68% of employed women were reg-
ular (seiki) employees in 1985, only 46.5% were in 2007 (MHLW 2008: 10). Between 1985 and
2007, the portion of female workers employed part time doubled and those employed on fixed-term
contracts tripled (Nakamura 2006). Some analysts see this as evidence that indirect discrimination
against the 43% of the labor force that is female is spreading (Sato, Osawa and Weathers 2001).
As nonregular work has increased, the number of dual-income households in which both spouses
work full time has gently declined (Danjo Ky
od

o Sangaku Kaigi 2005: 32). Also indicative of continu-
ing trends, the curve representing women’s labor force participation over the life course retains an ‘M’
shape due to withdrawal from employment for childrearing (Rebick 2005: 26).
Despite Japanese women’s comparatively low rates of participation in paid labor and correspond-
ingly high level of devotion to children, Japan is experiencing a crisis of under-reproduction. Marriage
and fertility rates are falling together, as women avoid or delay marriage and have fewer children (Usui
2005). Less than 2% of births take place outside wedlock (NIPSSR 2004: 8), meaning that declining
marriage rates have a direct impact on fertility rates. Total fertility fell below replacement level (2.08)
in the mid-1970s, and when it hit 1.25 in 2006, Prime Minister Koizumi called it the government’s
‘most pressing issue’ (Botting 2006). Koizumi’s successors have continued to grope for answers, so
far without success. Two so-called ‘Angel Plans’ (1994 and 2000) and other measures, including pro-
visions to expand childcare leave and provide more childcare centers with longer hours, as well as
a ‘plus one’ campaign to encourage mothers to have one more child each, have failed to stem fertility
decline (NIPSSR 2004: 14).
Although there is a popular discourse that says wives’ reluctance to have more children is due to
husbands’ failure to help shoulder the burden of raising them (Japan Times 2006), and although it
is true that wives typically do about 90% of family work (Danjo Ky
od

o Sangaku Kaigi 2005: 24–
25), the primary reason couples do not have the 2.56 children they say they would like is financial
 Persistent Gender Inequality in Japan 25

(Naikaku-fu 2005: 38–43). The costs of raising children, especially educating them, create incentives
for husbands, whose incomes are generally higher, to be devoted company men, absent from the home.
Increasing husbands’ family work contributions would require major changes in their time at work. A
quarter of men aged 30–40 years, the prime fatherhood years, work 60 or more paid hours per week
(Asahi Shinbun 2006). Long commutes, unpaid ‘service overtime’ and obligatory socializing also re-
duce potential family time. Less than a quarter of Tokyo men return home before 8 pm (NIPSSR
2004: 20).
International comparisons rank Japanese men at the bottom in the proportion of family work per-

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formed. They average only 30 minutes per day on housework, childcare and eldercare whether their
wives work full time, part time or not at all (Danjo Ky
od
o Sankaku Kaigi 2007: 20), even when their
children are under age five (Otake 2008). Past age five, Japanese fathers’ total average time with
children falls to less than 10 minutes per day and less than three minutes a day for children over
age 10 years (R
od

osh
o Joseikyoku 1998: 57).
In a 34-country comparison of national context, gender empowerment and spouses’ hours of
housework (Knudsen and Wærness 2008), Japanese men were clear outliers whose 2.5 hours of
housework per week (childcare was not measured) was more than 10 times less than their wives’
27 hours per week. In terms of gender empowerment, Japan’s United Nations Development Project
score was only 0.2 (1.0 being perfect gender equality) putting it in a neighborhood it shares with
Poland, Hungary, the Philippines, Mexico and Brazil.
This context of falling fertility has drawn attention to the persistence of the unequal division of fam-
ily work in Japan. Consciously or otherwise, Japanese women, especially the more highly educated
(Nemoto 2008), are avoiding marriage because it is an extension of the institutionalized sexism of
the workplace and Japan’s patriarchal past. Dual-income marriages are struggling because of the spec-
ter of the ‘second shift’ for wives. Low birth rates and working wives’ dissatisfaction over family work
are intertwined strands of an emerging crisis of care seen in hypercompetitive, capitalist societies
(Hochschild 1989: 11, 2003: 2–3), but Japan’s care deficit may become particularly acute because
expectations of female care are high.
Traditional premises about gender and care forestall open discussion about the gendered division of
labor. Japan needs to have this debate, but is avoiding it (Schoppa 2006). Open talk threatens the tacit
foundations of male supremacy. In current government deliberations about work-life balance, the talk
is mostly about doing things to enable women to work and care rather than helping men to care. De-
spite tripling since 2005, less than 2% of men take any childcare leave and the government’s modest
ambition is only to raise it to 10% by 2014 (Nikkei Woman 2008). Japanese society is riding ominous
demographic trend lines toward economic and social deflation, but countermeasures equal to the
challenge have been stubbornly slow to emerge.

3. Theorizing Persistent Inequality in Family Work

Research on this issue is comprised of two lines of questioning. A comprehensive review of the socio-
logical literature on the division of household labor (Shelton and John 1996) identified ideology
(traditional or egalitarian), time constraints (including number of children) and relative resources
(especially income) as the relevant independent variables. Time constraints matter most, but even
statistically significant associations tend to have small real effects on the negotiation of the division
of family labor (ibid.: 304–309). Sociologist Brines, (1994) influential article agreed, concluding that
research on discrete variables limits understanding of how spousal economic dependency and gender
culture interact to reproduce family work as women’s work.
26 Scott NORTH

The second stream of theorizing on persistent inequality in family work sees it as the outcome of
displays of a prestige hierarchy derived from gendered consciousness. This research emphasizes sub-
jective meanings of gender over structural factors in determining task allocation. Adding gender meas-
ures to multivariate analysis makes other variables diminish or disappear, suggesting that they are
subsumed within a gender display model (Brines 1994; Shelton and John 1996: 312; Ono and
Raymo, 2006).
Joan Williams, an American legal scholar, distills the consilience of this evidence into concrete pre-
cepts explaining why women, whether working or not, do the lion’s share of family work. She locates

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the unequal division of labor as part and parcel of a historically evolving system of gender conscious-
ness. She calls the current iteration ‘domesticity’. It rests upon three tacit entitlements:
(1) Employers are entitled to ‘ideal workers’, who put organization goals first.
(2) Men are entitled (required) to be ideal workers in a male-centered workplace.
(3) Children are entitled to a full-time parent whose life is organized around caregiving. That is, a mother
(Williams 2001).
These entitlements underlie gender displays: women are not entitled to much but motherhood and
men are not entitled to much but work. One asserts and affirms position and identity by performing
gender appropriate tasks and repudiating those that feel inappropriate (Chodorow 1975; Pascoe
2007). Gender is achieved through routine social action (including inaction) that is felt to be in accord
with the putative natural essence of masculinity or femininity (Coltrane 1989).
American couples generally report feelings of fairness, suggesting that their unequal division of
household labor is a purposeful social construction that validates essential gender identities, contrib-
uting to psychological well-being and marital satisfaction (Shelton and John 1996: 315–317). One
recent US study concluded that shared church attendance has the strongest impact on wives’ marital
satisfaction (Wilcox and Nock 2006), while others find that men’s time spent on female-typed tasks
predicts wives’ level of satisfaction (Shelton and John 1996: 313).
Japanese society is neither Christian nor very feminist, and its discursive justifications for ‘fair’ gen-
der practices are probably different. By what standard is fairness judged? What premises engender feel-
ings of appropriate entitlement that add up to the exceptional gendered gap in Japanese family work
set out above? To find out, I examined the ways negotiations regarding family work were enabled or
constrained in particular marriages.

4. Analyzing the Culture of Spousal Social Action

Marriages are intimate partnerships, influenced by and reflecting the people, cultural milieu and ma-
terial circumstances that surround them. I approached the division of family work in Japan as an aspect
of social life best studied by ‘looking at and listening to real people doing real things in a given his-
torical moment, [. . .] and trying to figure out how what they are doing or have done will or will not
reconfigure the world they live in’ (Ortner 1996: 2). My aim was to interpret couples’ division of fam-
ily work in terms of subjective meanings—the gender consciousness that informed their motives for
doing the things they did or did not do.
This perspective revealed the spousal division of family work as ‘social action’, action oriented pur-
posefully toward others and given meaning by how they respond. For Weber, who originated the cat-
egory, social action excluded gender relations. According to the 19th century prejudices, marital roles
were manifestations of immutable male and female natures, the taken-for-granted basis of patrimony
and masculine domination (Adams 2005). Unpacking the intersubjective creation of meaning in
spousal social action exposes rationales for gender differentiation in family work as examples of
 Persistent Gender Inequality in Japan 27

‘culture in action’: durable, but not ‘natural’ or immutable, socially constructed strategies for orga-
nizing social life (Swidler 1986). In times of stability, these strategies are used unconsciously. Times
of instability, however, set the stage for open conflict and negotiation between competing alternative
ideologies and practices.

5. Methods
Foreign scholars have noted the difficulties of getting inside Japanese family life, as well as the rewards

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of achieving entry (Bernstein 1983; Hamabata 1990; White 2002). I conducted my study in and
around Toyama City in Toyama Prefecture, a medium-sized regional hub where prior residence of
nearly 5 years allowed me to seek access to private family lives. To bolster my credibility, I obtained
a visiting researcher appointment at Toyama University. Reasoning that gender and the division of
family work become serious issues ‘when partners become parents’ (Cowen and Cowen 1999; It
o
2003: 249–251), I sought introductions to dual-income households with small children. Using a pro-
cess of ‘snowballing from [. . .] multiple starts’ (Vaughn 1990: 198), I accepted no more than three
introductions from any one referent to avoid oversampling particular social networks.
Referring to earlier studies of family men (e.g. Gerson 1993; Coltrane 1997), I created a 151-item
interview instrument suited to the Japanese context. Between 1998 and 2001, I interviewed and ob-
served in their homes a purposive sample of 33 dual-income couples with at least one child under age
10 years (Tables 1 and 2). These pair interviews were generally about three hours in length. The tran-
scribed interviews were supplemented by observations from shared meals, drinking parties, sleepovers
and playdates involving respondents’ children and my child.
In practice, interviews were unstructured discussions about daily life. I asked respondents to tell me
about typical weekdays and weekends at their homes. In this way, I obtained answers to most of the
questionnaire items. When necessary I probed for details, but preferred respondents to volunteer what
they thought was important. Their self-estimates for weekly hours of paid work and family work, an-
nual income and who did what percentage of specific tasks were generally in round numbers.

6. Sample and Setting

All the husbands were employed full time. Twenty-nine (88%) were first sons, the position in Japanese
family structure that traditionally inherits household leadership and its associated role expectations for
the son and his spouse. Although 88% seems high, it merely reflects a trend accompanying fertility decline
in which 70% or more of all men born after 1964 are first sons (NIPSSR 2006: 2; Ochiai 1997: 152).
Seventeen wives were employed full time, sixteen worked part time. Nine full-time wives had ‘twin-
career’ marriages: both spouses’ jobs were identical or very nearly so, with equivalent salaries, duties
and social status. Those couples all worked in the public sector. Such jobs are relatively immune to
market pressures and may be the most gender equal in Japan (Fuse 1981).
The small size and regional limitations of the sample mean that it may not be nationally represen-
tative. Still, it is worth recalling that intimate studies of particular locations have been among the most
illuminating accounts we have of Japanese gender and family life. Japan’s New Middle Class by Vogel
and Vogel (1963) relied on only six families in a Tokyo suburb. Haruko’s World (Bernstein 1983)
unveiled gender in village life through the lens of a single Shikoku family. Lebra’s Japanese
Women (1984) portrayed the particular femininity of a hot spring resort. The credibility of those
studies was enhanced by regional specificity and a focus on a few respondents. The subjects have an
immediacy and believability that inspired my approach to the field research in this study.
28 Scott NORTH

Table 1. Respondents’ Family Characteristics.

Family Age Education Length of Type of Children Age of Home: Own,

(* 5 First Son) Marriage Marriage Youngest Loan, Rent

H W H W

A* 35 30 HS HS 5 L 1 3 Own

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F* 31 28 HS HS 9 L 2 4 Rent
H1* 44 44 HS MA 15 L 2 9 Loan
H2* 46 45 BA BA 20 L 2 10 Loan
H3* 44 44 BA BA 17 L 2 8 Loan
H4* 37 35 BA BA 8 L 2 2 Loan
I1* 40 38 HS JC 15 L 2 7 Loan
I2* 24 26 HS JC 2 L 1 2 Loan
K1* 45 42 BA BA 14 A 5 5 Own
K2* 30 27 HS JC 6 L 2 2 Rent
K3* 29 29 HS JC 5 L 2 1 Own
K4* 34 34 HS HS 13 L 2 7 Own
N1 42 41 BA BA 14 L 2 9 Loan
N2* 36 34 MA BA 9 L 1 6 Own
N3* 37 37 JC HS 11 L 1 7 Rent
N4* 48 43 BA JC 20 A 4 5 Own
O1* 38 37 BA BA 12 L 2 8 Loan
O2* 38 36 BA MA 10 L 1 5 Loan
S1* 41 37 HS HS 10 A 1 6 Loan
S2* 42 39 PhD MA 14 L 2 3 Loan
S3* 41 40 BA BA 15 L 2 8 Loan
S4 38 37 BA JC 9 L 1 6 Loan
T1* 42 39 HS HS 9 L 2 4 Loan
T2* 32 27 BA JC 2 L 1 1 Rent
T3* 36 33 BA JC 9 L 2 1 Own
T4 34 34 HS HS 10 L 2 4 Loan
T5* 39 38 HS HS 19 L 2 10 Own
T6* 41 39 BA BA 12 L 2 8 Own
U 43 42 BA BA 14 L 1 6 Loan
W1* 45 41 HS HS 17 L 4 7 Own
W2* 38 31 BA JC 8 L 2 4 Own
Y1* 39 39 BA BA 11 L 3 3 Own
Y2* 35 29 BA JC 4 L 1 3 Own
Average 38 36 11 years 30 love, 2 5
or total 3 arranged
marriages

Note: H 5 husband; W 5 wife; HS 5 high school; JC 5 junior college; BA 5 bachelor’s degree; MA 5 master’s degree; A 5
arranged marriage; L 5 love marriage; Loan 5 making home loan payments; Own 5 no mortgage. Respondents’ names have
been abbreviated for anonymity.
Table 2. Respondents’ Work and Family Work Characteristics.

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Family Husband’s Weekly Wife’s Weekly Household Wife’s Husband’s Percent
(* 5 Twin Career) Occupation Hours Occupation Hours Income Percentage Family of Total
(million yen) Work Hours
A Farmer (FT) 60 Office worker FT 40 5.00 60 6 17
F Cable lineman 72 Office worker PT 30 5.30 15 0 0
H1 Farmer (organic FT) 50 Social worker/farmer FT 50 13.00 54 0 0
H2 Engineer 50 CAD input PT 30 9.00 11 2 9
H3 Teacher 55 Piano teacher PT 16 6.60 18 9 23
Senmongakko
H4* Teacher HS 55 Teacher HS FT 48 10.00 50 4 14
I1 Pharmaceutical 50 Computer input FT 60 7.00 29 25 71
manufacturing
product development
I2 Plumbing/ 42 Nurse FT 50 7.00 50 25 50
construction
K1* Teacher HS 70 Teacher JHS FT 50 9.70 46 3 13
(farmer PT)
K2 MFG engineer 40 Cosmetic sales PT 35 5.50 18 12 23
K3* City official 60 City/welfare FT 46 7.0 50 5 11
(farmer PT) department

Persistent Gender Inequality in Japan

K4 Barber 50 Barber assistant PT 25 3.50 43 10 27
N1 Insurance company 52 Call center PT 32 6.50 17 12 32
representative
N2* Teacher HS 65 Teacher HS FT 65 11.00 50 17 53
N3 Sales 55 Clerk PT 12 5.30 15 1 3
N4 Purchasing agent 50 Various PT PT 12 6.70 9 3 6
O1 Equipment lease 50 Bank clerk PT 35 6.95 7 10 25
O2* Teacher HS 70 Teacher HS FT 70 10.00 50 5 13
S1 Cook/checker 70 Amway PT 20 5.70 12 2 7
(two jobs)

29
 30
Scott NORTH
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Table 2. Continued.

Family Husband’s Weekly Wife’s Weekly Household Wife’s Husband’s Percent

(* 5 Twin Career) Occupation Hours Occupation Hours Income Percentage Family of Total
(million yen) Work Hours
S2* Professor (full) 50 Professor FT 30 13.50 26 8 21
(Assistant)
S3* Prefectural bureaucrat 53 Teacher HS FT 58 16.00 47 15 38
S4 MGR Software Co. 55 Computer input PT 39 6.00 17 8 24
T1 Cook 65 Bakery worker PT 15 5.40 17 6 13
T2 Engineer (chemical) 55 Office worker PT 20 7.00 14 10 14
T3 Industrial group 48 Nurse FT 56 7.80 51 2 5
researcher
T4 Buyer 40 Dental Assistant PT 40 5.76 17 20 33
T5 Restaurant manager 60 Music shop worker FT 40 5.50 27 0 0
T6* Teacher HS 62 Teacher—elementary FT 55 9.70 46 3 13
school
U Produce sales 50 Teacher JC FT 40 8.90 56 10 33
W1 Wholesale medicine 56 Bookkeeper PT 30 6.68 15 1 2
sales family biz
W2 Teacher HS 75 School secretary PT 25 8.50 12 5 9
Y1* Teacher special 55 Teacher special FT 55 12.00 50 6 17
Y2 Office products sales 70 Clerk PT 30 4.50 24 1 1
Total or Average 56 38 7.82 32 7 18
 Persistent Gender Inequality in Japan 31

Toyama is located in the ‘snow country’ region of Hokuriku. Together with T
ohoku, Hokuriku has
Japan’s highest rate of female employment and the least workforce attrition for marriage or childbirth
(R
od
osh
o Joseikyoku 1998: 48). I have heard full-time Toyama housewives criticized for ‘playing
around at home’. Wives’ share of household income in 1997 was 15.2%, second in the nation. Toyama
was first in average income for workers’ households (U706,375/month) and had the highest rate of
home ownership (Toyama Ken T
okei Kyoku 1998: 44, 49–50), distinctions it retains today (S

omuch
o
2008). In all, 64% of couples in Toyama prefecture were dual income when the study began (ibid.: 20),
while the national average was only 48.1% (Danjo Ky
odou Sankaku Kaigi 2007: 17); 56% of Toyama

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couples with a child under age six were dual income (Toyama Ken T
okei Kyoku 1998: 68).
No respondents were divorced. Toyama’s divorce rate is the third lowest in Japan (S
omuch
o 2008).
Nor did I find evidence of domestic violence. A prefecture-wide survey, however, estimated 30% of
wives suffered some abuse by their husbands (Toyama Prefecture 2000: 5).
This statistical sketch of Toyama suggests a place where traditional family structures and work ethic
were stronger than average and remain so. In addition, the interviews were carried out at the dawn of
‘the age of gender equality’, which began with the establishment of the Basic Law for Gender Equality
in 1999 (Kashima 2003). Consequently, it should be noted that the negotiations of family work por-
trayed in this paper took place in a context where strong local gender traditions were just beginning to
feel the influence of government promotion of gender equality.

7. Interview Dynamics
Interviewing couples together allowed me to observe how interaction reflected and shaped spouses’
thinking about the division of family work. These pair interviews also resembled couples’ counseling.
Wives sometimes used my presence in their homes to raise issues with their husbands. They perceived
me as a possible ally and the interview as a forum in which complaints were acceptable. In clinical set-
tings, couple interviews may produce a higher truth quotient because spouses are constrained by each
other’s presence. Alternatively, however, this situation may also compromise the truth. Rubin (1976:
10) noted that anxiety about confrontation in family therapy caused couples to ally against the ther-
apist in the early stages of treatment.
I am not a family therapist. Couples did not come to me for help, nor did I encourage confronta-
tion. I only asked them to tell me of their daily lives, about which they were the world’s foremost
experts. Instead of asking if they told the truth, I followed Vogel and Vogel (1963: 287) and asked,
‘What truth did they tell?’ The majority of husbands and wives used the interview to proclaim, and at
times negotiate, feelings about family, the division of family work, their marriages and self-identity.
Asked how the divisions of family work they described came about, the couples’ universal response
was ‘naturally’. This agrees with the American finding that relative resources and time constraints are
not gender neutral, but ‘operate in the context of a symbolic system that defines men and women as
essentially different and ‘‘naturally’’ responsible for specific tasks’ (Ishii-Kuntz and Coltrane 1992:
643). But what did ‘natural’ mean for Japanese couples? How did their interaction recreate those
meanings despite dual-income or twin-career pressures?

8. Bargaining with the ‘Natural’ Gender Order

The following examples of spousal interaction illustrate how negotiations implicitly oriented to the
pole of men’s symbolic social roles of ideal worker and first son construed inequality in family work
32 Scott NORTH

as ‘natural’. Most of the examples are from the twin-job couples, where income and working hour
gaps are smallest. Bargaining theory predicts high-income wives have maximum leverage to negotiate
mutuality in family work. The relatively high levels of education among these couples meant also that
they tended to be my most articulate respondents. These couples were frequently explicit about what
was implicit in the sample as a whole. Where possible, reference is made to other surveys to provide
context. The discussion is organized around the three categories that earlier research concludes are
most salient to negotiations of family work: gender ideology, displays of time use and bargaining
based on relative resources.

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8.1 Conflict between Older and Newer Ideologies
Gender ideology in Japan has been measured by responses to the statement, ‘Men should work out-
side and women should protect the household’. Table 3 shows younger Japanese cohorts increasingly
disagree with this traditional stance. Nevertheless, opposition to men putting family above work or
women giving priority to career remains strong.
The small spike of increased support for tradition among women in prime childbearing years (30–
39) is an indication of financial dependence that encourages some wives to urge their husbands to
forego taking leave at a crucial time for both their careers and their families. Relying on the traditional
division of labor can be seen as a family ‘risk management strategy’ (Taga 2006: 144). Having missed
the opportunity to get close to their children at this time, men may remain distant as children grow
older and become as absorbed by school as fathers are by work (It
o 2003: Chapter 4). But the appro-
priateness of distant fatherhood faced challenges from a competing ideology of father involvement,
which created new dilemmas for fathers.
One twin-career husband contributed only four hours (14%) of weekly family work. He explained
how amae, a cultural strategy in which subordinates seek benevolent indulgence from superiors (Doi
1973), helped him negotiate the cognitive dissonance between his evolving ideology and stubbornly
traditional behavior.
‘From school textbooks in required home economics classes, I learned that men have to do house-
work, too. I don’t oppose men scrubbing the bath, making dinner, and vacuuming’. He said he

Table 3. Changes in Gender Ideology by Age Cohorts.

Age Cohort Percent Who Agreea

Men Women

20–29 40.7 34.8

30–39 41.5 40.5
40–49 49.6 37.3
50–59 43.9 30.7
60–69 54.1 45.7
70þ 66.1 60.7

Source: Danjo Ky
od
o Sangaku Kaigi (2005: Appendix p. 7).

a
Total percentage of those who ‘agree’ or ‘agree rather more than disagree’ with the statement ‘Men should work outside and
women should protect the household’.
 Persistent Gender Inequality in Japan 33

sympathized with the ‘theory’ of the ‘new family’ perspective, but he ‘relied’ on his wife to do the
family work because, ‘It’s work that I don’t want to do. Actually doing it is a pain’. The gap between
theory and practice made his position difficult. ‘I have to find ways to excuse my selfishness. All I can
do is ask her to forgive me’, he said.
Taking the position of supplicant, he induced his wife to indulge him. This could be read as recre-
ating the positionality of his relationship with his mother, in which the coddled first son is naturally
entitled to indulgence. The wife was obliged to show forgiveness, even though she clearly felt dissat-
isfaction. He, thus, maintained the customary masculine prerogative to use time as he saw fit. After

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work he practiced golf, came home and ate, drank beer and fell asleep on the floor. He had become
somewhat overweight. She bore total responsibility for the children and chores, despite working al-
most the same hours as her husband and contributing equally to their finances.
She showed metaphorically at least that she knew she was dealing with inertia rather than evolution.
‘He just soaks up nutrients and keeps getting bigger and bigger. I can’t lift even one leg’. ‘She wants
to move me, but she can’t’, he agreed. Conflict between his wife and his mother drove them to an
apartment soon after marriage (‘It was like a war’, he said). There he washed dishes, but the sink being
low he had to stoop. Seeing him bent like that, she felt it should be her job. She took over so that he
could symbolize the straight, strong central pillar of the family that she wanted to see. But despite her
contributions to income and their new house, her gifts were not returned.
On the other hand, the wife with the most involved husband (71% of the family work, one of three
men who did 50% or more) feared her two daughters would not find marriage partners equal to the
standard of male participation displayed by their father. The eldest son of a farm family, this man
worked in quality control for a pharmaceutical manufacturer. His considerable occupational self-
direction insulated him from the workplace masculinity culture that proscribed family work. Because
he arrived home before his wife, and because he had had a Chinese chef as his college roommate, he
did most of the family cooking. His wife did not resist this, nor was her identity threatened by lax
housekeeping standards. Their priorities were also influenced by participation in a foreign language
learning movement called the Hippo Family Club. Aggregated, these factors created the context
for the husband to easily incorporate family work into his gender ideology.

8.2 Coresidence, Tasks and Time Use as Rationales for Gender Displays
The ‘time availability’ hypothesis predicts a division of labor determined by time commitments, such
as children’s care and hours of work.
Table 4 shows the relationship between number of children, family work and working hours.
Clearly, family work was mother’s work. The more children families had the less fathers did. However,
in this small sample, it was the effects of grandparents and coresidence that really seemed significant in

Table 4. Number of Children and Husbands’ and Wives’ Hours of Work.

Number of Children Wives’ Average Family Work Husbands’ Average Family Work
Hours (Average Paid Work) Hours (Average Paid Work)

1 (10 couples) 35 (39 hours) 9 (59.2 hours)

2 (19 couples) 31 (38 hours) 8 (54.6 hours)
3 or more 39 (37 hours) 3 (57.8 hours)
34 Scott NORTH

this regard. As seen in Table 5, 13 families (39%) had grandparents living close enough to help with
childcare and 10 of the families (30%) were coresident with grandparents, including all four couples
with three or more children.
Such extended family, ie style households are in decline. They fell from 27% of all households in
Toyama-ken in 1997 to 22.2% in 2002, although this remains the second highest figure in Japan
and exactly double the national average (Toyama Keizai Gepp
o 2003). In all, 51% of Toyama house-
holds were nuclear families, making Toyama 43rd (Toyama Ken T
okei Kyoku 1998: 15).
Coresidence was associated with a roughly 50% drop in husbands’ average family work hours (four

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hours) irrespective of working hours. Coresident wives did seven to nine hours more family work than
those who did not live with children’s grandparents. One explanation might be that proximity to
grandparents meant proximity to older gender role norms. The frequently mentioned Confucian dic-
tum ‘respect men, despise women’ was reflected in the prestige accorded first sons and provider hus-
bands. Deference toward older people and traditional behavioral premises may have increased wives’
family work obligations and inhibited their ability to negotiate or complain. Conversely, being far
away reduced wives’ family work by more than 25%.
The power of gendered expectations associated with coresidence was clear in the case of a twin-job
couple and their child who split time between their home and that of the wife’s parents because their
daughter went there after school. At their home, this husband cleaned house and did all the after-meal
cleanup (53% of total family work), although no cooking. But at his in-laws’ home, where they ate
dinner each weeknight, he was forbidden even to clear his plate from the table. His wife said her
grandmother did not permit men to enter the kitchen, the symbolic realm of women, in accordance
with tradition. The norms of the grandmother’s generation assigned duties and set firm boundaries
based on gender.
Yet, in other cases, it was also possible to imagine that the increased family work of wives in
coresident households resulted from modern grandmothers’ desires for twilight years free from the
burdens of childcare and housework. By employing the still-accepted gender tradition of mother-
in-law as household manager and yome as apprentice, such grandmothers could justify placing the
burdens of caring for children and the household on the daughter-in-law, thus preserving time for
their own pursuits.
Coresidence norms weighed most heavily on wives. But even if they lived apart from in-laws,
women married to first sons frequently complained that assumptions of privilege based on male family
position encumbered them with special burdens. Although respondents spoke of ‘democratization’,
‘historical progression’ and the gradual eclipse of the world in which ‘a wife was not to step on her
husband’s shadow’, attitudes toward the time use of the first son’s wife were not much liberalized.
Responding to her husband’s explanation of how his life as a professor would not have been possible

Table 5. Effect of Coresidence on Family Work.

Distance from Parents Number of households Husband’s Percentage of Total

Spousal Family Work

Coresident 10 9.3 (4 hours out of 43)

Near (less than 30 minutes) 13 21.9 (9 hours out of 41)
Far 10 26.6 (8 hours out of 30)
 Persistent Gender Inequality in Japan 35

under the stricter patriarchy of the, ie system, his wife, also a lecturer, complained that her work was
deemed a distraction from her primary duty to raise children for the ie.

Yes, it may be true that your father was a bit looser than your grandfather (both farmers), but with respect to
the wife of the eldest son, they agree. No matter who she is and no matter how good, they do not like her.
Second and third sons’ wives can do as they please and their children are cute little grandchildren regardless
of what they do, but the first son’s wife is treated severely.
In Kyushu and Western Japan, which have lower rates of coresidence, men’s family work time was

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marginally higher (Kukimoto 2006). Within Toyama Prefecture, small regional differences were
sometimes emphasized. Even though many wives echoed a version of the sentiment, ‘Don’t marry
a first son’, certain areas were deemed especially ‘feudal’ and those men to be particularly avoided.
But women married to such men sometimes expressed pride in upholding their part of the tradition
that defined their obligations by their husbands’ position as first son.
Men as breadwinners (daikokubashira, center-post of the household) provided another justification
for the natural division of family work. Japanese men’s long, inflexible working hours are well known
(Morioka 2008). Husbands worked on average 18 hours more per week outside the house than wives,
but all the couples in my study seemed overworked. Whether wives worked full time or part time, in
total they averaged seven hours more work per week than men (Table 6).
Moreover, my findings replicate studies that find little association between women’s paid working
hours and men’s family work, as well as the negative relationship between women’s hours of paid work
and family work (Coltrane and Adams 2001: 92), in which reductions in total family work make the di-
vision of family work proportionally more even, although men’s contributions do not increase (Table 7).
However, when Toyama wives did shift work (e.g. nurses, a dental assistant whose job ran late) and
husbands had earlier, stable quitting times (reliable schedules), the men contributed more. But if
childcare help from relatives was available, different schedules did not increase husband’s family work.
Feelings of partnership and reciprocity moderated time use inequality. In the following twin-career
example, the wife’s skill at providing emotional compensation for her husband’s nontraditional

Table 6. Couples’ Work Hours.

Husbands (hours/week) Wives (hours/week) Family Total

Paid work 56 38 94
Family work 7 33 40
Total work 64 71 135

Table 7. Wives’ Employment, Work, Family Work and Husbands’ Family Work.

Paid Work Family Work Husbands’ Family Work

(hours/week) (hours/week) (hours/week)

Part time 27 33 7
Full time 51 26 8
Twin career 55 27 6
36 Scott NORTH

behavior set up a positive feedback loop. This man did 38% of the 40 total hours of household family
work (15 hours), including what his wife called ‘the full course’—shopping, cooking dinner and
cleaning up—each Wednesday, an overtime-free, ‘refresh day’ at his workplace, when everyone was
required to go home at 5 pm. ‘Dinner is really good when someone makes it for you’, she said.
Their arrangement originated in a complaint. ‘Since he swims one night a week, I felt I also de-
served a night when I could let go of the children and do something on my own’. She joined a civic
group. Her husband agreed, ‘Everyone needs stress relief’, and said he could appreciate his wife’s po-
sition. ‘Thinking up the menu is hard’. He began suggesting things for her to cook and pitched in

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without being asked. Most couples in the study felt shopping and cooking were gender-defining tasks,
and wives craved the intimacy and validation of women’s traditional role implicit in menu suggestions
or requests from their husbands.
This couple did not rationally discuss balancing family work on the basis of working time differences
(he worked five hours less per week), income contributions (he contributed six percent more to the
total) or gendered skill sets. When I followed up their detailed description of their daily lives by asking,
‘How did this division of labor come about’? They laughed a bit, as if to hint at past arguments, and
then she said, ‘Somehow it just emerged naturally’. ‘That’s it’, he agreed. She explained,
I don’t go around hectoring him to do things. He doesn’t tell me to do things because ‘That’s your area’.
That thing on Wednesdays that we were talking about – I was just feeling beat with work and the kids all the
time and he was going swimming once a week, right? So I complained a little, you know. With that, he vol-
unteered to cook on Wednesdays. But the rest is just natural.
‘Natural’, he repeated. When asked what ‘natural’ meant, he replied,
I mean I don’t think what we do is typical Japanese women’s work-for-women, men’s-work-for-men. It’s
not so much that. If she is busy, I have to help. And we both work, so it’s necessary to cooperate as much
as possible.
His wife elaborated on the factors behind his ‘natural’ transformation.
Yes, but, you know, when we first married, he was the kind who did nothing at all. (He laughs.) He was an
only child. His mother did everything, even boiling water for him when he wanted tea. Then right after we
married, he started taking English classes and his teacher (a Nikkei American woman) introduced him to her
husband (a Japanese) who turned out to be my husband’s elementary school classmate. They were glad to be
reunited and it was the start of our association as couples.
The wife said that cultural differences were a major topic of conversation between these families, but
more than Japan versus America, it was gender culture that was central. ‘The teacher’s husband was
very cooperative and helped his wife a lot. After I saw that, our marriage changed greatly, I think’.
The example of an alternative strategy for using time and thinking about family work was significant
in redefining this couple’s conceptions of ‘fair’ and ‘natural’. Imitating the West’s putative gender
equality held some cachet for other couples, too. Some degree of ‘internationalization’ or other
nontraditional influence on gender consciousness helped mutuality develop in the division of family
work. Likewise, female coworkers’ solidarity was important for wives’ efforts to increase husbands’
contributions.
Ultimately, schedules also mattered: if, as ideal workers, husbands faced mandatory overtime, they
could not shop, cook dinner or care for children. In addition, time use needed to symbolize gender-
appropriate behavior. By praising their husband’s efforts and skills, wives gradually drew them across
the gender line and into the kitchen, increasing husbands’ appreciation for them and fostering inti-
macy. A healthy household ‘economy of gratitude’ (Hochschild 1989) promoted satisfaction and
 Persistent Gender Inequality in Japan 37

mutuality regarding time use and family work. But an economy of resentment or indifference drove
wives and husbands to withdraw into the defense of naturally separate spheres, perpetuating inequality
in family work.
Motherhood was one such sphere, centered on children’s needs and the time commitment required
for meeting them. The hold of gendered parental traditions had as great an impact on family work as
work schedules and was tied up with them. Ishii-Kuntz (1993) found men ‘psychologically present’,
used as authority figures, but not physically present at home. Their absenteeism was a proper way of
enacting manliness that also opened a large space for women to enact motherhood.

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Myths rooted in the early 20th century invented tradition of the ‘good wife and wise mother’
assigned women-innate nurturing abilities denied to men. This widely accepted and celebrated prem-
ise of the superiority of female childrearing instincts has been analyzed as ‘the trap of the myth of
mother-love’ (Ohinata 2002). Even the most educated and outspoken women in the study were sub-
tly constrained by the premises of motherhood in ways that forestalled negotiation of family work.
A high school teacher and mother of a five-year-old son, married to another high school teacher
who did 13% of the family work, was asked the possibility of the father taking childcare leave if they
had a second child. ‘Impossible’! she said. ‘That leave is for taking care of the child. He can’t cook, so
the child can’t be left alone with him all day’. Even though it undermined her efforts to get him to do
more, she insisted on the superiority of a mother’s style of engaged childcare.

This guy’s ‘looking after’ is just being beside the child. Our son says, ‘Dad won’t play with me’, even though
dad is sitting right beside him. He probably thinks he is taking care of him though. The whole concept of
‘looking after’ is different for this guy. Simply being there is playing, perhaps. But kamao means facing
the child, really paying attention, talking, or drawing something together. Simply being there isn’t taking
care of the child.

She said men of her husband’s generation (he was 38) lacked both necessary skills and the desire to
do such things. She felt the sense of male privilege he acquired as a coddled first son had ‘damaged’
her husband by making him incapable of doing family work.
For his part, her husband felt that these unreasonably strict standards were part of the problem that
was beyond his control.

Half of it is that the roles are determined. What can I do? My feeling is that I should help as much as I can, but
if I try to help, my efforts don’t meet her standards for quality or quantity. I am doing some, but she does too
much. That’s a factor, too.

Some wives wanted to be seen doing all the housework. They were concerned with seken no me, the
normative assessment implicit in the gaze of their neighbors and relatives. Mothers-in-law were espe-
cially important. Their influence worked two ways. Their hierarchical gaze sometimes enforced patri-
archal tradition. However, mothers-in-law who worked realized that no one woman could do both
shifts without help. They gave their daughters-in-law permission to violate traditional norms, telling
them to make their sons do family work. And there were mothers pointedly raising boys to do house-
work, increasing their sons’ potential value in the tight rural marriage market.
The extensively elaborated traditions of intensive motherhood and professional housewifery devel-
oped over the last century were the corollary to ideal worker discourses. For both genders, domestic-
ity’s historically institutionalized task separation gave the division of schedules a natural appearance.
This continued to operate even when incomes were equal because action was oriented toward tacit
assumptions about marriage. ‘You should have noticed that I was tired and offered to help’, said
one wife, reflecting working women’s understanding of the notion that a good marriage is ‘like
38 Scott NORTH

air’, requiring little discussion. From the husbands’ perspective, the same notion meant that men did
not need to be concerned with the female sphere, thwarting important negotiations.

8.3 Relative Resources and Bargaining

The relative resources hypothesis predicts that income, occupational status and education confer
power to negotiate exemptions from family work. Japanese women’s inability to negotiate equality
at home has been seen as a product of limited labor market opportunities (Kikkawa 1998).
Table 8 shows that full-time and twin-career wives did significantly less family work than wives

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employed part time, but husband’s family work varied only an hour per week regardless of the level
of wives’ contributions to household income. So although wives’ higher incomes did correlate with
them doing less at home, it did not correlate with men doing significantly more.
It may be that there is a cultural lag at work (Gershuny et al. 1994). High incomes for Japanese
women are a relatively rare and recent phenomenon. Indeed, as noted above, the number of full-time,
regular employed women is falling (op. cit. ’07 Josei R
od

o Hakusho). A ‘gender free’ evaluation, in
which women and men’s economic contributions receive equal consideration, has not yet percolated
into popular consciousness and cultural practices.
Indeed, one of culture’s defining aspects is durability (Swidler 1986). Japan’s male dominated gen-
der culture is particularly heavy, dense and widespread, limiting the ‘cultural room’ for bargaining
(Hochschild and Tanaka 2003). The new reality of equal pay for some Japanese couples demands ac-
commodation, but the hold of old traditions is common enough to restrain widespread negotiation of
gender equality even among elite graduates (Strober and Chan 1999). Equal incomes for women are
necessary but not sufficient to bring about change in the domestic division of labor. Also necessary are
‘a sufficiently large proportion of men who, if faced with an economically autonomous woman, would
rather participate in domestic tasks than endure marital breakdown’ (Breen and Cooke 2005: 43).
How might such cooperative men appear when the need to display respect for traditional position
and received premises about proper dignity limited what wives could ask in negotiating household
bargains? To be accepted, new roles needed to fit into identity narratives that retained connections
to the past even as they pointed to the future. For husbands, evolution, conceived of as necessarily
slow change in gender relations across generations, was the most common trope. From most wives’

Table 8. Wives’ Occupational Status, Income, Contribution to Family Income, Paid Work Hours,
Family Work Hours and Husband’s Family Work.

Wife’s Average Percentage of Avg. Paid Avg. Family Husbands’ Avg. Husbands’
Occupation Income Family Income Work Hours Work Hours Family Work Percentage of
(Number of in Yen (Range) (Range) (Range) Hours (Range) Family Work
Cases)
All (33) 2,640,000 31.0 (7–60) 38 (12–70) 33 (10–80) 7 (0–25) 17.5
Full time 4,440,000 46.4 (27–60) 51 (40–70) 26 (10–42) 8 (0–25) 23.5
(16)
Part time 950,000 17.0 (7–43) 26 (12–40) 40 (21–80) 7 (0–20) 14.5
(17)
Twin career 5,390,000 49.2 (46–54) 55 (46–70) 27 (15–42) 6 (0–17) 19.0
(9)
 Persistent Gender Inequality in Japan 39

point of view, however, the story unfolding in their marriages was not a tale of progress but rather one
of continuity with the past. Although it pained their sense of fairness, working wives propped up hus-
bands’ family position and downplayed their own economic contributions so as to maintain their own
familiar identities and family positions.
One man explained how the differences in physical power and social status that were the basis for
male superiority in the village society of his father’s generation were replaced by earning power in his.
Now, however, even that basis for difference was giving way.

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Now, if both spouses work and if the woman earns roughly as much as the man, then if they fight, saying
things like, ‘Well, if you don’t like it you can leave’, or ‘I work as hard as you do and make as much money,
but on top of it I have to do housework’, then the man, you know, has no decisive grounds for claiming
superiority. So even if a man tries to exercise the authority that men had in the household in the past, it
is utterly impossible. Rather, what we have now is both spouses working the same hours and needing to share
the housework. Men never used to do things like raising the children or shopping, but now they have to do
those things equally, just as their wives do.
This couple was teachers, trying to reduce strain in their marriage by somehow adapting their re-
ceived gender premises to the reality of their lives. The problem was not all on the husband’s side.
The wife, too, was torn between natal traditions that informed her sense of self and the demands
of her career. Knowing the expectations for a bride who marries into a farmland owning family,
and concerned for her career, this woman negotiated a pre-nuptial exemption from work in her fian-
cée’s family rice fields as part of her arranged marriage. Liberation from that work, however, did not
mean escape from traditional gender consciousness.
In my house, men were above women; that is what I saw growing up. Because both of us do the same work,
my mother thinks we should be equal, but in the back of my mind I still have some idea that men are supe-
rior. I can’t do everything properly myself so I have to support (tateru) my husband.

The husband told me later that despite her submissive demeanor, his wife had twice threatened di-
vorce. After the first clash, he began to do laundry. The second time she brought an application for
divorce with her seal already affixed. Subsequently, he began washing breakfast dishes. Doing house-
work challenged his gender self-image and confrontation challenged hers. Tensions between the man
and his coresident mother may also have grown because his wife’s exemption from farm work in-
creased both his and his mother’s burden and his wife’s career meant that his mother did much of
the childrearing.
This man’s mother did not think men and women should behave as if they were equal even if they
did the same work. As with other cases where I could observe mother–son relations, this mother’s
conceptions of proper first son masculinity counted for a lot. After all, she had raised him with an
eye toward the local standards of her generation for taking over the household leadership. Still, his
wife had, after four daughters, finally given birth to a son and heir, thereby fulfilling the most impor-
tant duty of a first son’s wife.
Doing housework certainly challenged this man’s self-image, but divorce would have threatened his
ability to do his duty to preserve the household. He rationalized his concessions this way:
Dividing the housework and childcare is better for improving cooperation and it builds stronger ties between
spouses. Just as working in the fields once did, now housework and childcare are ways in which spouses
achieve cooperation.
By recycling the premise of cooperation for the good of the household as the goal of marriage, the
husband legitimized his housework within the ie framework. As the one responsible for solving
40 Scott NORTH

problems that threatened the household, it was incumbent upon him to take action. Her schedule was
so hectic that some nights she simply fell asleep in her clothes. She said she ‘handed off’ to him on
those nights and he washed dinner dishes. However, she never mentioned the conflict that led to their
revised marital bargain, preferring instead to preserve the facxade of harmony, and with it the part of
her identity that mandates a subservient, supportive wife.

9. Summary

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From pair interviews and observations, this paper identifies displays of gender consciousness that sus-
tain Japan’s exceptional division of family work at the start of the 21st century. The argument that
industrialization and higher rates of female employment close the gender gap holds in most OECD
nations. But despite advanced economic development, the Japanese gap yawns. Falling birth rates
are tied in part to women’s apprehensions about married life, creating a social crisis of under-
reproduction that government measures have so far failed to alleviate. Negotiation between spouses
is clearly necessary for a new division of labor to emerge, but discussion of husbands’ family work par-
ticipation was handicapped by traditions of ‘natural’ male rights and female obligations in marriage.
Japanese wives’ relative docility enabled husbands’ retention of prerogatives inherited from more
overtly patriarchal times. Couples’ shared cultural strategy of tacitly respecting ‘magnified images’
(Bourdieu 2001) of masculine power and position in the household—ideal workers and first
sons—preserved their gender identities and perpetuated gross inequalities in Japanese family work.
The sense of ‘natural’ entitlement carried by first sons was a major barrier to developing mutuality in
Japanese family work. ‘No one has ever told him ‘‘No’’’, said the wife of one. Characterized as cod-
dled and spoiled, first sons were defined by what they did not do at home, regardless of their wives’
earning power or occupational prestige. Socialized for natural dominance, these men were the visible
rural tip of a hulking patriarchal iceberg.
The portraits of spousal social action above revealed couples orienting their behavior to traditions of
gender power rooted in family structures and ideal breadwinner discourses propagated through cor-
porations and other institutions of Japanese civil society. Respondents’ justifications for the resulting
division of labor echoed the ideal type articulated by Weber, in which the norms of patriarchal dom-
ination in the family
derive from tradition: the belief in the inviolability of that which has existed from time out of mind. [. . .] In
the case of domestic authority the belief in authority is based on personal relations that are perceived as nat-
ural. This belief is rooted in filial piety, in the close and permanent living together of all dependents of the
household which results in an external and spiritual ‘community of fate’ (Weber 1978: 1006).
In the current age of dual-income households, the inevitability of these gendered fates is a source of
frustration and quiescence, but also a basis for stability and satisfaction. Adhering to traditional role
prescriptions promotes correspondence with internal emotional landscapes formed early in life. Phi-
losophers and psychoanalysts (Appiah 2005; Chodorow 1999) note how being a man or woman
implies an inescapable tie to the ethical demands of masculinity or femininity. Gender identities are
both socially evolving and personally constructed blueprints for living, but one tinkers with inherited
designs at one’s peril. Creating change may produce less stable conditions of existence. Orienting
one’s behavior by traditional symbols of stability and order is therefore a form of risk avoidance. This
may be why, despite the social problems and personal burdens of masculine dominance, couples in
this study, and Japanese in general, are loath to abandon their ‘historic ways of being’ (Rubin
1984: 213). To seek equality is to lose the poles by which a safe course may be charted.
 Persistent Gender Inequality in Japan 41

10. Implications: Where Does Japan Fit?

In other industrialized countries, the transition from the extended family to the nuclear, ‘male bread-
winner model’-family has been followed by the emergence of an ‘adult worker model’. Where this has
not yet happened, the persistence of unequal division has been a hot topic, often focused on the need
for welfare policy reform (e.g. Minguez 2004).
Changes in Japanese gender relations have been predicted since the 1970s (Fuse 1981; Fujimura-
Faneslow 1995). And, indeed, increased father involvement in contemporary Japan is evident: images
of fashionably involved fathers in ads and the new fathering magazines are reflected in public behaviors

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such as younger men shopping and pushing strollers. In Osaka today, I routinely see men caring for
children in public in ways that would have been hard to imagine only 25 years ago. As the narratives in
this paper show, Toyama fathers 10 years ago were likewise aware of impending changes. Recent eco-
nomic instability and official promotion of gender equality have certainly strengthened the awareness
among Japanese that the time has come for revised conceptions of gender to take root, although they
have been slower to appear in elite bastions of masculine domination, such as corporate boardrooms
and the Diet.
Ishii-Kuntz (1996) points out that the increase in men’s family work stems from a combination of
changes in some men’s perception toward employment and family, demands from wives due to their
employment, and men ‘reprioritizing’ work and family as workers’ share of national growth is declin-
ing. Debt burdens and work intensity are rising, as are fears of downsizing and damage to health
caused by overwork as ‘lifetime employment’ is being phased out in favor of results-based, flexible em-
ployment schemes.
Looking back and comparing them with their fathers’ generation, the current generation of fathers
is increasingly likely to conclude that the bargain of stable employment for loyal service is broken.
Moreover, many regret that their fathers were seldom home and they vow not to repeat that experi-
ence with their children. This historical context explains much about the emergence of a more fam-
ilistic orientation among men. If patriarchy and an unequal division of family work persist in Japan
today, it is unquestionably diminished in comparison with that which existed 40 years ago.
Yet, the pace of change has been slow. In comparison with other industrialized powers, Japan remains
an exceptional outlier. For every Japanese husband who does the shopping, cleans the bath, cooks or
takes his children to nursery school, there are nine who leave the household and care of children to their
wives (or mothers). And as this family-centered male minority has appeared, so has a backlash calling for
restoration of the hegemonic masculinity that supported fathers’ unquestioned authority (Hayashi
1996). This side of Japan’s gender politics is a serious obstacle to progress (It

o 2003).
At the same time, the reactionary backlash, although repugnant, is itself a sign of change. As hus-
bands (and men who would like to be husbands) are increasingly involved in ideological conflicts and
practical negotiations around gender and family work, they naturally must forfeit the aloofness from
domestic affairs that has been a signal characteristic of recent hegemonic Japanese masculinity. Al-
though ‘gender convergence’ is not yet the issue in Japan that it has become in Europe (Coltrane
2008), the negotiations of the rural Japanese couples portrayed in this paper suggest the sorts
of emerging interpersonal conflicts and accommodations around family work that will shape Japan’s
trajectory toward a less naturally gendered future.

Funding
Japan Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant 0726; Predoctoral Fellowship, Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation Berkeley Center for Working Families.
42 Scott NORTH

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