Role of Partners
In ancient times, women were engaged solely in housework and rearing infants, and men in the struggle with neighboring tribes and wild animals and in hunting game for the family. Men's duty was always very risky and involved desperate life-or-death confrontations. As long as men were engaged in such dangerous work, in which women could not participate, there was no room for a women's liberation movement to develop. The roles of men and women were clearly separated.
With the progress of civilization, men's work has been rationalized and simplified, and men are no longer required to face life-threatening danger. In contrast, women must still undergo the burdens and pains of pregnancy and childbirth, though they have been greatly relieved of housework as a result of modern science.
Today, men play their role outside the home as they did in ancient times, but it is no longer a matter of life or death. They can even afford to read papers or magazines on the commuter train to work and can enjoy a drink on the way home. Women's position too has changed. They now have an opportunity to do many of the same things as men. In fact, many women are doing as well as or sometimes even better than their male counterparts in Japanese society. It is natural that the women's upheaval will continue.
Nevertheless, in a traditional society like Japan, there is still a distinct boundary between the roles of husband and wife. They may be trapped by their own notions of "manliness" or "womanliness," but a more fundamental point seems to be that Japanese women are proud of their dominant family role in keeping the household together while the men go out and earn a livelihood outside. Judging from the fact that Japanese wives usually have absolute control over the family budget and the education of children, along with a responsibility to hold the family together, they are definitely the "stronger sex" in the family. Despite their subservient manner, the position of Japanese wives is something more than it has often seemed to be. In addition, despite the heavy overlay of male supremacy resulting from feudalistic and Confucian concepts, Japanese husbands very often demonstrate weaknesses of personality. They wish to be the wives' grown-up children and are lost without their tender care. A Japanese man, once experienced as a husband, cannot survive without a wife, whereas women have proved that they can lead a single life after divorce or the death of a spouse. Japanese wives have more will power and psychological strength than their husbands, and it may even be concluded that these wives—the "stronger sex"— are the mainstay of Japanese society.
Expectations of a Wife
One night I telephoned a friend of mine after I had returned home. It was around nine o'clock, which I thought was not too early and not too late to catch him. His wife came on the phone and said to me:
"My husband? He is always Gozensama [Mr. a.m.]. O ho ho ho ho. . . ." She laughed happily and proudly. Gozensama is the nickname for a husband who comes home after midnight. It means automatically that he is a hard worker and has a sign of success in life. It also means that he is a loyal samurai to his lord. This wife's happy laughter obviously came from her confidence that her husband's deep involvement with his work was putting him well on the road to success.
"In contrast to my husband, you are already home. How hopeless you are. .. ." She did not say this exactly in words, but her triumphant laughter surely implied it.
The American billionaire J. Paul Getty, who passed away some years ago, was married and divorced five times in his life. In his book How to Be Rich, he explained why his five marriages ended in failure. Each of his former wives was a wonderful woman who did her utmost to make their marriage a success. But he overworked. He could not remember taking a single day of vacation in 45 years. His work schedule and need to devote most of his time to building and expanding his businesses took a heavy toll on his personal life. When each of his wives found her man thinking of his business interests first and of her only second, she could not feel she was really a wife, or that she really had a husband.
I imagine Getty would not have been divorced if he had had a Japanese wife. In general, a Japanese wife would be pleased to support such a great samurai husband as long as he showed a promising future. She would feel better knowing that her husband was dedicating so much of his time to business achievement. Japanese wives are usually more understanding of their husbands than are wives in the West and put up with a considerable degree of hardship and solitude for the sake of their husbands' career. Perhaps no other women in the world are so anxious for the success of their husbands as are Japanese wives. Why is this so?
Japanese women have been tied to the traditional family system for centuries. Doomed to stay inside the house, they were denied any important social participation. Therefore, a wife needed a surrogate to express her existence and aspirations socially. Her husband has always played this role and been her chief status symbol. Success or failure of the husband has always had grave significance for the wife. If the husband rises in his career, the wife will be credited by the community with an invisible but honorable award entitled "meritorious supporter." This is an uncontestable social identity for a married woman. The more boring and tedious housework is, the more the wife desires her husband to work harder and achieve more.
Mr. A was a good-natured man who graduated from a first-rate university and then went to work for a well-known trading company. He was rather serious-minded, and his image was more that of an intellectual than of a businessman. Several years after his marriage, he was transferred from a top-level sales job in the field to a desk job in personnel. The transfer indicated that he was no longer a promising samurai executive.
When he was 45, his wife foresaw that he would rise no higher in the company than to the position of section chief. Thereafter, she began to develop strange physical symptoms. Her husband's very approach to her made her sick. She could not help feeling a disgusting chill and could not stop shivering for a while. Merely thinking of her husband's future gave her a fierce headache. To make matters worse, one day in Ginza (a famous shopping street in Tokyo) she attended the alumni meeting of her university classmates. Each one of them spoke about her chief status symbol—her husband: professor, doctor, big businessman, bureau director, and so on. The sexual relationship between Mr. and Mrs. A ceased for good after that. Mrs. A began torturing her husband over the smallest matter. What terrible days the husband had to go through! Even the slightest retort on his part made her hysterical. She would faint and her hands and feet got Stiff. Later her illness became worse and she was admitted to the hospital.
This is an extreme and rare case, but it does illustrate the high expectations a Japanese wife has for her husband. It is only a matter of degree. The development and progress of the husband is everything for the wife. An average husband is just like a runner on a jogging machine. He keeps running on the conveyor belt of the machine—runs, runs, and runs—but never reaches (the goaclass="underline" satisfying the expectations of his wife. And her nagging at him never improves the situation. It only drives him to be another Gozensama, who sacrifices his family life and works harder.
Expectations of a Husband
For many young men, sexual attractiveness is a primary criterion in the choice of a partner. The determining factor for them is usually a woman's physical features—a good-looking face, large breasts, and full hips set against a narrow waist. However, when mature men are asked to give qualities they regard as most important in their marriage partners, virtues such as tenderheartedness, sincerity, faithfulness, and warmth are often cited, and the commodity value of physical attractiveness is usually given secondary importance.