For Japanese Mothers, a Day’s Work Never Ends
home.
It is a legacy of the country’s exacting domestic expectations and rigid gender roles. While Japanese women have entered the work force at historic levels, their avalanche of domestic responsibilities is not shrinking — and men are typically not helping.
In fact, men in Japan do fewer hours of household chores and child care than in any of the world’s wealthiest nations.
According to an analysis by Noriko O. Tsuya at Keio University in Tokyo, women who work more than 49 hours a week typically do close to 25 hours of housework a week. Their husbands do an average of less than five.
Consider Ms. Nishimasa’s daily routine. The preschool her two youngest children attend requires the family to keep daily journals recording their temperatures and what they eat twice a day, along with descriptions of their moods, sleeping hours and playtime. On top of that, her 8-year- old son’s elementary school and after- school tutoring class require that a parent personally signs off on every homework assignment.
The paperwork is just the beginning. Cooking a typical Japanese dinner often i nvolves preparing multiple small dishes. Packed lunches can be works of art. Dishwashers are not yet ubiquitous. Wet clothes are generally hoisted on clotheslines. She does the vast majority of it all.
Her husband, a management consultant, often stays late at the office or goes out drinking with clients — which are also deeply entrenched expectations in Japan, particularly for men.
But Japan’s economy needs educated women to work to their full potential. After World War II, Japanese women typically quit work when they married or gave birth, taking care of the home while their husbands worked long hours to power Japan’s industrial expansion.
In the late 1970s, married women slowly started to enter the work force. Then, when Japan’s stock and property bubbles popped in the early 1990s, large numbers of them went back to work to keep their families afloat financially.
After that, Japan struggled to lift itself from a protracted period of stagnation. It was overtaken by China as the world’s second-largest economy in 2011.
Now, with a declining and rapidly aging population, Japanese employers are struggling with a severe labor shortage. The country is still opposed to increasing immigration, so Mr. Abe has underscored the importance of working women to shore up the economy for the long term.
But close to half of working women are employed part time, and more than half are on temporary contracts, reinforcing a large pay gap.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, fewer than 1 percent of employed women in Japan are in management positions, compared with an average of 4.6 percent among the most developed nations.
Like many Japanese companies, Ms. Nishimasa’s employer accommodates her domestic responsibilities. Until her youngest child enters third grade, she can work a shortened seven-hour day, albeit for 30 percent lower pay. She is never asked to do the kind of overtime she put in before her children were born. But because of that, she has not been promoted in eight years and has received scant pay raises.
“When I asked why,” she said, “my boss said my output was lower be- cause I work fewer hours.”
After Ms. Nishimasa graduated from a top university in Tokyo, she worked for a textbook publisher.
She married four years later. Much to her shock, the company automatically converted her employment status to part-time, she said.
“My boss started saying, ‘ You are not long for this job because you’re probably just going to go off and have kids, right?’ ” she recalled.
She looked for another job, but prospective employers said, “You probably can’t work late, right?” or “Does your husband understand how busy you will be?”
The publisher where she found a job did not ask her marital status. But the hours were intense, and when she did get pregnant, at 29, she did not slow down, often remaining in the office until midnight. She miscarried early in her pregnancy.
She got pregnant again, yet continued working long hours. When she left at 10 p.m., she recalled, “I was the earliest one leaving and I would have to beg my colleagues for forgiveness.”
After giving birth, Ms. Nishimasa never thought of quitting.
But because her husband is expected to meet rigorous targets for raises and promotions, Ms. Nishimasa cut back on work.
“Theoretically, it sounds ideal to have me work fewer hours and Yoshiko work more,” said her husband, Kazuhiro Nishimasa. “But realistically, it is not feasible.”
Just over half of Japanese mothers go back to work after the birth of their first child. But they often have part-time jobs while their husbands continue to work brutal hours, contributing to a phenomenon known as “karoshi,” or “death from overwork.”
Some experts argue that Japan’s culture of overwork is unnecessary, leading to inefficiencies and low productivity. If everyone worked fewer hours, women might be able to catch up and Japanese society as a whole would benefit, they contend.
Entrenched cultural expectations are another obstacle.
Last year, when Daiwa House, a homebuilder, conducted a survey of 300 working couples, most of the respondents said that women completed close to 90 percent of the chores at home, many of them unacknowledged by their husbands. The results went viral under the hashtag “namonaki kaji,” which roughly translates as “invisible house chores.”
“The awareness of men is still so low,” said Kazuko Yoshida, 38, a graphic designer and mother of two young children. “My husband does not have a gender equality concept.”
Her husband, Takahisa Yoshida, says he wants to be more involved with his children. But he says he does not have the confidence to handle two young children on his own.
“I work so hard,” he said. “I come home late at night and am exhausted in the morning.”
On a Friday afternoon, Ms. Nishimasa dashed out of the office to pick up her daughter Mei, 5, and youngest son, Haruki, 2, heading straight for the child-size mattresses stacked in their preschool.
She stripped off the sheets and blankets and put on a fresh set she had washed at home. Then she retrieved Mei’s indoor shoes before a teacher handed her some construction paper: a weekend homework assignment to make a flag.
Outside, Ms. Nishimasa loaded both children onto a bicycle and climbed on for the ride home. They arrived just after 6 p.m. Ten minutes later, her oldest son, Kazuaki, 8, arrived from an after-school program.
Ms. Nishimasa began chopping, fixing an array of dishes for dinner. She snatched bites of food while loading the washing machine and drawing a bath. She checked Kazuaki’s homework, rinsed the dishes and put the leftovers away. One after another, the children popped in and out of the bath.
Just before 10 p. m., her phone buzzed. It was not her husband, who was out drinking with clients. It was another mother, asking for a play date the next morning, while their husbands would be sleeping in.
Ms. Nishimasa then got back to work, reviewing the preschool journals. In a final burst, she zipped the vacuum cleaner around the living room.
Eventually, they all crammed into the master bedroom, the children squirming. “I’m fed up!” Haruki chirped. “I’m fed up too,” Ms. Nishimasa responded, good- naturedly. “Let’s sleep!”
The house finally quieted down close to 11 p.m. Her husband was still not home.
“The ones who work long hours get the promotions,” Ms. Nishimasa said. “And the bosses have full-time housewives.”