Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation (Vintage Departures) by Zielenziger Michael

Author:Zielenziger, Michael [Zielenziger, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-05-04T05:00:00+00:00

These days Kiyoko prefers returning home each evening to the same small bedroom she had as a child, just a few feet from her parents' room. The comforts of a home-cooked breakfast and the dolls she grew up with are more appealing than having to spend at least $1,300 a month for her own place.

“I go shopping, I go out to dinner, I enjoy musicals, and like to go out with my friends,” Kiyoko said, toying absently with a diamond pendant when I asked how she spends her free time. Kiyoko prefers to savor her financial and social independence without having to answer to a husband—though offhandedly she told me that she might like to be a mother someday, if she ever meets the right guy.

Kiyoko studied for a year at the University of Wisconsin during college and took her first job after university graduation at NHK, the prestigious government-owned TV and radio network, hoping to make it her career. She soon learned that her American training and experience was more of a detriment than an advantage, because her language ability was superior to that of many of her bosses. “There were only a few people there who spoke any English, but they wouldn't pay me for my knowledge. I didn't feel appreciated,” she said.

After two years, she moved on to Toyota, whose international marketing campaigns she hopes some day to lead. Today she earns enough to shop regularly at Prada and Louis Vuitton and to take regular vacations in Paris and Hong Kong. Her parents effectively subsidize her living costs, aside from the few hundred dollars she pays them each month as “rent.”

Up until the 1970s, before the rise of the service and information society, a woman like Kiyoko had to marry just to survive. Her schooling and work training focused on her acquiring the skills needed to please a proper mate, including cooking and household management. By joining a man's household, or ie, and taking his family's name, a woman secured identity for herself in Japan's complex social hierarchy and also effectively guaranteed her economic future. Marriage was about duty, not love, and the vast majority of marriages were arranged by parents or intermediaries. As in most cultures, an aging single woman confronted poverty, isolation, and uncertainty.

Also, in the decades just before World War Two, when Japanese society was far more agrarian, men and women commonly worked side by side in the fields and farms, planting rice and growing vegetables. But after the industrial collapse caused by defeat in war, there were fewer factory jobs available and women workers were consigned to low-prestige jobs with little hope of attaining professional stature. A full-blown baby boom, which started in 1947, also drew women back into the nursery.

A woman who worked in a white-collar field became an O.L., as the Japanese call it—an office lady—who poured tea and performed clerical or menial chores. In a factory, she did repetitive chores or operated a textile machine. Society expected her to marry by her mid-twenties, get pregnant, and quit to raise her children.

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