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Japan's slump prods housewives into workforce
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From The Asian Wall Street Journal March 27
TOKYO--When Masako Torii got married 28 years ago, she was eager to tackle what she believed was the most important job for a woman: full-time housewife and mother. In the decades that followed, she devoted herself to caring for her husband and later, their two children.
That freed up her spouse, Hiroshi Torii, to spend long hours running his small printing company, which provided the family with an upper-middle-class income. At home, Mr. Torii, like many Japanese men of his generation, was anything but self-sufficient. His wife says he would often call out to her to bring him his ashtray, even when it was sitting right in front of him.
Then, three years ago, Mr. Torii's company failed. His family lost their income and temporarily split up to save on expenses. To help make ends meet, Ms. Torii enrolled in a job-training program and landed a full-time post as a hotel clerk. Now, at age 50, clad in a navy-blue uniform suit and striped bow tie, she spends five days a week behind a hotel desk, juggling telephone calls and taking reservations. Meanwhile, Mr. Torii, 51, who has since started a new venture, has had to take on such unaccustomed household chores as making coffee and helping with the laundry.
The transition hasn't been an easy one. But, these days, it is being repeated all across Japan. The country's decade-long economic slump has roiled the domestic lives of many couples like the Toriis. The downturn has thrust Japan's businessmen into a tough new world of bankruptcies, pay cuts and layoffs, eroding household incomes. That, in turn, has prodded a growing number of the country's estimated 16.5 million homemakers into the work force as fledging breadwinners.
The trend has fueled a heated controversy known as “the housewife debate,” which pits traditionalists who insist that a woman's place is in the home against those who argue that women should have their own incomes. The debate began in 1998 with the publication of “Give Me A Break, Full-Time Housewife,” by Risa Ishihara, who wrote that stay-at-home wives were “parasites” feeding on their husbands.
The 34-year-old housewife-turned-author says she decided to write her book after tradition-minded homemakers chided her for seeking work soon after the birth of her daughter.
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