Have you ever heard that Christmas Cake joke: Japanese women are like Christmas cakes, if they surpass the 25th (Christmas day or their birthday), they’ll be difficult to dispose of…
This joke makes me think Japanese women are bred to be wives. Some of the festivals, like the Hina Matsuri (also called Girl’s Day) are celebrated so daughters will grow to be healthy and find good husbands. A few friends have told me that as parents they worry that their daughters won’t marry. One of my older lady friends announced her daughter’s engagement, and let out a big sigh of relief. She said her daughter will finally be married at 24. She is one of the fortunate ones, it seems.
Others who aren’t as lucky, like one of my close friends, was telling me she’s turning 33 soon and must find someone suitable or suffer going through an omiai (お見合い, a type of matchmaking meeting）. Another, who is 28, told me she will marry at 34 (an age considered the last chance to get married by most Japanese people).
Whichever female type a Japanese girl is, she seems to want to be married by a certain age, either by her own choice or her parents’ or even by the society’s. Basically, there are four female types in Japan. According to this Time Magazine editorial comic, they are the Career Girls, the Little Princesses, the Desperate Housewives, and the Bad Girls. A common thread is the need to find husbands (maybe except for the Bad Girl…). While more and more women are starting to become more liberated and choose to be single, a lot of women still want to find a partner, settle down and build families. In a developed nation like Japan, it’s quite nice to see that women still prefer to keep to traditional roles (remember the words of a certain Japanese minister?).
The funny thing is that, when I first came to Japan, the notion of “Christmas cake” was running strong. In the last decade though, the concept has become so obscure (at least in Tokyo) that most of my husband’s and my student’s don’t instantly recognize it. Every student we’ve mentioned it to in the last 3 years believes it’s an utterly out-dated notion, though I do wonder if their parents might be nervous about them getting married ASAP as they (the parents) grew up with the idea of “Christmas cake”.
That being said, I think most women would still like to get married though now the age where they draw the line is between 30-35. Mainly, they feel this way because they want the option of having children.
Your blog is very interesting and I look forward to continuing to read it. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the comment, Shari! And thank you for the encouragement!
I’m on a short holiday, but I will resume writing when I return
“In a developed nation like Japan, it’s quite nice to see that women still prefer to keep to traditional roles ”
Traditional roles?
Out of 100 or so students, about 60 are women and most of the married ones are not happy and almost all the single ones are happy.
I love the route women are going right now. Modern men welcome…traditional men , keep living with mommy!
Thank you for your comment, Chris B!
Although a lot are happier single, some still would like to be married. Like Shari mentioned, the marrying age seems like it has moved to 30-35 but many women still haven’t given up hope of finding a suitable partner and having kids.
I have asked some friends why they’d like to marry if they’re happy being single, but all they say is that they’d like to be married… strange but I guess it’s part of life here?
WOW!!!!
im a canadian “indian” and i got married at 19. this seems to be the way it is around here, most of my friends are married now and most r happy.
now that i think of it, a good percentage of people in my age range (20-24 yrs) are married, well in my part of the country.
Thanks for the comment, c beardy!
I think that it is nice that women in Japan can pursue traditional roles without being looked askance at or regarded as failures like they are in the U.S. In the States, being a housewife is seen as a wish to be lazy or as being too unambitious or stupid to get a decent job. I seriously believe that a stay-at-home partner or parent is essential to a well-raised child and seriously helps even in childless families.
Women (or men) who stay home improve the quality of life for the people they live with immensely. I know because my husband worked 4-6 months a year for 8 years while I worked full-time for 12 years and the months when he was a “househusband” made my life a lot easier during those years because he cooked, cleaned and shopped. For the last two years, he’s been working full-time and I’ve been working part-time and we’ve changed places and it makes his life while working easier. The two-income, two-career family mainly enriches life materially and tends to be detrimental in many other ways.
Personally, I believe the obesity epidemic in the U.S. is closely linked with the lack of stay-at-home parents as the first thing to suffer when you’re tired and worn out from work is food shopping and preparation and the next thing that follows is fatigue-based eating (sugar for sugar energy boosts).
I hope that Japan maintains a positive outlook on both housewives and working women and they don’t go the way of the west in belittling how women who choose to stay home are regarded. The next step is to view men favorably for making the same choice so there can be a flexibility in who fills that role.
Thank you, Shari!
That was exactly what I was thinking! It is so refreshing to see women who can work successfully yet choose instead to raise children (which I think is more difficult, anyway).
I have students who are excellent at English and they excel in everything from arts to history, but if asked they still reply they’d still like to be moms when they get older. They’d readily give everything up to focus on rearing their own kids.
I know how hard it is to balance a career and a family, and it can sure lead to one being neglected. It’s really sad when it is the family that is sacrificed. So that being said, I was just hinting that I admire Japanese women for being traditional in that respect, being selfless and accepting the inevitable role women take, that of wife and/or mother.
[...] Japan, if a women is over 25 and still single some would liken her to a Christmas Cake, which is really hard to get rid of after December 25th (or in this case a Japanese woman’s [...]