The Girl from Outside

(8 of 10)

Dr. Koizumi met as usual with his pupil the day after the betrothal was announced. As they began their lessons, the elated crown prince unconsciously spoke up: "It is really fine!" Dr. Koizumi echoed him: "It is really fine, is it not?" And they smiled at each other.

Some Changes Made. Michiko-san makes an inspiring example of the ability of a Japanese woman to move from the ranks of the common people to the dizzying heights of the imperial throne. But it is a deceptive example. Ever since the peerage was abolished, wealthy industrialist families like the Shodas have become the new peers of Japan, and their daughters are princesses of the realm in everything but the name.

For other Japanese women the gains have been less spectacular, but in their limited horizons, more revolutionary and of greater significance. Even in the rural districts, where women still work 14 hours a day, and man is still treated as danna-sama (the master), there is change. Explains a countrywoman: "The farm wife is quite willing to work just as hard as before, but she wants to be treated like a human being." Girls are no longer sold to textile factories by their parents—now the factories try to lure them by "guaranteeing a husband before you are 30." In the richer farm areas, many households are installing modern kitchens, bathroom plumbing and washing machines that are ending centuries of drudgery.

Six million women are now wage earners, twice as many as in 1948. There are 26 women in the national legislature, 360 women seated in local assemblies, one woman mayor. In more than 30,000 clubs and P.T.A.s throughout Japan, house wives go in for cooking classes, sewing circles, charity drives. Wives can also be militant, and have often backed their husbands in strikes by bullying shopkeepers into advancing credit, badgering government officials and forming picket lines. The women of Japan are fiercely antiwar, anti-rearmament, anti-H-bomb.

In the cities, freedom has gone further. The average girl of any class is taller and stronger than was her mother at the same age. She wears earrings, permanents her hair and paints her nails, smokes, wears a wristwatch, Western dresses, nylon stockings and high heels. She may live in an apartment house that has also radically changed Japanese life. Formerly, a wife was chained to her home, not only by her duties, but by fear of fire if the wood-and-paper house was left unattended. Rice cooking used to take an hour before serving; now the housewife merely fills an electric rice cooker (cost $10) and turns a switch.

Luxuriating in her new ability to go about by herself, to movies or coffeehouses or department stores, the city woman derides the old system, thinks that Michiko Shoda is mad to want to live the stiff, formal life of the imperial family.