If you have a chance to come to Japan due to your husband’s business or marriage to a Japanese man, you might be wondering about Japanese housewife culture.
Further, you could be wondering what do they do daily and how to make a relationship with them.
In this article, I’d like to explain the following matters.
-What is Japanese housewife culture
-What do Japanese housewives do daily
-How to get along with other housewives and join their community.
After reading this article I hope you will understand their lifestyle and solve the problems with the relationships with Japanese housewives.
Let me introduce myself. I am Hiro from Tokyo and I was born and raised here. My Japanese wife was a temporary housewife when our kid was born and my mother was a housewife for more than 30 years, and I received their opinions when writing this article.
Japanese housewife culture
Japanese housewives usually take part in housework and care giving for their kids while their husbands are working.
The ratio of housewives in Japan
Based on the poll done by the ministry in Japan, the percentage of the housewife is 31% whereas the working wife is 69% in 2021.
It has dropped dramatically since 1980 when the percentage of housewives was 64%.
The reason for decreasing the number of housewives is that the Japanese economy was stagnant since the 1990s and A lot of families gradually became unstable to rely on the husbands’ income only and the Japanese government has promoted more ladies to work, but still, 31% of married ladies are housewives.
Japanese housewives are covered by a social security system
Japanese housewives are eligible for social security such as health insurance and pension insurance even though they don’t pay anything for that by becoming dependent members of working husbands, so they feel they are protected by society even if they are jobless.
Japanese housewives often control purse strings.
Most Japanese wives keep the wallet of their family and their husbands receive a monthly allowance for their lunch in the office or anything to buy.
My mother is also a housewife and my father often asked for her permission when his consumption exceeds his monthly allowance, and she always decided yes or no by checking our financial situation at home.
Unavoidable relationships with other housewives
Japanese housewives usually have an unavoidable relationship with other housewives.
They start to have a relationship when their kids enter kindergarten/school and there are a lot of opportunities to join a community of parents. I’d like to introduce more about the relationship in an upcoming headline.
What do Japanese housewives do daily
Usually, Japanese housewives are busy, doing all the housework such as cleaning rooms, washing dishes, hanging out laundry, and preparing meals for the family, and at the same time, they need to take care of their little kids feeding them, helping brush their teeth and change their clothes, etc.
At that time they are often furious with their husbands because Japanese husbands tend not to be supportive of housework or caregiving of their kids because they focus more on their work.
They sometimes have a lot of free time
However, they have free time when kids are in kindergarten/school and their husbands are working, so they spend most of their time on whatever they want to do such as watching drama, reading books or studying something.
When my wife became a temporary housewife when giving birth to our first daughter, she enjoyed studying Chinese online lessen.
Some housewives do part-time work
There are a lot of housewives working partially.
if their yearly income is less than 1.03 million yen, it is not taxable, so they tend to work till that amount of yearly income.
In Japan, there are a lot of mothers who work at restaurants, shops, and supermarkets to be clerks. (Recently online businesses, such as web writing is getting popular among them).
My mother (housewife) also did a part-time job distributing newspapers early in the morning when I was little.
How to get along with other housewives.
The relationship with other housewives is unavoidable. You may possibly encounter them in the kindergarten/school that your kids attend.
The relationship is sometimes important to receive information regarding attending kindergarten/school and you may sometimes mutually sympathize with their hardship at home due to the similar environment they are in.
However, there is a way to get along with them properly such as follows.
You shouldn’t be too much into their lifestyle
It is sometimes thought to be rude if you ask too many questions regarding their family situations in Japan. Each family situation is different e.g. husband company’s status, marriage status (got divorced or not), and kids’ status.
A lot of the wives wish to hide those personal matters especially if those are negative (e.g. husband’s job was bankrupted or their kids are disabled) and they sometimes feel humiliated if the information is disclosed among their community. Then the relationship could deteriorate.
Of course, some wives love to openly tell about their own family situation, so you should discreetly ask about their situations if you are really interested.
You should never speak ill of their housewives.
Some wives love to speak negative things about other families, but you shouldn’t agree with what they say or imitate to speak ill of another family.
It could affect not only the whole housewives’ relationship but also their kids’ relationship and you are possibly a target of criticism due to their revenge for saying negative things.
Thus you shouldn’t speak negative things about other housewives if possible.
How to join their community
If you are a foreigner you might be wondering how to join their community.
If you attend kindergarten/school you may have a chance to communicate with other parents, but other than that you possibly attend a community centre for children (Jido kan児童館) each city/town has one or two facilities. There are a lot of housewives letting kids play in the playground.
Also, you may go to Child care salon held by volunteer people in your city. Child care salon is the place where you can consult the problem of raising kids or you can have the opportunity to interact with other housewives & kids.
Usually, a brochure is available in a municipal office.
Conclusion
In this article, I introduced Japanese housewives and their daily life and how to get along with them.
I hope you have learnt what Japanese wives usually do in their daily life and hope you have a good relationship with them.
Thank you for reading my article till the end!
Also, if you are interested in whether Japanese women are good wives, please refer to the below article.
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