The worlds' perception of Japanese women must have been further distorted with the recent premier of Hollywood's Memoirs of a Geisha. I have not seen the movie myself apart from the cinema preview, but I think the mass media simply doesn't do justice to Japanese women by putting the wrong images forward.I present my own views of Japanese women and I realize that they are not a generalization of the entire Japan demography nor should they be treated as such.
At home
There are many virtues of Japanese women that deserve to be depicted or mentioned. Japanese people have been trained to follow a strict regime and guideline since young. Everybody has their roles. A father is the sole bread winner. The mother takes care of household chores. And that's how it has been ingrained by social pressures into the perception of most general Japanese. However, it is perhaps due to this ingrained image that every Japanese woman have that makes them ideal housewives. They are meticulous, unquestioning, and devoted. With virtually no questions asked, Japanese housewives goes about their daily chores like a carefully programmed robot. Everyone is supposed to know and follow the unspoken rules. And this probably leads to very little conversation at home. Recently, with more influx of Western ideas and thinking, a new wave of modern Japanese housewife has emerged. They demand their husbands to do their share of the housework, child rearing and other social activities. Is this a good development? Perhaps this will lead to a more solid relationship as the spouses have more in common when they perform the more activities together.
At work
Never in any other advanced countries will you see gender discrimination being so obvious as in Japan. I think Japanese men doesn't know what treasure they have living beside them. Japanese women are so taken for granted as if they were born to serve the opposite gender. Historically, this may be so, but in the modern society, people see this as unfairness and maybe even abuse of authority due to status or power. I had a brief conversation with a friend who has stayed in Melbourne for more than 10 years. And she remarked that she has not seen a single Japanese postgraduate lady student during all her travels. I agreed. Me neither. The status of Japanese girls take a sharp decline compared to their peers of the opposite gender upon graduation and when they finally start working. The future of Japanese women is to get married and take care of their home while the men are shown the way up the career ladder. Of course it doesn't make economic sense to train someone only to loose them when they tie the knot. But it's a social dilemma, employers are taking huge risks when they promote a women only to loose them when they start a family. But I don't disagree that women can't be more capable than their male counterparts. So unless science can come up with a solution and tip off the balance, as in Arnold Schwarzenegger in Junior, in the future, women may be continuously discriminated upon.
So, I think that Japanese women are extremely well educated and can be very independent if they want to. But at the end of the day, they would have to stand up for what they believe in and not submit themselves to general views.
