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What would be the word,
which describes Japanese women today?
I don't think there
would be any suitable words, which would contain the typical characteristics
of today's Japanese women. In the past, we used the term "Yamato
Nadeshiko" and it means "vulnerable but valiant".
What would be the Today's equivalent?
In the old days, Japanese
women helped men in a modest and devoted manner while they spent
most of the time taking care of the household and raised kids at
home until the end of their life. It was a life of a sceneshifter,
so to speak. It was almost impossible in that era for women to choose
the direction of their lives and such a trend was accepted in Japanese
society in those days. Yet, the Japanese women lived valiantly supporting
their husbands and family in such an unfair society.
Now let's look at today,
what about today's women as compared to those of Old days?
In 1960 th Japanese
women started to gain their position both at home and in the society
and began to start working out of the house part time and few worked
as employees. It seemed that a woman's way of thinking started changing
gradually since then. Undoubtfuly, there remain unfair equality
of job opportunities just because they are women even today.
However, it was tremendous
improvement on the Japanese woman's status in the society and they
are freed from the half-slavery image of Japanese women. Today,
you cannot find such docile woman who wishes to be an old fashioned
Japanese woman. While it is a fantastic improvement, it is also
a pity that Japanese women lost some of their charm at the same
time. By saying that, I hear women say "What about Japanese
men?"
Yeah, you are right! The same applies to Japanese men also.
However, whether they are Japanese women or men there are still
some who keep good old days traditional value. This probably would
be due to the environment in which one was raised, age, experience
and social environment.
There is symptom of
"manly" in Japan. That is women behave and speak like
man. A typical example is young Japanese women prefer to use men's
words. Like other foreign languages, there are words for a man or
woman and Japanese kids that start distinguishing them as soon as
they are in kindergarten. Japanese woman used to speak softly and
their vocabularies were very soothing for the ear of listener. Now,
young generation women are giving it up for equality or trend. Today,
Young Japanese women, especially those secondary and high school
kids, use "Boku" or "Ore" (means "I"
for men) without hesitation. The vocabulary or way of speech reflects
the quality of oneself and it reveals the speaker's education, experience
or human relationship to listeners.
I sincerely hope that young Japanese women will recognize the beauty
of women language.
There is increasing
number of divorce cases in Japan year after year and one of the
reason of divorce for men is " I felt as if I were with a friend"
or " I felt as if I lived with man" that sounds very close
to the situation of "Big Mac" country doesn't it?
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