ABSTRACT
The full-time or “professional” housewife (sengyō shufu) is central to many discussions of postwar Japanese society.1 First introduced by Ezra Vogel’s study on Japan’s New Middle Class (1963) as the counterpart of the salarīman, the housewife has become a symbol of postwar middle-class family life. Dedicated to the well-being of her family and devoted to the educational success of her children, the role of the housewife has been considered as a profession, lifelong career, and a sign of status matching that of her white-collar husband (Hendry 1993; Imamura 1987; Vogel 1978). Although studies of the housewife phenomenon have generated a greater understanding of gender aspects of family life and women’s life courses in postwar Japan, relatively little attention has been paid to class aspects of the role of the housewife. As research on working class and blue-collar women has shown (Fuse 1984; Kondo 1990; Roberts 1994), the role of the housewife and emphasis on stay-home motherhood is largely limited to the middle-class. Working class women often need to work in order to add to the family income, and tend to reject the lifestyle and ideal of the full-time housewife. Viewed from this perspective, the full-time housewife is a class-specific phenomenon, and rather than representing women in general, sheds light on gender aspects of social class in contemporary Japanese society. As housewives not only gain their status through marriage, but socialize children, they provide insight into existing class differences between women as well as the socialization and reproduction of class in contemporary Japan.
