ABSTRACT
As we stated in the introduction, there were 271 letters printed in the column during the fifty-one-week period of our study. Ninety-one of the 271 were omitted from our consideration; forty-three were from writers under the age of seventeen, and we decided to concentrate on adult problems, or at least on letters sent to the column by adults; since our aim was to investigate the column as it reflected general social trends, the forty-eight letters dealing which such highly technical problems as the interpretation of inheritance or real estate laws or requests for sophisticated medical advice were also discarded. This process left us with 180 letters from adults dealing with themes we wanted to concentrate on. According to the subject categories decided on for chapters two through
eight,thebreakdownforwhatwedeterminedwerethemajorsubjectsof letterswasasfollows:
SubjectNumberofLetters
Complaintsagainsthusbands51 Lonelinessandisolation29 Troublewithin-laws23 Additionalsourcesoffamilytension32 Courtshipandloveaffairs17 Worriesofparents11 Troubleatwork10 Miscellaneousproblems7
Whatcanwesaywediscoveredfrominvestigatingthelettersand responses?Somepatternssurfacedasratherobvious:Itwouldbedifficult tooverlookthefactthatwivesinJapanarepresentlyreevaluatingtheir spousalrelations,andalargenumberofthemfindtheirhusbandstobea sourceofirritation.Aswesaidattheoutset,morethananythingelse,the columnisaforumforyoung,marriedwomen.Onlynineofthe180 lettersfromadultsweresignedbymen;theagedistributionwasasfollows:
Age
17and19 2~29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70-79 80+ Unclear
NumberofLetters
7 72 33 22 19 11 8 5 3
Oftheseventy-twolettersfromwomenbetweentheagesoftwenty andtwenty-nine,fifty-eightwerefromwives,andabout60percentwrote tocomplaineitheraboutrelationswiththeirhusbands,themotheroftheir husbands,oraboutsomeotheraspectofmarriedlife.Astheagebrackets increaseinseniority,thepercentageofcomplaintsfromwomenabout someaspectofmarriedlifebecomesevenhigher.Twenty-oneofthe twenty-twolettersfrompeopleintheirfortieswerefromwomen;•.;ixteen
of those were complaints about married life. Of the sixteen letters from women in their fifties who wrote to the column about nontechnical problems, thirteen (over 80 percent) described troubles with husbands or other problems with marriage.
