ABSTRACT
Since first broadcast in their current format around 1990, Japanese television dramas have almost always featured working women. The development of these dramas has paralleled the growth of a generation with more choices in employment and family than women before. With more than twenty years of hindsight, this chapter analyzes 1990s television dramas to understand the genesis of working women characters that influenced this generation. A seminal example is Tokyo Love Story (1991), the first Japanese primetime drama to attract global fans. Tokyo Love Story balances expectations for female characters, while depicting them in new ways. It encourages empathy for women who take the initiative in romance and work but furthers beliefs that women who prioritize their careers can never be wives and mothers. Various categories of working women have emerged since. Yet the narratives through which they have been portrayed promote the family as the nation’s backbone and the assumption that women’s happiness is dependent on marriage and motherhood. Surveying what has and has not changed since Tokyo Love Story reveals the television industry’s role in shaping gender norms and notions of women’s labor.
