Supplemental Response #1_A Modern Take on Housewife in Japan_Ann

After reading this week's articles, especially Lynn Spigel’s “Installing the TV Set: Popular Discourses on Television and Domestic Space, 1948-1955”, I feel a strong urge to recommend a Japanese TV show I watched recently to people who are interested. The show is called We Married As A Job!, and it was aired on Japanese TV station TBS in 2016. For this week, both Spigel and Lipsitz talk about the relationship between TV sets and women as well as the representations of women on TV. Spigel also pays special attention to the domestic space and the role of American women in the age of suburbanization in the 1950s. Of course, the show I’m recommending is anachronistic to what Spigel and Lipsitz are talking about, but it does present an innovative and in some way feministic view of the role of the housewife in modern Japan. 

We Married As A Job! tells the love story of Mikuri, an unemployed master's graduate in phycology, and Hiramasa, a well-paid and kind programmer who has never been in a relationship before. Mikuri struggles to find a permanent job even with a master's degree and bounces between temporary positions. When she is laid off from her current job, she desperately accepts a temporary side job as a housekeeper in Hiramasa’s home. Both of them really enjoy each other’s company and Mikuri becomes the regular housekeeper for Hiramasa. One day Mikuri’s parents decide to move into the mountains after her father retires, Mikuri, not wanting to give up her job as a housekeeper as well as the advantages of living in Tokyo, proposes a “contract marriage” with Hiramasa. Hiramasa is shocked at first but after some calculation, he thinks that this “contract marriage” is economically beneficial for both of them. So the two of them get married while Mikuri gets paid as a full-time “housewife”. This is but a very brief plot summary of the 11-episode series, and of course, Mikuri and Hiramasa fall in love with each other through the process of this “contract marriage” and get actually married at the end. 

The plot may sound a little cheesy but I think there are some really forward-thinking and feministic discussions in this show. For example, when Mikuri proposes the “contract marriage”, she and Hiramasa carefully calculate the yearly income that should be paid to a full-time housewife as around 3,041,000 yen (around 30,000 dollars). Hiramasa then strictly follows this salary and the show clearly appreciate (even glorify) the work done by housewives. What’s more, the most interesting part of this show appears after Hiramasa proposes to Mikuri. This proposal happens after Hiramasa is laid off from his company and he is in the process of seeking another job. There is no doubt that Hiramasa proposed because he loves Mikuri, but the timing upsets her. She questions Hiramasa’s decision to propose at this time because they are in a pinch and need to save more money, and she calls the free labor of housewives as men’s “exploitation based on love”. What’s interesting about this show is that Hiramasa, being a well-paid middle-class male, does not fall into the stereotypical trope of patriarchal men. He actually listens and absorbs many feministic ideas proposed by Mikuri, and then he reflects and modifies his own behaviors according to Mikuri. Granted men like Hiramasa are not common in the real world, but the show poses a sharp question on the topic of domestic labor division: why do housewives have to work for free? 

I apologize for ranting this long about this show. However, I really do like the concepts being explored in We Married As A Job!. In fact, the 2020 New Year special of the show even explores the topic of paid maternity and paternity leaves in Japan, which is a topic not widely discussed in Asia in general. As a result, I highly recommend watching this show if anyone is interested in the modern discussion of women’s role at home.