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99 4 Fulfilled Selves? Working Women Tokyo, 1983. A woman in her mid-forties sighed over tea with friends on her way home from work on Saturday afternoon. Eyes a bit red, hands rough, she spoke slowly: “I get up before 6 and work until 5. I feel sorry when the train gets to the station near the cafeteria where I work because I have to wake up. I want to sleep a little longer . . . once I did go too far by mistake! I’d quit if I didn’t have to work for money.” Tokyo, 1983. A woman in her late forties spoke briskly over tea in the conference room high up in the building of the publishing company where she worked. Her eyes were bright and alert as she quickly ticked off her responses to my questions, so she could get back to work: “My work has become my meaning in life. I really don’t want to retire at 60! As I have gotten older, I feel more confident in my work and even in social interactions with other people at work.” Both of these women had been working all their adult lives, but in very different kinds of work. They indicate the diverse nature of work for Japanese women who, despite the homogenizing influence of public discourses , varied in level of education, socioeconomic background, and household income and assets (Ishida 1993, 216). Such class differences are important factors that make the work experience more or less positive, especially given the new link between work and pleasure. The experience of work differed to a lesser extent between the regions and the big metropolis. Tokyo had more and a greater variety of jobs available than the northeast, and social opinion was more open to middle-class homemakers working. Poorer and less-educated women in both areas, however , had less possibility of manipulating the choices of what kind of work to do, whether to work or not, and whether to work part-time (Roberts 1994; Kondo 1990). 100 Fulfilled Selves? In this chapter, I call on the voices of Japanese women in diverse work situations to answer these questions: In what ways did work expand and limit women’s senses of self? What can we find out about self via the work experience? My approach is broad, assuming that work can be understood only in the wider context of people’s lives (Moore 1988, 42). The ideological spotlight of the ’80s shone approvingly on part-time work for women. Part-time work had the disadvantages of low wages and few benefits despite six to seven hours of work per day. Yet it seemed modern because it accommodated personal schedules and did not link workers’ virtuous strength of spirit with their productivity; no moral compunction kept women from leaving when their hours were up, or from quitting. The idea that work contributed to the worker’s individuality and diversity of lifestyle contrasted with older views of work. Artisan work emphasized a serious development of strong spirit (seishin) through hard work, productivity, and devotion in a strict hierarchical relationship (Kondo 1990). The view of work for middle-class salarymen drew on these older ideas, although individual spirit now was devoted to a small work group within a larger company working for Japan (Turner 1993). Older views of women’s work in hierarchical households and middle-class professional housewife’s work also turned on the ideas that work required persistence and devotion to a group; it caused stress, but it also gave one strength of character. The new meaning of work for women turned the former view on its head; work should center, not on the company, but on the person, providing enjoyment and a feeling of self-worth. Eventually this was supposed to happen for men too, but changes had to be limited so that Japan’s economic growth would not be threatened.1 Contradictions surrounded this new idea of work for middle-class women. Part-time work was attractive as part of a push for individualized consumption and lifestyle. Yet the social morality still taught to students and core workers emphasized serious effort for the larger good. As a result, women’s part-time work could easily look like inconsequential play. Still, the reason most women worked was not for self-fulfillment but to add to their household income, especially in light of rising costs for housing and education combined with husband’s plateauing incomes. The ideology avoided the fact...

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