* This essay column is written by a longtime foreign resident of Japan.

When I was a teenager, I was very interested in training gun dogs, which help hunters by finding or fetching game, and I read extensively on the subject. Although I have a Labrador retriever as a pet, I didn't own a dog in my youth and when hunting I had to do all the retrieving myself -- mainly of critters too old and infirm to avoid my badly aimed shots!

I sometimes joke that my canine-centered studies weren't wasted as they came in handy for raising three sons. True, I never got any of them to jump into an ice-encrusted pond to fetch a downed duck or bound into thick bushes to fetch a dead rabbit, but they promptly obeyed my instructions and knew their place in the family "pack."

But, having watched Japanese husbands get their wives to run around the house and fetch ashtrays or cold drinks with the minimum of hand signals and voice commands, I must confess to failure in getting my wife, Keiko, to bound about on my prompting.

I seem to recall family meals where my mother-in-law would carefully monitor my rice consumption, ready to leap up to refill my just-emptied bowl. Her daughter, on the other hand, would ignore my hints, like holding the rice bowl upside down over my head while exclaiming, "That was really tasty rice! I wonder if there's any left?" Direct calls to action, such as asking her for more rice, would cause her to look at me quizzically while inquiring sweetly, "Is there something wrong with your legs, dear?"

I attribute her attitude to studying in the United States then working for four years in Bermuda, where we met. Ingrained feminist ideas of equality -- or superiority -- are hard to erase after such a long exposure!

Women's lib, however, has yet to have much impact on the lives of most of the women of Doshi Village, where we live in rural Yamanashi Prefecture. They bear an unfair burden compared to their spouses: Not only do many of them hold down jobs, they rear the kids, do the cooking, shopping and cleaning, plus maintain the gardens and family graves. Living next to a village graveyard, I note a disproportionate percentage of women visiting to weed the family plots and clean the gravestones. And when it comes to farming, the men ride on the tractors or operate the machinery, and the women provide the manual labor. The wives are called on for cooking and serving at communal events, such as festivals and funerals.

In private there are restrictions on their activities. For example, it took years for one wife to win her husband's approval to get a mobile phone. (She, by the way, puts in a full day's work in the family business but receives no pay or allowance.) And when I popped in to see the mother of two of my sons' friends, where I chatted to her and her acquaintance before resuming my chores, Keiko subsequently warned me against visiting unaccompanied women as the neighbors would talk. She mentioned a widow we know who won't sit next to a man in public lest tongues start to wag. To me, that sounds more like Arabian countries where women can't drive a car, travel abroad without a male guardian from her immediate family or walk in public unveiled or unchaperoned.

But change is coming, albeit slowly, and there's a big generational difference, with youngsters showing more independence. I enjoy the stance of my good friend's daughter, 20, who has long refused to jump up from the living room table to fetch cold beers from the kitchen fridge for her father and me.

No wonder over half the respondents of a survey in late August believed that Japanese women can lead happy lives without getting married! My mother-in-law, who has been living with us for almost 20 years since just after her husband died, was watching a drama in which the heroine became a widow then promptly remarried. "It must have been written by a man," was her assessment.

If you have any comments please e-mail me at jtweekly@japantimes.co.jp

The Japan Times Weekly: Dec. 6, 2003
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