Japanese Women

TOKYO -- Japan's 74 million women, long regarded as oppressed victims of one of the world's most male-dominated societies, are gaining power over their lives faster than women anywhere else, some social scientists say."The position of the woman in the Japanese family has come 180 degrees in the last 15 years," says Sumiko Iwao, a Keio University social psychologist. "And yet nobody's taken a serious look at how radically it's changing the society."Indeed, what emerges is a picture that stands on its ear everything most foreigners -- and many Japanese -- think they know about Japanese women.

DORTMUND, Germany - It had been a decade since Yuka Sato became one of two Japanese figure skating champions, and both triumphs were regarded as near-oddities. Shizuka Arakawa's victory yesterday was different. It might have marked the start of a decade of dominance for Japanese women. They were first, fourth and seventh in these world championships, by far the best overall performance of a women's team. And behind those three - Arakawa (age 22), Miki Ando (16), the first woman to land a quadruple jump, and former world medalist Fumie Suguri (23)

Life in America is puzzling enough if you come from a country like Japan that is a world away in taste and customs. And just when you think it can't get any more disconcerting, your child comes home demanding a PB & J on white bread.For a group of Japanese women in Westchester County, N.Y., one way to figure out the puzzle has been to learn to cook and shop the American way."I want to understand America," said Keiko Senda, a 35-year-old mother of one, who used to think American cuisine was burgers, meatballs and frozen foods, the things she saw in movies back home.

TOKYO -- The pair, whose lives would briefly intersect, were from different worlds. Govinda Prasad Mainali was an illegal immigrant waiting tables in an Indian restaurant in Tokyo, sending much of his salary home to his family in Nepal. Yasuko Watanabe was a promising economist earning nearly $100,000 a year by day, but still driven to stand on a street corner and turn four tricks a night. After the 39-year-old Watanabe was found slain in a seedy one-room apartment in 1997, Mainali was arrested and charged with the crime.

TOKYO -- Fifteen Japanese women who have lived in North Korea for most of their adult lives arrived in Japan last night for a brief return visit, a result of an unofficial "wives for food" exchange between the countries.The women, clearly thrilled as they flew in to a far more modern homeland than the one they left nearly four decades ago, are to visit family members for one week. If successful, the exchange program may ease tensions between Japan and North Korea and lead to hundreds more Japanese women in North Korea being allowed to return to see their families.

DORTMUND, Germany - It had been a decade since Yuka Sato became one of two Japanese figure skating champions, and both triumphs were regarded as near-oddities. Shizuka Arakawa's victory yesterday was different. It might have marked the start of a decade of dominance for Japanese women. They were first, fourth and seventh in these world championships, by far the best overall performance of a women's team. And behind those three - Arakawa (age 22), Miki Ando (16), the first woman to land a quadruple jump, and former world medalist Fumie Suguri (23)

TOKYO -- This land of high tech and recurring health fads is preparing, with no little trepidation, for a medical invention the rest of the industrialized world adopted three decades ago.The pill, the small hormone tablet that has been profoundly changing both personal lives and national population curves in other societies since the 1960s, is expected to get Ministry of Health approval later this year for use as a means of birth control.Akira Kawahara, assistant director of the ministry's New Drugs Division, said last week that the first pills could be on the market by late 1991.

TOKYO -- When first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton stepped off Air Force One with her husband and approached a line of waiting limousines here Tuesday, a Japanese reporter wrote disapprovingly that "she gestured as if to say in a wife-leading-the-husband-manner, 'That's your car and this is mine.' "The comment was telling, both about Japanese attitudes toward Mrs. Clinton before her arrival and about the current state of this country's attitudes toward women. In Japan, Mrs. Clinton was seen in almost legendary proportions as the tough, pushy superwoman who became co-president of the United States.

TOKYO -- "The cry of Japanese women is that enough is enough!" the new head of the Japan Federation of Employers' Organizations declared.In the pressures of Japan's company-dominated lifestyle, Eiji Suzuki wrote, too many women find that their husbands are rarely at home to help, so, "having children is too much of a financial, physical and psychological burden."Mr. Suzuki is neither a child-welfare crusader nor a feminist. He is the head of one of Japan's small innermost circles of power-packed business federations.

TOKYO -- It's Wednesday night, and Hiroshi Ieyoshi and three dozen other gas station attendants are gathered for some tough after-hours training.They're learning how to smile.Or rather, trying to learn.Relax the muscle under your nose, teacher Akio Emi commands. Loosen up your tongue. Put your hands on your stomach and laugh out loud, feeling the "poisons" escape. Even if you're down in the dumps, Emi tells his sullen audience, deliver an artificial smile and your emotions are likely to follow suit.

TOKYO -- It's Wednesday night, and Hiroshi Ieyoshi and three dozen other gas station attendants are gathered for some tough after-hours training.They're learning how to smile.Or rather, trying to learn.Relax the muscle under your nose, teacher Akio Emi commands. Loosen up your tongue. Put your hands on your stomach and laugh out loud, feeling the "poisons" escape. Even if you're down in the dumps, Emi tells his sullen audience, deliver an artificial smile and your emotions are likely to follow suit.

TOKYO -- Fifteen Japanese women who have lived in North Korea for most of their adult lives arrived in Japan last night for a brief return visit, a result of an unofficial "wives for food" exchange between the countries.The women, clearly thrilled as they flew in to a far more modern homeland than the one they left nearly four decades ago, are to visit family members for one week. If successful, the exchange program may ease tensions between Japan and North Korea and lead to hundreds more Japanese women in North Korea being allowed to return to see their families.

TOKYO -- "Wow, you have fat legs. Well, I guess you can't do anything about it," one female job-seeker was told. Another was asked, "Are you a virgin?"In America, such comments would land the personnel manager and his company in court. In Japan, it's a different story, particularly this year as women suffer through the worst hiring season in memory.A survey of 112 students provided many examples of what female job-hunters have been experiencing.For many, jobs disappear as soon as inquiries are made, information is withheld, and interviews are denied, canceled or made unbearable.

TOKYO -- When first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton stepped off Air Force One with her husband and approached a line of waiting limousines here Tuesday, a Japanese reporter wrote disapprovingly that "she gestured as if to say in a wife-leading-the-husband-manner, 'That's your car and this is mine.' "The comment was telling, both about Japanese attitudes toward Mrs. Clinton before her arrival and about the current state of this country's attitudes toward women. In Japan, Mrs. Clinton was seen in almost legendary proportions as the tough, pushy superwoman who became co-president of the United States.

Boston. -- Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Ella who found herself working for sub-minimum wages at a dead-end job doing housecleaning and cinder removal for a wicked stepmother.When, after much ado, a charming Prince chose young Ella to be his bride on account of her beauty, humility and teeny-weeny feet, nobody ever doubted her answer.For that matter nobody ever doubted that they would live happily ever after. If there were troubles in the castle, the tapes of their bickering have not survived.

TOKYO -- On a street of stolidly upper-middle-class apartments, a shop window is filled with familiar Tokyo icons: Revlon lipsticks, Shiseido skin creams, Christian Dior scarves and Issey Miyake belts.Inside, the ceiling is painted with angels and cherubs. French impressionist prints line the walls. A "relaxation room" at the rear is lined with gilt-edged mirrors, makeup lights and hair driers. A massage chair gives off the sound of birds chirping and the fragrance of lilacs.Is this any way to run a pinball joint?

Boston. -- Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Ella who found herself working for sub-minimum wages at a dead-end job doing housecleaning and cinder removal for a wicked stepmother.When, after much ado, a charming Prince chose young Ella to be his bride on account of her beauty, humility and teeny-weeny feet, nobody ever doubted her answer.For that matter nobody ever doubted that they would live happily ever after. If there were troubles in the castle, the tapes of their bickering have not survived.

TOKYO -- The pair, whose lives would briefly intersect, were from different worlds. Govinda Prasad Mainali was an illegal immigrant waiting tables in an Indian restaurant in Tokyo, sending much of his salary home to his family in Nepal. Yasuko Watanabe was a promising economist earning nearly $100,000 a year by day, but still driven to stand on a street corner and turn four tricks a night. After the 39-year-old Watanabe was found slain in a seedy one-room apartment in 1997, Mainali was arrested and charged with the crime.

TOKYO -- In the days of equal opportunities for men and women, the next Sherlock Holmes may be a female.According to a newly opened school in Tokyo that trains detectives and researchers, women account for about 70 percent of the 300 students taking beginner courses.Some of them said they want to acquire skills to look into their husbands' cheating.Tokyo Intelligence & Research College, which opened last month, offers six-month, twice-a-week introductory courses for 300,000 yen ($2,500) each.

Life in America is puzzling enough if you come from a country like Japan that is a world away in taste and customs. And just when you think it can't get any more disconcerting, your child comes home demanding a PB & J on white bread.For a group of Japanese women in Westchester County, N.Y., one way to figure out the puzzle has been to learn to cook and shop the American way."I want to understand America," said Keiko Senda, a 35-year-old mother of one, who used to think American cuisine was burgers, meatballs and frozen foods, the things she saw in movies back home.