[chajin]

As strange as this may sound, the setup has the practical effect of making all Japanese children be the product of single-mother households, with all the symptoms and results that one sees in such households in the US--but with two major differences. First, the woman gets her money, not from the government, but from her husband's work, so even though she may be passive-aggressive, she knows she can't just walk away and try to go it on her own--and she doesn't expect the other Japanese taxpayers to subsidize her lifestyle. Second, she knows she has to get the sons to finish their education and go into successful careers, otherwise they'll turn into otaku, young men who lock themselves up in their bedrooms 24/7 and never leave home, so there isn't the laissez-faire let-'em-run-the-streets attitude one unfortunately finds here too often.

[GraceG]

[ As strange as this may sound, the setup has the practical effect of making all Japanese children be the product of single-mother households, with all the symptoms and results that one sees in such households in the US—but with two major differences.

First, the woman gets her money, not from the government, but from her husband’s work, so even though she may be passive-aggressive, she knows she can’t just walk away and try to go it on her own—and she doesn’t expect the other Japanese taxpayers to subsidize her lifestyle.

Second, she knows she has to get the sons to finish their education and go into successful careers, otherwise they’ll never leave home,
]

In some ways sounds like how it used to be in this country decades ago if your father had a job that always kept them working and the mother was a bit of a shrew.

Some decent chucks of Japanese culture today came from the 1950’s and Douglas MacArthur’s influence in re-building Japan after the war.

Some parts of this could very well have come from 1940s-50s american culture.