Title: Various Thoughts on Work-Life Balance
Author: Professor Kotaro Minato, Division of Information Science, Bio-Imaging
I am a baby boomer of ill repute, born in 1947, but the so-called "Anpo" generation, a few years older than me, are the poster children of postwar American democracy, with textbooks blacked out with black ink. A couple I know are of the Anpo generation, and the house they built has a living room and dining room on the first floor, and a bedroom and study on the second. The bedroom and study are arranged in a completely symmetrical layout, with the couple in separate rooms, and to get to and from each other's rooms, they always have to pass through two doors via the stair hall in the common area. Another friend, a D.H. Lawrence scholar, married a man a year younger than herself, raised him to be a full-fledged scholar, divorced him, and is still flying around at the age of 70. There seems to be a belief in this generation that men and women must be exactly alike.
There seems to be a shift in old Japanese customs among the baby boomers. I recently had my first elementary school reunion in 50 years. The deceased were overwhelmingly male, and the attendees were overwhelmingly female, 11 to 23. When I graduated from college, there were almost no so-called job opportunities for women with bachelor's degrees from four-year universities, and it was said that if a woman wanted to get a job, she had to go to a junior college. In my elementary school memories, I remember that the classroom was dominated by a few smart girls, and the boys could hardly compete with them in terms of study, word count, management skills, and maybe even physical strength, and I always followed their instructions. This impression did not disappear even after my 60th birthday, and the reunion hall was filled with the enthusiasm of the aunts. Half of them were talking about their grandchildren and half about their sons and daughters over 30. This may be a rare generation in which a relatively large number of women lived the life of a full-time homemaker.
When I look at my sons and daughters and the students in my lab, I think women are much more aware of social possibilities from a broader perspective than men. For example, if my son said, "I want to be a novelist" or "I want to be a musician," my first reaction would probably be, "What on earth are you thinking, you can't live like that. On the other hand, if my daughter said, "I want to play the piano for a living," my response would be, "Well, if you like it, go as far as you can. If she wanted to "study engineering and build a nuclear power plant" or "become a lawyer," I would be happy to pay for her tuition at an exam prep school. In fact, both of them are employed as SEs in the broad sense of the word, but women have more freedom of choice than men in how they live their lives after entering society. Of course, whether you succeed or fail is another matter.
In other words, I am in the clutches of this implicit concept of gender roles. Today, women are less bound by stereotypes, while men, and young men on the other hand, seem to be stuck in the old concept of "masculinity" and unable to move. We are taught that we must do our best to get a good college degree, work for a well-known company, and be accepted by those around us. All sons are really mothers. The demand for "masculinity" comes from women's expectations of their sons as mothers. This is why "masculinity studies" are attracting attention to free men trapped in the iron bars of the old ways. Please open the door of gender equality to these poor young men.
The declining birthrate and the aging population are two separate issues. Raising children is an entirely private matter for married couples, and I don't think the government needs to interfere. However, the rapid decline in the labor force due to the aging of the population structure over the next 20 years is a major problem for Japanese society, and in order to make the decline in the labor force as mild as possible, it is necessary for both men and women to work to increase their income and consumption and support economic activity. In this regard, we recognize the importance of realizing a gender-equal society. Women of both the security treaty generation and the baby boom generation have lived their lives while maintaining a robust work-life balance. I believe that men, too, have maintained a reasonable balance while keeping an eye on their partner and being pushed by the pressures of "masculinity" in the world. I now think that I would like to see young men regain their freedom, following the example of young women who have somehow escaped the gender fence and become energetic.
