Smart Japanese Women

Posted on June 12, 2007 by Subodh Dhakal

By nature, I am not smart enough. I am shy with the girls, it takes a lot of time to mix up with the new culture and society and I also have a habit of living in low profile. During my school age, I used to avoid my class mates who are sexually different than me. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t like girls, rather it means I didn’t have courage to face them. Maybe medical practitioner have some terminology for this type of behavior, maybe some “phobia” or something. In that context, it is natural that I used to watch what we called it as ‘teli-films’ or dramas in television. Our television once broadcasted one of the Japanese dramas called “Oshin” once a week. I forgot how many parts it has, but I know that it could not be less than one hundred. It is a female character dominated drama, where the name of the main character is Oshin. Oshin’s story from childhood to the old age clearly sent us message about the Japanese society and smartness of Japanese women.

There is one saying that ‘the first impression is the last impression’, it applied with me about the Japanese women. From that time, I have much respect to them. Many people told me that this is just a drama, we can not generalize the society by watching it because in TV serials and dramas, everywhere in the world the main character are shown much hard working, kind, honest and beautiful. I had strong instinct with me that most of the Japanese women are like Oshin. I had a dream to come to Japan to study the Japanese society closely so as to prove my instinct. That dream comes true, now I am in Japan for research. Though main theme of my research is not related with the culture or society, I have tried to understand the Japanese society from those Japanese with whom I have a contact and other gaijins who spent much time of their life in Japan. If you can talk in Japanese, this is not very big deal in Japan because in general Japanese are much helpful, kind and honest. My stay in Japan is more than one and half year by now. My observation, communication and interpretations have revealed that yes, I was right, my instinct was correct. My observation is that young school age girls, college level girls, recently married woman and old age woman all are smarter than the opposite sex of their respective ages in general. Most of the time what I notice is Japanese boys are more shy than the girls, they are highly devoted in their respective jobs but in many cases they have some reservations to the gaijins who are still strangers. When it comes to women, I found different story. Most of the time they want to talk with gaijins and want to solve the problem so far they can even though they also have a communication problem. I have also seen in many Japanese dramas that women are much busy in the home and also in the work. In the home, they need to cook, clean and also take care of their children and husband. Majority of the house works are their responsibility and they have equal responsibility in the job. Husbands are very busy in their job, and don’t have time to share the work at home. Despite all these tensions, they never seem tiring. They are always smiling and cheerful. I have contact with some Japanese language teachers, who are all women in their fifties. From them I knew that most of their husbands are not together with them, they are working in different countries. They need to take care of their home and the children, may be they don’t have money problem, their husband can also support them for this but they don’t have any confusion in their mind that it is their job, and they are happy about it. They don’t even have any argument that it should have been the responsibility of both of them. For me, this is quite unique and interesting, which is more because I didn’t find it as a personal behavior of few women, but I find it as a culture. All of these and many other observations are in favor of my young age instinct that Japanese women are really very smart.