For most young Japanese women, the housewife lifestyle a tempting yet impossible dream

"... A recent government white paper found that a large portion of women in their 20s want to be housewives. Not only that, another survey found that around 40% of unmarried women aged 25-35 want a husband who makes at least Y6 million a year. Sadly for them, only 3.5% of unmarried men in that age bracket actually make that much...

... This desire for a typical middle-class lifestyle—a single-income household with a salaryman husband with lifetime employment and the wife at home raising kids—seems to hark back to the postwar Showa era (1945-1989) when the economy was booming. However, today Japan’s economic stagnation has made the idyllic nuclear family impossible for many families, with more women needing to work to make ends meet... "

If anyone can find that white paper... by the way, I've only thought to do this once before, when I was reading that Foote-edited book Law in Japan, but you can find a lot of .jp/.en translated government stuff such as: http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/wp/wp-hw3/index.html (via http://jguide.stanford.edu/site/governme...e_233.html) - Although the translations vary in quality and extent.

I think I read this same blurb in the Japan Times a few months ago. I find the whole thing somehow amusing to be perfectly honest.

During the 70-80's or so (maybe even 90's), you had a lot of women that wanted to be able to work on their own and make their own money. So you had a lot of women that didn't want husband's that would lock them down at home. Now that the economy has hit the fan, they want someone to take care of them, basically. And in both situations, I bet they still want to manage the entire household's money.

I'll have to dig around on Japan Times site, cause about 2-3 weeks ago I read another article that showed more realistic ideal's in their choices for mates and salary.

EDIT: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/nn20100324f4.html Found that quick enough. Poll was done by a french (irony) insurance company, which I found odd (and somewhat questionable). But they found that women these days want a guy with similar interests, similar spending habits, and steady job (ie: non-Temp). Idea salary like you said is 5.5Million yen, but if they _REALLY_ love the guy they can settle for 2.71 million.