Salary Women and Family Well-Being in Urban Japan

Few well-educated Japanese women manage to maintain regular full-time employment while raising a family. Yet, with governmental initiatives designed to shore up the birthrate, it is arguably easier to do so now than ever before. How do women in career-oriented jobs conceive of the well-being of themselves and their families? In this article the author explores this question through data from qualitative interviews with working mothers in continuous full-time employment in one Japanese multinational corporation in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Evidence from these interviews supports Ueno's (2005) hypothesis that changes in the Japanese family system itself ironically enable support for women's participation in society, through what she terms the "Asian solution" of reproduction. Work/life balance for full-time career women hence is often achieved as a kind of extended family project.