With few exceptions, the wife takes care of everything in the home. This includes not just the day-to-day household chores but also major decisions such as where to live, what to buy, and even the children’s education and discipline. Thus, in a subtle way, even though the men may still talk and act as if they are the heads of their families, most families of the big-company men are really matriarchal arrangements.

The situation with women employees is quite different. While about 39 percent of Japan’s work force are women, they are usually paid only about half the amount of a man’s salary. In fact, most companies do not offer promising positions to women even if they have the qualifications, because they are expected to work only until they marry and start a family.

On the other hand, women, especially mothers, who must singlehandedly care for the children’s scholastic, moral, and religious education, naturally are more drawn to religion. But with them, the tendency is toward the other extreme​—the more the better. A young mother expressed what might be the typical religious attitude in a news story in Time magazine: “I owe respect to my ancestors and show it through Buddhism. I’m a Japanese, so I do all the little Shinto rituals. And I thought a Christian marriage would be really pretty. It’s a contradiction, but so what?”