The Wife Tells All

Before World War II, Japan was truly a man's world. Husbands ruled as absolute masters of the home, and wives were expected to be obedient, unobtrusive and completely devoted to family and household. Divorce for a man meant little more than writing a brief decree and sending his spouse back to her family; for a wife, it was nearly unobtainable. Adultery was a criminal offense --for women, not men.

All that changed with the end of the war and the U.S. occupation. Many of the old laws went off the books, and the emancipation of Japanese women made giant strides. Just how wide the break with the past has become was demonstrated when Novelist Shusaku Endo published, in the popular weekly Shukan Asahi, an interview with no less a personage than Mrs. Hiroko Sato, wife of Premier Eisaku Sato.

The interview was entitled "My Tearful Early Days of Marriage," and in it Mrs. Sato described the Premier as about as fierce an old-style Japanese husband as can be imagined--a rake, a wife-beater and a man so taciturn that he never consulted his wife on anything. It was not only an uncommonly candid flashback of the Satos' early wedded life but a commentary on the old code and how it has been broken. And the source was the woman whose husband heads one of the most industrialized and progressive nations in the world.

The Good Old Days. The article caused a minor sensation in the West, but Japanese newspapers either ignored it or printed only brief notes on the reaction elsewhere. Young Japanese, with little knowledge of prewar Japan, dismissed it as incomprehensible. To older people it was hardly news, although it aroused a bit of nostalgia for the good old days among some of the men. The Premier, true to his wife's characterization, remained silent; an aide reported that he had only laughed when he read the interview.

Mrs. Sato was honest to a fault about the early days of her marriage to Sato, a cousin. It was a match that, like many of the time, had been arranged while she was still in primary school. Her first shock as a bride came when she realized that her husband was consorting with geisha girls, Japan's professional entertainers, and was spending more than half the family budget on them. "I really dreaded geisha girls," she recalled. Her eldest son almost threw a rock at a geisha whom he saw walking with his father.

Two Children. When Mrs. Sato complained to her husband about his exploits, she said, "he beat me and smashed things. There were quite a few people who sympathized with me and counseled him against resorting to violence against me. He was not without affection toward me, to be sure, but he certainly did not have the ability to express it. Girls nowadays would simply walk out on him. Even at home he was always oddly silent and played solitaire. He's been playing solitaire these past 40 years, when I think of it. He certainly proved reluctant to open his mouth and say things to me. Instead, before he opened his mouth, his hand came out."

Was there nothing good to be said about the Premier, asked Interviewer Endo in some astonishment. Indeed, there was. Over the years, Mrs. Sato conceded, affection had grown between husband and wife--and they had had two children. "Our Mr. Eisaku, I think, is not without a certain masculine charm," she said. "Now we are like brother and sister. We've been together for a long time, you know. We are just like the air to each other."

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