Under Japan's old Confucian and Meiji codes, the role of the Japanese woman was well defined and faithfully followed: to obey her father, then her husband and finally, in old age, her sons. Even those women who make up roughly one- third of the Japanese work force have been treated as a species apart. They have been banned by law from working more than two hours of overtime in any day or, with a few exceptions, past 10 at night, and allowed monthly menstrual leave with full pay in certain strenuous jobs. All that changed last week when, after months of...
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