Women in Love and Hate in 1960s Japan: Re-reading Ariyoshi Sawako's The Doctor's Wife

Throughout much of the twentieth century, in both the prewar and postwar eras, the perfect family in Japan was hegemonically posited on the presence of a woman who—either as wife or mother—was required to suppress or erase her desire. For the male, on the contrary, taking a 'concubine'—or entering into a similar relationship with a woman who was not his legal wife—was de rigueur in that it announced to the world not merely sexual potency, but, also economic and social masculine success.