Salarymen have taken a pummeling in recent years — with pay stagnating and rising numbers of working women and mothers eroding their once-dominant position as the family's breadwinner.
Those changes have affected how they are seen at home, with children respecting their mothers more than fathers for the first time, according to recent research. And wives — who typically control the purse strings in Japanese households — have continued cutting their husbands' pocket money, a survey by Shinsei Bank showed last week.
Over the past two decades, average male base wages have shrunk 0.5 percent. And even though flat or falling prices mean there may have been little damage to purchasing power, that stagnation meant that there has been little impetus for pocket money to rise.