The image of Japanese women walking several steps behind their "master" husbands is alive and well in the American popular imagination. Appearing both literally and metaphorically in academic as well as popular literature, such images are responsible for the idea that Japanese women are decades behind their Western sisters in terms of rights and status.
In a legal sense, this is arguably true. But the fabric of Japanese society is far more complex, and women more innovative, than these arguments give them credit for.
The greatest contribution this valuable and thorough study offers to the debate -- how far have women advanced toward equal status? -- is to deflate the myth that women in the U.S. are so far ahead.