Twenty years ago, Japanese girls were told that marriage should be the last item on the list of to-dos after college, that hankering after a wedding ring was idiotic and that the first and foremost concern should be work and a career.
The dirty word back then was sengyoshufu (housewife or homemaker). These were women who did the housework without budging from the house. Shunned though they were, there seemed to be an awful lot of sengyoshufu around.
Post-World War II Japanese society had rigged it so that women didn't have the means or opportunity to work after marriage, and for a long time the majority had no choice but to stay home and tend to the family.