The nostalgic ad campaign for Suntory’s hugely popular drink Kin Mugi has proved a hit with middle-aged men who are pining for the simple charms of yesteryear. The campaign depicts a smiling wife played by actress Rei Dan who, while waiting for her husband to return home from work to down a few refreshing glasses of beer-like Kin Mugi, passes the time by enjoying fireworks, running through clouds of cherry blossoms and posing cutely in a yukata. Though men are lapping up the nostalgic picture of the carefree, stay-at-home cutie, some women of the same generation find the whole thing deeply offensive.
“Every time I watch that actress playing the wife wait for her husband to return from work with a big smile on her face, I get the sense that something’s deeply wrong with this picture. If I think about that carefree spoilt woman, I get really irritated. These days households that can survive on only a husband’s salary are in the minority,” a woman in her 40s wrote earlier in the year in Tokyo Shimbun newspaper. She’s not the only one, journalist Yuzumi Yamashita raised the issue again in an article written on Oct. 3 in News Post Seven. Yamashita writes that she's heard the same opinion from other people and that economic realities these days mean that it's typical for Japanese wives to take a job.