Manual Labor
The twenty-first century canonical pregnancy in Japan is one where from the moment of conception the incipient mother is molded internally and externally by both the medical profession and the advice manual industry. In two works, authors push back against the notion of canonical motherhood, by rejecting the idea of the mother-fetus dyad. Pregnancy they say is a social enterprise, demanding that the mother develop or strengthen bonds with her husband and family. In Kakuta Mitsuyo’s My Due Date is Jimmy Page’s Birthday (2007), she traces a conventional story of how a woman grows closer to her husband and family through her pregnancy. In Tadano Miako’s 2005 Three Year Pregnancy, her protagonist remains pregnant for three years while she works out her relationship with her husband, her mother, and finally her sister. These narratives reflect changes in Japanese society—the woman’s demand for the father’s participation in the family.