Retired Husband Syndrome in Japan

According to an article written by Paul Kenyon, the common problem of sixty per cent of old women in Japan is the husbad.

The effect of the husband on the wife causes what is now diagnosed as retired husband syndrome.

The baby boomer generation husbands were "married to their jobs" when still working that the wives were left alone tending to their homes and children. The husbands go to work early morning, then come home in the evening merely to eat and sleep.

The couples are practically living separate lives and become strangers to each other.
When retirement comes, the wives exhibit physical signs of depressions and anxieties with the thought of the husbands staying the whole day at homes.

For those belonging in this generation, the women were treated as commodities and not
as wives. Imagine, a woman who had lived peacefully the whole day would find herself with a company to whom she is obliged to serve.

One old woman claimed that she developed rashes every time she gets near her husband.

The syndrome was discovered by Dr Nobuo Kurokawa who, over the past 10 years, has been treating a steady flow of Japanese women of a certain age with the same symptoms, including depression, skin rashes, ulcers, asthma and high blood pressure.

According to the doctor, if it is ignored, the symptoms will just get worse.
"If the husband doesn't try to understand, the illness becomes incurable," he says.

Although divorce is recognized in Japan, the generation is covered by the outdated law that exludes the wife from the husband's pension (just amended to include the wife and would take effect only in 2007)/. Women who have been financially dependent on the husbands would not survive without his support in case they divorce.

So many women suffering from it actually want to keep their husbands. Stranger still, the husbands are completely unaware that they are part of the problem.

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