I’ve always felt that you could get a sense of the Western mother by the way she is portrayed on television. From the idealized perfection of Carol Brady in ‘The Brady Bunch’ in the 1970s to the more authentic imperfection of Roseanne Conner in ‘Roseanne’ in the 1990s, American sitcoms always seemed to be where ‘mom’ lived. And in Great Britain mothers seemed more complicated, in soap operas such as ‘EastEnders’ and ‘Coronation Street’.
In several surveys over the past few decades asking who best represents a Japanese mother, the most popular answers tend to be older. For example, actor Sayuri Yoshinaga, 79, is high on a few lists. Perhaps the mothers who helped us recover emotionally from the war will always have a hold on our hearts.
Another source of maternal role models in Japan? Manga. Particularly manga that spawned TV adaptations. The full-time mothers on shows like “Chibi Maruko-chan,” “Kobo-chan” and the world’s longest-running animated series, “Sazae-san” (sorry, Marge from “The Simpsons”), not only gave us our ideal mothers, but also presented them in Japanese-style multi-generational households.