Japan’s Salarymen Learn to Save

Japanese women have by tradition run the budgets of their nation’s households. Each housewife scrupulously tracks her family’s spending in her kakeibo, or budget book. They also traditionally stash away secret savings (hesokuri) that the husbands usually don’t know anything about: The savings come in handy for a rainy day. Finally—and most surprisingly to Westerners—housewives in Japan dole out an allowance to their salarymen husbands, which most men meekly accept. The wives even determine how much of their biannual bonuses the husbands can keep for themselves.

Little wonder, then, that the financial decisions of Japan’s housewives are closely scrutinized as guides to the health of the nation’s economy. Judging from this year’s research, the news is bad. In January a survey of housewives by Sompo Japan Insurance revealed that the value of wives’ secret savings fell 18 percent in 2010, to a three-year low.