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Fukushima Michihito wanted to marry his girlfriend. But a decade ago he fell ill, had to stop working, and consequently broke up with her. “I thought: if I can't support my family, I shouldn't get married,” he recalls.
福岛道仁想与女朋友结婚。但十年前他生病了，不得不停止工作，因此与女友分手。“我想：如果我不能养家，那么我就不应该结婚。”他回忆道。
He later realised that many Japanese men are similarly weighed down by pressure to fill the traditional male role. He now runs a “men's hotline” in the city of Osaka, which encourages men to discuss their anxieties.
他后来意识到，许多日本男性同样被传统男性角色的压力压得喘不过气来。现在他在大阪市经营着一条“男性热线”，鼓励男性讨论他们的焦虑。
In Japan, relations between men and women are shifting as marriage rates decline and more women enter the workforce. But the idea that men are breadwinners remains deeply entrenched.
在日本，随着结婚率下降和更多女性进入职场，男女关系正在发生变化。但是男人挣钱养家的观念仍然根深蒂固。
In 2022 only 17% of eligible men took parental leave, compared with 80% of women. Japanese women spend five times longer doing chores than men.
2022年，只有17%符合条件的男性休育儿假，而女性休产假的比例为80%。日本女性做家务的时间是男性的5倍。
A survey in 2022 by Lean In Tokyo, an activist group, suggested that over 60% of Japanese men feel awkward at work because of pressure to behave in a manly way. In Japan, which has the highest suicide rate in the G7, men are twice as likely to kill themselves as women.
社会活动组织“向前一步东京分部”在2022年进行的一项调查显示，超过60%的日本男性在工作中感到局促，因为要表现得像个男子汉给他们带来压力。日本的自杀率在七国集团中最高，而男性自杀的可能性是女性的两倍。
The hotline Mr Fukushima helps run was established in 1995. It was founded mainly in an effort to reduce domestic violence by giving anxious men an opportunity to air their grievances to a discreet stranger.
福岛帮助运营的热线成立于1995年。成立这条热线主要是为了减少家庭暴力，给焦虑的男人提供一个向谨慎的陌生人表达不满的机会。
Since then, the hotline has received calls on an expanding range of concerns, including relationships, sexuality and work. “More men are growing tired of behaving in a manly fashion, and want to be free,” says Mr Fukushima.
从那以后，热线电话接到的问题越来越多，包括人际关系、性和工作。福岛说：“越来越多的男人厌倦了要表现得像个男人，他们想要自由。”
The government has also taken an interest in the problem. In 2010 it included an objective to promote “men's counselling” in its gender equality plan. There are now over 80 counselling centres offering this service.
政府也对这个问题产生了兴趣。2010年，日本政府在其性别平等计划中纳入了促进“男性咨询”的目标。目前有80多个咨询中心提供这项服务。
Japan's archetypal gender roles—the salaryman husband and stay-at-home mum—were cemented during the country's long post-war boom.
日本典型的性别角色——上班的丈夫，待在家里的妻子——在战后的长期繁荣中得到了巩固。
Following the oil crisis of the early 1970s, those rigid roles began to break down in many Western countries, as more and more women entered work in response to economic stagnation and labour shortages.
在20世纪70年代初的石油危机之后，随着越来越多的女性进入工作岗位以应对经济停滞和劳动力短缺，这些僵化的角色开始在许多西方国家被打破。
By contrast, Japan tried to overcome the crisis by extending men's working hours — then by inflating the great “bubble economy” of the 1980s. While Western countries went through a “transition point” in gender relations, says Tanaka Toshiyuki, a sociologist, “Japan missed the opportunity to change.”
相反，日本克服危机的方式是延长男性的工作时间（以及后来在20世纪80年代让“泡沫经济”膨胀）。社会学家田中俊之说，西方国家经历了性别关系的“转折点”，“日本却错过了改变的机会”。
