The feel-good story of the World Cup, Japanese fans staying behind to clean up stadiums, has been tarnished. Women’s groups in Japan are now telling supporters: tidy your own homes first.
This is a classic case of a good deed becoming an unwelcome burden. The spectacle of fans in coloured shirts picking up litter has been a staple of tournament coverage, making Japan look like a nation of saints. But the reality behind the viral clips is more complicated and less virtuous.
Japanese women are pushing back. They argue that the same men who gleefully scrub other people’s stands are often guilty of leaving dinner plates to fester at home. It is a fascinating glimpse into the domestic division of labour in the world’s third largest economy.
Let us examine the data. Japan has a persistent gender gap when it comes to unpaid work. According to the OECD, Japanese men do less than 20% of the unpaid work in the home, the lowest proportion among advanced economies. Women spend nearly five hours a day on chores; men barely an hour. So while the men are out polishing the national image at the World Cup, the women are left to tackle the dirty dishes back home.
This is a classic externality. The women, who are effectively subsidising the men’s stadium cleaning through their own unpaid labour, are finally saying “enough.” They want the aggregate balance sheet to show a fairer split. The men are generating positive PR for Japan, but the hidden cost is falling on a specific group. Women are essentially asking: why should we bear the cost of your virtue signalling?
From a market perspective, this is a correction. The price of male domestic input has been artificially low, sustained by cultural norms. The women are demanding a renegotiation of the implicit contract. The men cannot claim the moral high ground abroad if they are freeriding on their partners at home.
There is also a lesson here about incentives. Cleaning up a stadium is a one off, highly visible act. It yields immediate social credit. Doing the washing up every night is repetitive and invisible. The market rewards the former far more than the latter. The women are pointing out this misalignment.
The reaction to this critique has been predictable. Some accuse the women of churlishness, of spoiling a nice story. But that misses the point. The nice story was built on a convenient omission. The women are simply including the missing line items in the national account.
This is a reminder that macroeconomic narratives often obscure microeconomic realities. Japan’s current account surplus is partly built on the backs of women who are unpaid. The stadium cleaning is a metaphor. The country presents itself as orderly and self sacrificing, but that order has a cost. It is women who are paying it.
So what is the bottom line? The Japanese men need to start treating household labour as a shared liability, not a women’s dividend. If they can clean a stadium after a match, they can clean a kitchen after dinner. The women are simply asking for a fair rate of return on their time.
This story is not about Japan being bad. It is about the gap between image and reality. The market is efficient in the long run, and it is now correcting for a longstanding distortion. The men have received a lot of applause. Now the women are sending them an invoice.
The World Cup will end. The stadiums will empty. But when the final whistle blows, the real test will be what happens at home. Will the men continue to pick up the litter, or will they retreat to the sofa? The market will be watching.
