“In this society, you could command respect as long as you were someone’s wife, no matter how dull your husband was. The world would always defer to a woman who was the property of a man. Though, of course, the respect was ultimately directed toward the husband more than the wife.”

“In this society, you could command respect as long as you were someone’s wife, no matter how dull your husband was. The world would always defer to a woman who was the property of a man. Though, of course, the respect was ultimately directed toward the husband more than the wife.”

— Natsuo Kirino