I'm amazed - several people on here say they have lived in Japan yet don't mention something that is well known about those "late-working husbands". They are most likely at one of the prostitue-filled mulit-storied hotels, where the license tags of their cars are covered up, shielding them from wives who might see their husband's car at one of them (assuming wife has a car to drive to see if "late-working hubby" is at one of them!).
Infidelity is one of the most blatant assumptions about a Japanese marriage and clearly these career women don't want to marry, not only to become maids, care for multiple parents and aged relatives in their home as well as be totally responsible for the children and the home, but also have to put up with cheating husbands.
It amazed me when I lived there, to see the number of hotels and clubs that catered to the various "needs" of married Japanese men. There is a hotel floor for every perversion and every wanton desire.
It seems to me that these career women don't want to have to give up their careers AND wind up with a husband who not only works late, doesn't help around the house but also cheats as frequently as he wants, hiding behind the "long hours stuff" demanded of Japanese workers. HAR!
One thing that most Western men also need to learn is to never date a Japanese woman, NOT ONCE, or trust me, you will never be free of her. She will chase you and demand you marry her. I worked with a Harvard graduate who, unforunately, dated a woman he met at a USN friend's wedding. When he returned to the US, after having said "Goodbye" and intending to never see her again, she moved herself to DC, took an English class and used her family's money to pursue this man, ruining a subsequent relationship he had established here with her stalking, and ultimately got what she wanted: Marriage.
The classes that US Navy personnel go through after being assigned to Japan not only include driver's license training (and that is a whole 'nother subject I'm not going into here. Ugh.) but also etiquette that includes subtle warnings about not dating a Japanese woman without understanding that "once is forever" in that woman's mind. She will see that Military person as her ticket to America, a large kitchen, an American bathroom, and a YARD for her children to play in, and TWO cars in the garage. You have no idea of the ticket to freedom that an American means to a Japanese woman, even a professional.
JenB got it right when she said, "and getting a Green Card couldn't have anything to do with it" or words to that effect. Of course it is. That Green Card and the house in America is everything.
The Madame Butterfly syndrome. LOL.
But in any event, they're not to my taste.
How is that different from the tendency of American women not to marry below them economically or educationally? Women want material security, there's nothing wrong with that, it's part of their natures, good for kids, and the responsibility of their men to provide it for them.
What we're talking about is a difference in the appreciation of foreign women for what American men provide, vs. the appreciation (and frequent lack of it) for the same thing by American women.
However, if this was only about green cards, American women would have as high a foreign demand as American men. They don't.