Who is Sazae-san?: Meet Japan's Beloved Anime Family Icon

The importance of the Sazae Family to the Japanese can not be over emphasized.

Sazae-san (main female character, lives with her husband, Masuo, her parents, younger brother and sister and her child) is based upon the comic character first publishes in April 22, 1946, just one short year after the end of the second world war, and remains a staple of Sunday night primetime. Interestingly enough, all of the characters are named with things related to the sea.

A seven-member Japanese family shares a warmly lit tatami room beside a television, with a smiling mother steadying her young son.

The author of the original comic book Hasegawa Machiko desire was for the this family to embody the image of the modern Japanese family after World War II, and this image continues to this very day, and remains dear to the Japanese heart.

The TV series began airing in October 1969 and hold the Guinness World Record for the longest running animated television series.

A luminous sea-blue ribbon curls from a spiral shell over a closed book toward an old television displaying a Japanese house.

Sazae was a very "liberated" woman, and many plot-lines revolved around Sazae bossing around her husband, to the consternation of her neighbours, who believed that a man should be the head of his household.

Later on, Sazae became a feminist and was involved in many comical situations regarding her affiliation with her local women's lib group.

For most people unfamiliar with Japan and their society, it may seems that this society is highly patriarchal, and this is true to a certain extent.

Five Japanese women converse animatedly outside a suburban house while a sheepish husband and two surprised older neighbours look on.

However, Japanese women actually rule and run the household, as well as control the finances of the family.

The husbands salary is directly deposited into a bank account controlled by the woman of the house.

In fact, the salarymen of Japan usually receive a monthly allowance from their wives, and once this is gone they are done for the month!

Hands hold an open purse containing one coin while a smiling Japanese woman rests her hand on a plain envelope across the table.

These haggard salarymen work extremely long hours, and have long commutes going from the suburbs to the office towers of the metropolises of Japan to run the machine that is Japan.

They don't really have a say in matters concerning the education of their children, or much in the way of how the household run.

They are probably too tired to care too much anyway.

An exhausted salaryman sleeps with a briefcase on his knees as suburban rooftops and distant office towers pass the train window.

Leave it to the wife!

Things are not always what they seem in the Land Of The Rising Son, and one must never take the surface of Japan to be any thing other than: a constructed reality to which everyone pays lip service

Behind a house facade bearing a suited man's silhouette, a woman sorts envelopes while her enlarged shadow stretches across the ground.