TEXT A In Japan, where career
opportunities for women are few, where divorce can mean a life of hardship, and
where most female names are still formed using a word for child, a woman’s
independence has always come at a steep price. Notions of
women’s liberation have never taken root among Japanese women. But with scant
open conflict, the push for separate burials is quietly becoming one of the
country’s fastest growing social trends. In a recent survey by the TBS
television network, 20 percent of the women who responded said they hoped to be
buried separately from their husbands. The funerary revolt comes
as women here annoy at Japan’s slow pace in providing greater equality between
the sexes. The law, for example, still makes it almost impossible for a woman to
use her maiden name after marriage. Divorce rates are low by Western standards,
meanwhile, because achieving financial independence, or even obtaining a credit
card in one’s own name, are insurmountable hurdles for many divorced women.
Until recently, society enforced restrictions on women even in death. Under
Japan’s complex burial customs, divorced or unmarried women were traditionally
unwelcome in most graveyards, where plots are still passed down through the
husband’s family and descendants must provide maintenance for burial sites or
lose them. "The woman who wanted to be buried alone couldn’t
find a graveyard until about 10 years ago." said Haruyo Inoue, a sociologist of
death and burial at Japan University. She said that graveyards that did not
require descendants, in order to accommodate women, began appearing around 1990.
Today, she said, that there are close to 400 of these cemeteries in Japan. That
is just one sign of stirring among Japanese women, who are also pressing for the
first time to change the law to be able to use their maiden names after
marriage. Although credit goes beyond any individual, many women
cite Junko Mastubara, a popular writer on women’s issues, with igniting the
trend to separate sex burials. Starting three years ago, Ms. Matsubara has built
an association of nearly 600 women—some divorced, some unhappily married, and
some determinedly single—who plan to share a common plot curbed out of an
ordinary cemetery in the western suburb of Chofu. In this article, the author is mainly concerned with ______.
A．Japanese women’s endeavors to win sex equality B．social and governmental obligation in eliminating sex inequality C．how Japanese laws prevent Japanese women from being buried alone D．how to change Japan’s complex burial customs