Neojaponisme, one of the most consistently interesting and thoughtful online publications on Japan these days, just posted an excellent (and bilingual) interview with Sumie Kawakami. Here's an excerpt:

Is there not an unavoidable psychological issue that most Japanese men cease to see their wives as women after they give birth to children?

Many Japanese men say that if their wives have children they are no longer lovers: they are mothers. In Japan, there are only mothers or lovers. Nothing in-between. In a way, wives with children become special because they are given a special status beyond lovers. But the physical relationship often gets neglected.

If you go back to the employment issues we were talking about, after a family has children, the father may work around two hours away from home and he may not come back home until midnight. So he has a life outside of their house, but the wives also have their own lives. The woman’s life has a total radius of 3km with the kids’ school in the middle. Her life is established there, right? And she won’t probably go beyond that 3km unless she really needs to.

After many years of this lifestyle, the married couple have nothing in common. She is focused on daily activities — PTA, neighbors, school — while he is totally committed to his work. Even if they both think family is very important, they forget how to do things together. Maybe on the weekends they will go out together as family but that’s about it. It gets very difficult for them to actually talk together and understand each other.