| The story below is originally published on Mainichi Daily News by Mainichi Shinbun (http://mdn.mainichi.jp). |
| They admitted inventing its kinky features, or rather deliberately mistranslating them from the original gossip magazine. |
| In fact, this is far from the general Japanese' behavior or sense of worth. |
| このページは、毎日新聞事件の検証のための配信記事対訳ページです。直接ジャンプして来られた方は、必ずFAQをお読みください。 |
| ※ この和訳はあくまでもボランティアの方々による一例であり、翻訳の正確さについては各自判断してください。 もし誤訳（の疑い）を発見した場合には、直接ページを編集して訂正するか翻訳者連絡掲示板に報告してください。 |
1997,12,28
Shukan Taishu 1/5-12 By (RC)Ryann Connell
"Look. I don't give a damn whether you cook for me, but at least make the kid's breakfast,"
Mutsumi Misawa's ex-husband said to her one day.
"I'd cook anytime, but whenever I go in the kitchen you come up behind me and start feeling me up, you dirty bastard," she snapped back.
Trivial though the quarrel seemed, Shukan Taishu notes, it was the final straw for Misawa.
She promptly divorced her "dirty old man."
Misawa got a 1 million yen settlement and 40,000yen a month to pay for her 2-year-old son.
She got a part-time job and, with welfare payments, was managing to get by--at first.
While married, Misawa and her son had been covered by her husband's health insurance.
That was gone, the boy got sick and money started to disappear.
Her ex-husband's family refused to help her financially and her former hubby refused to even acknowledge her existence.
People would learn she was divorced and isolate her.
The bills mounted up, the kid kept screaming.
She waited till her son had gone to sleep, then had a sip of brandy.
Within week's the nightly sip had become a bottle.
Out on the town one night, Misawa met a young man she liked and took him home for a little fun.
A couple of weeks later, she started an affair with a married man from work.
"It doesn't really matter who it is I sleep with. Anyone'll do.
I just need someone to rely on," she says, her loneliness evident.
Divorce counselor and writer Hiromi Ikeuchi says that women like Misawa are not alone.
"Some women think being divorced is kind of cool.
It isn't always that romantic." she says.
Divorce lawyer Yuko Taniguchi agrees.
"It seems most divorced women are having a tough time.
To combat frustration, some turn to alcohol, others beat their kids.
Just because the women get divorced doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be happy." she says.
Shukan Taishu gives some examples to support what Taniguchi says.
Yoko Takagi, 35, divorced her husband and took her two children to live with her mother.
Burdened by the expenses of caring for the kids, Takagi says she had no choice but to sell her body in a seikan health, a kind of massage parlor, to pay her bills.
"On a good day, I can make as much as 50,000 yen, I only work from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. so I can go and pick up my kids from the day-care center," she says.
Shukan Taishu notes, not without a hint of irony, that many divorced women now yearn for the men who once shared their lives.(RC)
