Breasts and Eggs

Breasts and Eggs is set in modern-day Tokyo, spanning nearly a decade from 2008 through 2017. Although women in Japan legally achieved equal rights after the conclusion of World War II, gender inequality persists in modern Japanese society. Female politicians are underrepresented in national government, as are women in high-ranking corporate positions. Though women are free to join the workforce, they are generally still expected to become homemakers after marriage, retiring or taking on low-paying, part-time jobs structured around their husbands’ schedules. A 2021 survey revealed that mothers do more than three times as much housework as fathers (Oi, Mariko. “Why Japan Can’t Shake Sexism.” BBC, 2021), and mothers are traditionally expected to do the majority of childrearing within heterosexual couples.

These gendered expectations lead to economic disparities between men and women; Japan has the highest gendered pay gap in the world, with women earning around 75% as much as men for full-time work (“Japan’s Kishida pledges to ‘work harder’ to fix gender pay gap.” Aljazeera, 2023). Natsu and Makiko experience this economic disparity firsthand in Breasts as they each work minimum-wage jobs with no prospect of career advancement.

Reproductive rights for single women and same-sex couples are a contentious issue in Japan, where 98% percent of births take place within heterosexual marriages (Roldan, Maria. “Money to stop the birth rate that threatens the future of Japan.” EFE, 2023); marriage between same-sex couples is still illegal as of 2023. Unmarried mothers comprise an extreme minority, and often face stigmatization as well as unequal access to resources and opportunities. Natsu runs up against the effects of this stigma as she attempts to get pregnant on her own. She is unable to find a sperm bank in Japan willing to work with a single woman, and many people tell her it is selfish for a single woman to become a mother. In 2021, the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology proposed guidelines that would restrict the process of donor conception to married couples.

These real-world issues form the crux of the plot, which explores the pressures facing single women in modern-day Japan.