An employer's influence stretches to commanding employees' social time, and even to encouraging and approving marriages. Women mostly play a traditional role, running the home and supervising the all-important education of their children. They tend to work until the age of 26, when many will marry and continue to work part-time. Some Japanese women are, however, beginning to follow independent, long-term careers. More are entering the medical and legal professions.
Social form remains extremely important in Japanese society.
Respect for elders and for social and business superiors is strongly ingrained. There is little tradition of generation rebellion, but the youth market is powerful and current fashions place teenagers at their center. Many may still end up following their parents' lifestyles, but established attitudes are under challenge. Working for the same company for life, and giving up evenings and weekends to entertaining company clients, became harder to justify in the economically turbulent 1990s.