According to the findings of a survey carried out by Japan's Cabinet Office in October, over 51 percent of the respondents said that married couples should perform conventional roles --- that is, the wives should stay at home, while the husbands should go out to work and earn money to run the family.

The survey's findings are noteworthy, especially in the wake of the fact that, in the year 2009 - when a similar survey on gender equality was conducted -, 10.3 percent of the respondents supported traditional roles for the married couples.

Moreover, ever since the first such survey was conducted in 1992, it was for the first time that there has been an increase in the percentage of respondents who supported traditional roles for married people.

To put it differently, it was for the first time that there has been a fall in the percentage of people who oppose the idea of traditional roles for married couples.

With the rise in the percentage of `traditional role' supporters being the biggest - 19.3 points - among the respondents in their 20s, Meiji Gakuin University's Prof. Kakuko Miyata said that lingering economic uncertainty has resulted in the changing trends among the youth.

Noting that "prolonged difficulty in finding jobs and the sluggish economy" has seemingly increased people's desire for "the home to be a source of emotional support," Miyata said: "Another factor may be that people began to attach more importance to home life after the Great East Japan Earthquake."