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The story
On the October 7 episode of TV Asahi’s talk show “After My Husband Falls Asleep,” Miki Fujimoto shared her personal approach to making “mom friends”: asking about their husbands’ jobs. When the remark was picked up by online news outlets, a thread on 5ch’s Entertainment & Sports News+ board split right down the middle, with some calling it “rude, basically the same as asking someone’s annual income,” and others saying “it’s just small talk, I don’t see the problem.” Male users chimed in with their own confession — “I’m the type who wouldn’t want to be asked about my job” — turning the thread into a broader debate about the gap between tatemae (social niceties) and honne (true feelings) in mom-friend relationships.
10/10 (Sat) 17:00
A remark Miki Fujimoto made on the October 7 episode of TV Asahi’s talk show “After My Husband Falls Asleep” is making big waves online.
The Mikity-style theory came out during a conversation about “making mom friends” with guest Rosa Kato. The moment it was picked up as online news, the comments section split cleanly down the middle, with users who appear to be women launching into a debate so heated it practically screamed “Objection! Objection! Objection!” (a nod to a famous catchphrase from a classic Japanese TV debate segment).
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / original article here
What people said
Wanting to research all the way down to their job is just you satisfying yourself.
I don't know which kindergarten Mikity's kid went to, but if it's a decent one, there are probably people who are just dying to tell you their husband's job!
People who click should just be friends and get along.
Never would've thought of it that way.
Though I guess I don't go out of my way to ask either — it's personal information after all.
but the ones who don't ask are more likely to be safe to be friends with.
People who ask what you want to do in the future are the ones looking ahead.
You've got to screen your friends.
I'd never ask first.
Though some people just volunteer it on their own.
You're in a business where being recognized IS the job…
But if I get a vague answer, I don't push any further.
Public schools genuinely have some seriously sketchy families mixed in, which is why I wouldn't send my kid there.
Setting income aside, I don't think it's true that nobody's even a little curious what someone does for a living.
Even if they ask all about the specifics of your job, they wouldn't understand it anyway.
I think that's just someone bad at small talk — they're not good at shallow, broad conversation.
But they're obsessed with somehow keeping the conversation going lol
I don't like how they put Mikity up on a pedestal.
Wish they'd stop treating her like some 'representative of moms.'
I don't watch shows with Mikity or Chisako Takashima in them.
Factory worker, plumber, convenience store part-timer…
You're not actually implying those are embarrassing jobs, are you?
and when she said 'my husband works at FamilyMart,'
I was like 'oh… okay…'
but it turned out he worked at headquarters and was a highly educated elite.
Made me realize the same employer can give wildly different impressions depending on how you hear it.
This exactly.
I joined FamilyMart straight out of college too.
Back then the headquarters building was right in front of Sunshine City in Ikebukuro, and I remember going there for my final interview.
When I told a friend I'd decided to work at FamilyMart, they said 'huh? That place down the street? Like, part-time?'
Yeah, there are women out there who hear 'Obayashi Corporation' (a major general contractor) and still call it a bottom-tier job.
She's just getting a pass because her mom-friend circle is made up of fairly high-status people to begin with.
Now that you mention it, my job also involves sales-style small talk with wives and the like, and I never go out of my way to ask about their husband's job — and that's exactly why. Personally I don't care either way, and I figured opinions would be split, but I just don't want to step on a landmine myself.
Background and key points of this debate
This kind of “mom-friend distance” controversy is a perennial 5ch topic, and opinions tend to split less over the act of asking about someone’s job itself than over how people choose to read the asker’s true intent. Within the thread, plenty of comments jumped straight to “asking about a job = just wanting to know their income,” but it’s worth noting that Fujimoto herself never said she was after income — nothing beyond what she actually said on the show is actually known. The thread also pulled in a lot of posts linking jobs to social class, from debates over public vs. private schools to personal anecdotes about how the same employer can land very differently depending on how it’s described — but these reflect each poster’s own experience of “mom friend” culture in general more than anything Fujimoto actually said. What looks on the surface like a simple yes/no question — “should you ask about someone’s job or not” — has effectively turned into a question of trust: how suspicious should you be of someone’s motive for asking? That’s a big part of why the discussion never quite lines up.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Entertainment & Sports News+) thread “Miki Fujimoto’s take on ‘asking mom friends about their husbands’ jobs’ splits the internet: ‘It’s basically as rude as asking their income’ vs. ‘What’s wrong with it?’.”
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