'I'm the one who cooks them!'

At the end of 1975, a commercial for instant noodles appeared on Japanese television. A woman makes up some instant noodles for her male partner, stating ‘I am the one who cooks them’. The man responds, ‘I am the one who eats them’. This advertisement became the target for a new women's group, the International Women's Year Action Group, which had been created in early 1975 in order to lobby within Japan and internationally for a productive response on the part of the Japanese government to the activities centring on the United Nations' International Year for Women.

The campaign against this commercial was just one in a series of actions directed against the mass media, but it could be argued that this particular advertisement provided a surprisingly dense site for the discussion of mass-mediated images of gender roles in 1970s Japan. The commercial reflected the segregation of gender roles, whereby men were responsible for paid labour outside the home and women facilitated this labour through their provision of support in the domestic sphere. It portrayed desirable models of masculinity and femininity, with the woman apparently gaining satisfaction from the very simple task of preparing instant noodles for her partner.