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.