Um, hate to be the one to break it to you, Ashton...
...but Japan has most definitely NOT reformed it's attitude towards women, at least not where it counts.
Yeah, there's a lot of "surface speak" about respecting women, and hey, a few have gotten quite far in the society... But look under the surface, and you'll find that things haven't changed much. Witness the rise of "compensated dating" - middle-aged business men paying school girls to do all kinds of weird crap - as well as the more traditional kinds of sexism. I've known quite a few Japanese women, a fair number of whom's parents had arranged marriages set up for them that they weren't at all interested in, yet were still going ahead with because "it is what a woman does."
Marital infidelity is sky-high over there - it's practically expected of the husband to have an affair or two on a regular basis. Women are still beaten by their husbands, rapes pretty much go unreported, and the "glass ceiling" is still firmly in place.
Although, one has to admit, that isn't all that different from the United States. :)
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche