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The emergence of Japan as an economic superpower evokes some now familiar images: throngs of well-dressed "salarymen" converging on Tokyo's business districts, urban workaholic commuters squeezed on trains by white-gloved station attendants, neat rows of uniformed students obediently marking their answers to entrance exams. In the aftermath of World War II, the Japanese media quickly dubbed these new urban salaryman and their student aspirants as "soldiers" in the new global economic warfare. Education mamas are products of the organization of postwar Japan. Soon after the end of the second World War, a nationalized competitive education system began teaching young men the skills that would be needed in the new economy, while social and economic pressures encouraged women to spend more time at home. Mothers in the rising middle class bore fewer children and prided themselves on the latest household timesavers: refrigerators, rice cookers, washing machines and flush toilets. While education mamas are best known for their strategies for children, the concept "education mama" can also be understood as a strategy of gender.