Comment by decimalenough

> In Japan, mobility is fundamentally expensive, and relocating to a different region is much harder than outsiders realize.

Unless said mobility is paid for by the company.

As part of the job rotation mentioned in the article, larger Japanese companies are also notorious for reassigning job locations, often at short notice and with zero care for family dynamics. Hence the tanshin-fu'nin phenomenon, where the husband is sent off to work at some factory or regional branch in the sticks for years while the wife brings up the kids elsewhere.