mama for its approach and initiatives in guiding industrial growth, in a manner similar to the definition of a nanny state. Media Housewives are surrounded by popular media that encourages their actions. Daytime television, magazines, products, and services for mothers are largely focused on improving the home and raising the children. Thus, the job of motherhood is taken very seriously by mothers in Japan. A common description of a mother's free time is “three meals and a nap.” Class distinctions Kyōiku mamas, preparatory preschools, and heavily academic curricula exist in Japan, yet they are relatively rare and concentrated in urban, wealthy areas. Kyōiku mamas are prominent in the middle classes. Middle-class women train the children, the next generation of the middle class. In a speech at the 1909 Mitsukoshi children's exhibition, First Higher School principal Nitobe Inazō asserted, "The education of a citizenry begins not with the infant but with the education of a country's mothers." In the post-World War II era in Japan, the mother was the creator of a new child-centered world stamped with middle-class values. The mother was linked with the success of the child's education. A woman was expected to be a "good wife, wise mother" and became the single most important figure in raising the child to become a successful future adult. Mothers needed to put their efforts into raising and teaching their children. Through self-cultivation and rearing of the children, the woman was crucial to a family's ability to claim a place in the so-called middle stratum. As education credentials became the recognized prerequisite to social advancement in the early 20th century, kyōiku mama actively looked to the education system, especially admission into middle school for boys and higher school for girls, to help improve the family's social position. The competition to pass the entrance examination to middle school and girls' higher school became intense, creating the social phenomenon known as shiken jigoku (): examination hell. While risshin shusse (), or rising in the world, was the clarion call of the mass of the middle class, there was no risshin shusse without a kyōiku mama. For the education mother, making the child into a superior student was a concern that began with the child's entrance into elementary school at age six and extended to all aspects of the child's education. Working-class mothers are not as intensely active in their children's education as middle-class mothers.