In Japan, where career opportunities for women are few, where divorce can mean a life of hardship, and where most female names are still formed using a word for child, a woman's independence has always come at a steep price. Notions of women's liberation have never taken root among Japanese women. But with scant open conflict, the push for separate burials is quietly becoming one of the country's fastest growing social trends. In a recent survey by the TBS television network, 20 percent of the women who responded said they hoped to be buried separately from their husbands. The funerary revolt comes as women here annoy at Japan's slow pace in providing greater equality between the sexes. The law, for example, still makes it almost impossible for a woman to use her maiden name after marriage. Divorce rates are low by Western standards, meanwhile, because achieving financial independence, or even obtaining a credit card in one's own name, are insurmountable hurdles for many divorced women. Until recently, society enforced restrictions on women even in death. Under Japan's complex burial customs, divorced or unmarried women were traditionally unwelcome in most graveyards, where plots are still passed down through the husband's family and descendants must provide maintenance for burial sites or lose them. 'The woman who wanted to be buried alone couldn't find a graveyard until about 10 years ago.' said Haruyo Inoue, a sociologist of death and burial at Japan University. She said that graveyards that did not require descendants, in order to accommodate women, began appearing around 1990. Today, she said, that there are close to 400 of these cemeteries in Japan. That is just one sign of stirring among Japanese women, who are also pressing for the first time to change the law to be able to use their maiden names after marriage. Although credit goes beyond any individual, many women cite Junko Mastubara, a popular writer on women's issues, with igniting the trend to separate sex burials. Starting three years ago, Ms. Matsubara has built an association of nearly 600 women—some divorced, some unhappily married, and some determinedly single—who plan to share a common plot curbed out of an ordinary cemetery in the western suburb of Chofu. From the fact that divorce can mean a life of hardship for Japanese women, we can infer that ______.