This is the reason I hate writing on these topics :-). I'm trying my best to describe the situation without judging it. Yes, there are women who wish a career in Japan. Some of my best friends here fit that description. One of my friends works in the same company as her husband and has been promoted higher than him (they started at the same time). They'll have a difficult decision to make if they have children. I haven't talked to her about it, but I suspect that career will heavily impact their decision about whether or not they will even have children.
The situation is slowly changing over time. Women are taking more professional roles. As in the example of my friend, the glass ceilings are slowly disappearing. Her company, a traditional Japanese company, seems to have no trouble recognising her ability and putting her in appropriate positions. There is still a long way to go, though.
Let's not pretend that it's all unicorns and rainbows in the west, though. In nearly 30 years as a programmer, I could chop off all my fingers and still count the number of women colleagues who have returned from maternity leave in my groups on one hand. It's never happened! Every single one of them swears up and down that they are coming back, but every single time when their maternity leave is over: "My husband's salary is enough for us to live on. Child care costs a huge proportion of my salary and I can't find anyone I trust anyway. Plus after a year of looking after my baby I don't want to hand them over to anyone". I'm completely sick of it. We need paternity leave laws (so that the stay at home father is a viable alternative) and we need them now.
Late Edit: I really should point out that there is just as much of a problem for men as there is for women in Japanese society. Men just don't get access to their children because they are expected to devote their lives to work. It is not uncommon for wives to push men to work harder so that the family can have more money. Some men thrive in that environment, but some would really like to be spending time with their families. To a great extent, the government has recognised this problem and it legislates ever more national holidays, forces public officers to take 5 days off at Obon, etc, etc. But the culture is very slow to react. This is Japan. Nobody moves until there is consensus and then everything happens overnight. With all it's problems, Japan is still the place where I feel people are all aligned with the idea of making society a better place. I don't agree with everything here, but I respect the slow but inevitable progress that society makes here. YMMV (and probably will -- my natural attitude was always very close to Japanese ideas even before I knew anything about them. It's one of the reasons I find it so easy to live here).