Japanese women are not particularly free compared to similar wealthy nations.

But you are forgetting history - those countries had their own brands of capitalist expansionism within living memory. They both had periods of time pre-World Wars where they homogenised themselves: Germany formed a nation state out of smaller states and kingdoms, while Japan did similarly, as well as forcefully assimilating it's Ainu ethnic minority groups. As a result of this, a powerful centralised state was able to direct the development of the economy as well as their respective society. Initially fascists exploited this. Then as the US, Soviets and other Western powers repudiated them, they were made to adopt the liberal capitalist model that they'd been on the path towards pre-World Wars.

The Middle East on the other hand has been under the boot of european puppet masters. Iran's democratic PM was couped (1953), in Afghanistan the Taliban was funded by the US against a secular progressive leader, and in Saudi Arabia, their royal family were puppets for Europeans (UK) and for decades now, the US.