Well, in Japanese, the honorific term for someone else's wife literally means inside (the house), coming from a term that originally used to express that something is out of sight and inside (a house, or some other enclosure).
Edit: It is the polite way to talk about someone else's wife, because indirect address is polite in Japanese, so basically many of the polite words - or words that used to be polite but no longer aren't - indicate the direction of someone, up to a point where the respectful word for person is "direction" with an addad modifier. Example: 日本人 (nihonjin) means Japanese (person), while the respectful variant used to talk about or adress people of higher social standing is 日本の方 (nihonnokata), meaning "from the direction of Japan".
So, well, in a way it makes sense to talk about someone's wife by adding the location of where she is supposed to be if you want to be polite. Which is where women belong, after all. Back home in the house.