Home and Family in Japan Continuity and Transforma... - (1 Continuity and Change in Japanese Homes and Families) PDF

1 Continuity and change in
Japanese homes and families

Richard Ronald and Allison Alexy
Introduction
The Japanese word ‘ie’ denotes both actual houses and the stem-families that are
supposed to inhabit them. This notion of family is linear and extends to members
long dead as well as those yet to be born. Moreover, ie has been a powerful
rhetorical concept and is frequently used to explain other forms of relatedness in
Japan such as company life or loyalty to the nation. In recent decades, however,
the ‘Japanese family’ has been deemed to be in ‘crisis’ (Hayashi, 2002), or at
least, to be undergoing a significant reorientation (Ochiai, 1994, 1997; Ueno,
2009). Ideologies of, and lived experiences within, the family have decoupled
from previous norms with household patterns and life-courses becoming charac-
teristically fragmented (White, 2002). For the more conservative minded, the
family – the very basis of Japanese life – has appeared to be in peril. This volume
explores ongoing shifts and turbulence in Japanese homes and family lives,
focusing on various dimensions and meanings of ie. Transformations are further
put in the context of recent turmoil in socioeconomic and political milieus as well
as the remarkable demographic shifts underway in Japan.
As a ‘family system’ based, in principle, on feudal ‘traditions’ and Confucian
values of filial piety, ie was embedded during the Meiji period (1868–1912) in
legal measures that defined obligations of household members to the male head,
who held title to family property and had rights over, and responsibilities for,
other family members. Despite its formal dissolution in the New Civil Code of
1947, the ‘family system’ continued to constitute a normative force in family
affairs and social relations. The post-war hegemonic image of family life focused
upon an urbanized and nucleated form of ie, imagining standard families includ-
ing breadwinning husbands, fulltime housewives and educationally-minded
children. Stem-family1 relations also persisted and, although families became
more mobile and multigenerational households declined, intergenerational
Copyright © 2010. Routledge. All rights reserved.
obligations for care and rights of inheritance were largely sustained across family
networks.
More recently, however, although an ideological ie hegemony has endured,
dramatic shifts have emerged in actual families and household conditions.
Japanese homes, particularly since the post-bubble recessions, have been
Ronald, Richard, and Allison Alexy. <i>Home and Family in Japan : Continuity and Transformation</i>, Routledge, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/indonesiau-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1166564.
Created from indonesiau-ebooks on 2019-10-17 17:14:51.
2 Richard Ronald and Allison Alexy
increasingly likely to include childless couples; divorcees; unmarried adult children;
children who refuse to leave the house and elderly relatives living alone or in
nursing homes. The fastest growing household forms have been single-only and
couple-only households, while at the margins of society significant numbers of
people have become homeless. Along with the erosion of ie norms and ‘standard’
household patterns, family lives have been increasingly described as dysfunctional
instead of harmonic and as problematic rather than stable.
These shifts have, furthermore, unfolded during an era of extensive social
transformation featuring intensive social ageing, falling fertility and marriage
rates, and socioeconomic restructuring in employment and social security practices.
While Japanese economic growth was unrivalled in the post-war decades, the last
20 years have witnessed a series of recessions that have undermined the financial
and institutional base of economic security. Governance too has featured some
unexpected reversals in recent years including, since the late 1990s, the advance
of neoliberal policy discourses and, more recently, the end of more than half a
century of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule. Family changes are thus unfold-
ing in the context of more seismic transformations in social, political, economic
and demographic landscapes, which are in turn being shaped by changes in the
form, constitution and meaning of family and home.
Although the emphasis has often been on the family in ‘crisis’ in public and
academic discourses, the ‘Japanese Family’ has historically proven to be a resil-
ient social institution. This endurance is visible in how frequently homes, house-
holds and family values have actually adjusted to social, spatial and economic
changes that have included radical periods of industrialization, militarization,
urbanization and rapid economic expansion (Ronald, 2007). Essentially, the
ie norm has perpetuated perceptions of continuity in Japanese society despite
substantial shifts. For Ueno (1994), the ie ideal is, rather than an essential and
eternal aspect of Japanese existence, the product of modernity, or in other words ‘the
Japanese version of the modern family’. To consider changes in family and
household relationships as the end of ‘traditional’ values is to misrepresent the
modern character of Japanese kinship. The ie system has, in many cases, served
to transform family relationships into more intimate and pragmatic ones, rather than
preserve feudal practices and obligations that bind Japanese generations together.
This volume deals with family change, not as a system in decline, but rather as
a complex and fragmentary process that reflects transformation and continuity,
adaptation and assimilation, function and dysfunction. Contributors to this edited
collection blend economic, political, social and spatial topics, echoing multidis-
ciplinary concerns, and nearly all draw upon recent empirical research. Many
address changes in families, households and homes through ethnographic
research while others use documentary and quantitative sources to demonstrate

shifts in homes and household conditions. The purpose of this chapter, as well as
providing an introduction to the other chapters of the book, is to identify past,
present and emerging features of Japanese families. The intention is to provide a
reflexive overview of continuity and change from which to access the following
chapters.
Continuity and change in Japanese homes and families 3
The family system
Both exogenous and indigenous studies have tended to emphasize the centrality
and inimitability of the family in Japanese social life, with the house itself
embodying the harmony of the family inside (see Daniels, 2001). Other
approaches have alternatively identified differences between Japan’s stem family
system and familialism in East Asia to the extent that is has been considered more
of a West European type (see Saito, 2000). Japanese familialism has stood out
among Confucian family systems as being highly adaptive. Indeed, imported
family members including the wives of sons, sons-in-law and adopted children
often take the place of blood-kin, even becoming head of the household.
Historians, among others, have, for the most part, perpetuated the assumption
that ie was embedded and broadly exercised in feudal social practices prior to the
1868 Meiji restoration. Itō (1982) nonetheless, dismisses the notion that the ie
system is founded on the relics of feudal traditions. Indeed, practices considered
fundamental, such as primogeniture (inheritance through the line of eldest sons),
were not especially widespread in feudal Japan. Patrilineal stem families were
common to Samurai classes – who constituted six to ten per cent of the popula-
tion at most – but were largely unknown among the general populous (Hobsbaum
and Ranger, 1983; Ikegami 1995). Ultimogeniture (inheritance by the last born
child) and matrilineal inheritance (along the line of the eldest daughter) were
practiced among farmers and merchants in western regions of Japan. It was
apparently considered better to select a groom from a wide source of human
resources than trust that one particular son would turn out well. Patrilineal relations,
considered fundamental to intergenerational harmony and continuity in Japan, is
thus essentially an adopted practice among ordinary families, imposed by Meiji
period legislation.
The Meiji Civil Code (1898) and the Family Registry System (1871) were
administrative pillars which compelled families to adopt particular practices.
The latter system required that all families register their members and made
family membership a requirement for legal rights. These two laws effectively
established taxation and land ownership rights for the heads of families and
enshrined patriarchal authority in law. Under the new administrative regime
the registered paternal head of household exercised authority over the rest of
the family, and was legally succeeded by the eldest son. Decisions over the
marriage and domicile of household members were determined by the father,
often discounting individual wishes (Vogel, 1979). These powers were consid-
ered necessary for the father to fulfill the family’s obligations to the state, as
well as to maintain the assets and status of the family for future generations.
Under the new legal frameworks, women lost rights and responsibilities that
they had held de facto if not de jure, such as claims to family inheritance
(Ikegami, 1995).
This system of family organization, billed as shared heritage, actually served the
interests of the modern state. Indeed, Ito- (1982) proposes that ie is a ‘pseudo-family
state ideology’, as evidenced by the two decades of controversy surrounding the
establishment of the Meiji Civil Code.2 For Sato- (1978) an important achievement
of the Meiji government was to establish the principle of filial piety in law and,
furthermore, extend obligations and loyalty associated with the family to the
emperor and nation, and consequently the state. A critical point was the appro-
priation of Confucian morals in a way which confounded the notion of filial piety,
making it inseparable from feudalistic loyalty. The Code gave priority to family
ethics over any other ethics, and made familialism subject to national ethics. This
made the emperor the ultimate head of all Japanese families, situating him in an
equivalent regard to ‘his people’ as that between a father and his children. The
general population was expected to be loyal to him and his representatives, the
state, just as family members were filial to the head of the family.
For Ueno (1994) the ie system was created in the process of transition to
modernity. Formalization of ie arrangements facilitated the transformation of
families from diverse and complex structures – in which social and productive
tasks were integrated – into more regular units characterized by the separation of
private and public spheres and a more formalized division of labour between men
and women. Sand (2003) describes pre-Meiji households as broad and fluid
compositions. Houses were filled with children and adopted children, parents-in-
law, other in-laws, concubines, apprentices, servants and lodgers, all living and
sleeping in close proximity with very little privacy. The social and physical
boundaries of the house were more porous and often submerged in intersecting
networks of relations and obligations within the village, community or occupa-
tional association. Under the purposive modernization conducted by the Meiji
government, families were reorganized around more compact units with defined
roles for husbands and wives. This coincided with the rapid urbanization of
households and the industrialization of labour. Relocation and reorientation
required a reinventing of the family and community involving both reshaping
domestic spaces and endowing them with new meaning. The home itself became
the new unit of social division and lawmakers and political thinkers became
concerned with it as a locus of moral meaning, although the ideological rhetoric
of a more eternal Japanese ‘family’ form concealed such concerns. This is not
only evidenced by the legislation of ie but also the focus in bourgeois culture in
the re-imaging of domestic space.
The formalization of ie under the Meiji Civil Code and in legislative rhetoric
bound the family to the home in more fundamental ways. Housing and cohabita-
tion practices inherited from the Edo period (1603–1868) provided the legitimacy for
re-centering households around the home, but with the nuclearized family itself
reduced to a conjugal core.3 Western notions of home and modern family life
were also influential in intellectual and public discourses. Both approaches
asserted the significance of the space and place of the home as the moral locus of
social life. This emphasis on the home helped transform the position of women,
who became characterized as domestic managers and the moral educators of
children. Bourgeois magazines became concerned with the status of the ‘house-
wife’ and the domain of female labour, and were popular among the growing
market of literate women (Sato, 2003). Indeed, the romantic bond between
husband and wife, and the home as a haven for child-rearing, featured strongly in
the emerging rhetoric on the family. This contrasts to pre-modern notions of ie
in which too close a relationship between husband and wife could be seen as
detrimental to the house as a whole (Hendry, 1995: 26). For Ueno (1994), the
concept of the ‘happy family circle’ characterized the reorientation of modern
families. It alluded to rituals such as family meals and conversations that became
common in middle-class households and associated with the proliferation of
conjugal male-breadwinner families.
Sand (2003) emphasizes the growing salience of ‘katei’ as a parallel notion to
ie in early modern Japan. While ie denoted the ‘ie seido’, or ‘family system’,
katei, meaning ‘home’, reflected more modern notions of family life and intimate
family relations. These two concepts were quite dichotic, the former being indig-
enous and feudal, and the latter being modern and exogenous. Both, however,
framed perceptions and understandings of family life. Among contemporary
families, the word ‘kazoku’, rather than ie or katei, is the one most often chosen
to describe one’s household or family. It refers most typically to the members of
the nuclear family unit. While this implies considerable fluidity in the meaning of
family and home, ie persists as a concept that frames kazoku in context of lineage
and the stem family as well as a normative set of values that has persisted well
beyond the official assertion of the family system.4
The formal dissolution of ie

Japan’s first census in 1920 put the number of nuclear family units at 54 per cent
and family homes with three generations or more at 31 per cent of all households.
While ie legally institutionalized a feudal stem-family system, the dominance of
nuclear families has been taken to signify that pre-war Japanese families were
modern (Ochiai, 1989) and resembled their European counterparts. Similarities
were evident in a number of regards: the separation of domestic and public
spheres along with a gendered division of labour; strong emotional relationships
among family members with a focus on child rearing and family collectivity; and
nuclear units that exclude non-kin.
The formal dissolution of ie as a legal system was achieved by the New Civil
Code of 1947. This asserted that all family members would have, in principle,
equal rights and primogeniture was abandoned in favour of shared rights to inher-
itance among offspring. Indeed, the code sustained a more democratic notion of
citizenship and laws were to be enacted, in regard to marriage and the family,
‘from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential quality of the sexes’
(Article 24). Citizens were still legally required to register themselves in families,
but each new household was registered as a nuclear family upon marriage, rather
than with the stem-family. Actual household practices, however, continued to
reflect ie practices that gave the male head of household authority over others.
Stem families were also sustained by de facto inheritance arrangements in
which eldest sons were expected to inherit the family home and take on specific
responsibilities of the head of family including the care of elderly members.
House and home
In post-war society, the space and place of the home became particularly impor-
tant in a number of respects to sustaining ie norms. First, as is explored in
Ronald’s chapter in this volume, modern houses often sustain physical bounda-
ries and spatial markers, such as genkan vestibules and tatami matted washitsu
rooms,5 which signify continuity between the intimate space of the contemporary
home and an idealized family locale of the feudal past. While domestic settings
have been drastically transformed during Japan’s urbanization and moderniza-
tion, the material form of Japanese houses has been argued to continue to reflect
particular arrangements of the ‘harmonious family’ within (Nakagawa, 2002).
Transformations in domestic places have also facilitated conditions necessary for
a modernized conjugal ie, with both walls that provide privacy for individual
family members and dining/living rooms conducive to family interactions.
Second, as the legal imposition of ie receded, housing became an important
mechanism by which the state sought to manage households and administer indi-
viduals as family members. Post-war housing policy intervention became intense
in the 1950s and 1960s. Policies not only focused upon housing shortages and
rebuilding the fabric of urban communities, but also the promotion of conjugal
family households and the transformation of households from renters, as the vast
majority of urban residents were before 1945 (Hayakawa, 1990), into home-
owning families (Hirayama and Ronald, 2007; Waswo, 2002). Key measures
included public housing production, which stimulated the modern transformation
of domestic spaces into single family units for nuclear families – normally
concrete apartment units. The most significant measure, however, was the facili-
tation of housing finance through government housing loans to promote the
consumption of dwellings as owner-occupied properties.
Through legislation in housing, the state was increasingly able to shape the
formation of a broad class, or social ‘mainstream’, of middle-class homeowners
and a flow up the housing ladder from the natal home to an independent rented
dwelling, to a condominium and finally a single detached family house with a
garden (Hirayama, 2007). By moving up this ladder families not only improved
their housing conditions but also became more self-reliant because owner-occupied
homes provided both family shelter and asset security. Essentially, the emergent
housing-ladder system had a strong hegemonic impact, defining a way of life for
those aspiring to form modern middle-class families. A life-course pattern orien-
tated around the dream of home purchase, or ‘mai hōmu’ (my own home), thus
became central to aspirations. According to public surveys, by 1955, around
52 per cent of families expressed the desire to buy their own-home, rising to
74 per cent in 1966 and 90 per cent in 1969 (see Tamaki, 1974).
Housing properties became a feature of intergenerational exchanges of welfare

care and inheritance. House prices advanced well ahead of other forms of invest-
ment between 1950 and 1991, and while younger people found it increasingly
difficult to advance up the housing ladder, older people who had entered
the market when land was cheap and building a family house more affordable,
accumulated considerable equity (see Hirayama in this volume). Cohabitation
with the family of an adult child, usually the eldest male, could mediate recipro-
cal exchanges of child care and elderly care between generations. Typically, the
son would inherit the property, which could then feature in welfare agreements
with his own children. The bond of inherited property thus helped sustain ie
norms by providing the material basis for the continuation of the social contract
between each generation. Although modern employment conditions encouraged
mobility, scattered nuclear families would often return to the stem-family
home, or reconstitute a new one in a more urban location, especially as ageing
parents became frail. As it is more problematic to split a housing property
between children, younger siblings would often receive cash gifts while the eldest
inherited the family home.
The transformation of homes into commodities and the creation of a housing
market helped shape family bonds as well as the state administration of individu-
als via family households. Because procuring a home required considerable
capital, family assistance via inter-vivo land transfers, cash gifts and informal
loans were important. State supply subsidy only targeted family housing units,
and subsidized loans were only provided to family households.6 In social policy,
welfare support was directed towards families because individuals did not qualify
on their own for most benefits. The state focus on family property both built up
welfare capacity and sustained the ethos of family self-reliance, offsetting the
underdevelopment of public welfare services. The Japanese state has in this way
demonstrated a close link between cultural and institutional ‘familialism’ and the
welfare system. The government has encouraged middle-class nuclear families to
obtain ‘husband earned’ housing in ‘family places’ by helping ‘standard families’
through state-assisted housing loans and a unique occupational welfare system
(Hirayama and Izuhara, 2008: 643). This has been particularly significant for
women who have typically relied on marriage in order to become independent
from their natal families, have accessed social insurance through their spouses’
employment benefits and have become home-owners in principle rather than in
name, with housing property predominantly held by husbands. The post-war
housing model effectively combined with the modern family norm to strengthen
women’s dependency as well as the division of labour (Nishikawa, 2004).
Indeed, the relationship between homes and families in Japan is not simply
linguistic or feudal. Throughout the modern period, families and the dwellings
they inhabit have been intimately linked with, and influenced by, the means
by which the Japanese people have been managed by the state. These connections
have also been reshaped by socioeconomic transformations which have perpetu-
ated social reproduction under conditions of radical social, spatial, economic
and political change. Nonetheless, bonds between family, home and social stabil-
ity appear to have been increasingly undermined in the most recent period
of Japan’s history. This is examined in some detail in Hirayama’s chapter in
this volume, with specific attention to how the housing system has begun to
augment generational differences in housing conditions, undermining family
formation.
Standard families and the middle-class mainstream
In the post-war era, despite the proliferation of nuclearized households and
sustained stem-family networks, there was still considerable variation in kinship
arrangements and housing conditions. Central, nonetheless, was an image of a
standard family and normalized life-course that reflected a homogenized and
harmonious notion of modern family life. Stable company employment and
corporate paternalism were also important to standard male breadwinner families.
The metaphor of the family itself was projected onto the company with male
employees expected to devote themselves for their working lives to a single
employer, who in return for loyalty would take care of the employee and his
family (Takahashi and Someya, 1985). This constituted a social contract mimick-
ing the parent–child (oyabun-kobun) relationship (Rohlen, 1974). Key practices
held this relationship together including corporate benefits systems in which male
employees (and their families) were housed or were helped onto the housing
ladder (Sato, 2007), and, more importantly, guaranteed lifelong employment
security and wage increases.
Although significant numbers of families have not been headed by regular
employees of large corporations,7 employment practices labelled ‘the Company
System’ helped consolidate standard nuclear families and life-courses. Especially
during the era of rapid economic growth, company employment along with the
owner-occupied housing ladder helped normalize and stabilize standard male
breadwinner families. A sense of social homogeneity was reinforced by growing
affluence and an emerging culture oriented toward consumption which promoted
middle class identification. According to public surveys, those who considered
their living standards as ‘middle’ increased from 72 per cent of the population in
1958 to 87 per cent in 1965, and to more than 90 per cent after 1973 (Cabinet
Office, 2008). For Murakami (1984) this marked the rise of a huge, homogeneous
‘new middle mass’, although others suggest that more significant was the ‘feeling
of middle-classness’ (Kishimoto, 1978). More critically, company employment
embedded a sense of solidarity and largely insulated families from risk.
Trouble at home and work

In the 1970s, the number of households composed of a single male breadwinner
with a full-time housewife and children began to decline sharply. Between 1975
and 2005 the ratio of conjugal families decreased by around a third and the
number of multigenerational stem-families halved. Meanwhile, the number of
single-only households doubled. While the trend toward household fragmentation
had begun earlier, it was hastened considerably by the economic bubble that
formed in the 1980s.8 An additional associated phenomenon was the pronounced
drop in fertility rates which first dropped below an average 2.05 children per
woman – considered necessary to maintain the population – in 1974. By 1989
average fertility had reached 1.57. Socioeconomic transformations in the 1990s
and 2000s have been even more radical and, furthermore, strongly associated
Million households
0 10 20 30 40 50
1975 13.5% 12.7% 12.4% 45.7% 5.8% 9.8%
1980 15.8% 12.8% 13.1% 44% 6% 8.1%
1985 20.8% 11.9% 13.7% 40% 6.3% 7.3%
1990 23.1% 10.6% 15.5% 37.3% 6.8% 6.8%
1995 25.6% 9.2% 17.4% 34.2% 7.1% 6.5%
2000 27.6% 7.5% 18.9% 31.9% 7.6% 6.4%
2005 29.5% 6.1% 19.6% 29.9% 8.4% 6.5%
Single household Married couple with child(ren) and parents

Married couple only Married couple with child(ren)
Single parent household Other households
Figure 1.1 Household change in Japan.

Source: Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Tele-
communications, Population Census.
with the further erosion of conjugal families and stem-family relations as well as
an even greater decline in the numbers of women having children.
The economic boom period of the 1980s saw many families become more
affluent. At the same time, younger couples found their dreams of buying their
own home and starting their own family increasingly threatened by soaring house
prices.9 Eventually, driven by over-inflation in land and stock-market values the
economic bubble finally burst in 1989.10 The government rallied around ailing
financial sectors and propped up banks as asset values plummeted. However, the
situation was exacerbated further in 1997 by the Asian financial crisis. Over a
prolonged era of economic stagnation, now often referred to as the ‘lost decade’,
government funds were significantly diminished and corporations were squeezed
by tight economic conditions. The lost decade technically lasted until 2002 when
the economy finally began to demonstrate signs of sustained revival. Global
events in credit markets in 2008, nonetheless, reversed this recovery and Japan
entered its harshest recession since the war.11 The effect of long-term economic
stagnation has been a thorough reshaping of economic conditions with families
increasingly thrown back on their own resources as state and company support
has been pulled away.
The government also had to cope with realignment in international conditions
of economic competition because of China’s rise as a centre of manufacturing,
putting even greater pressure on Japan as business and jobs moved elsewhere.
The power of the Liberal Democratic Party was also challenged by the loss of a
major election in the early 1990s. Although the LDP returned to power in less
than a year, the map of Japanese politics was redefined by new coalitions and
greater democratic competition. Faith in the state was also shaken by poor insti-
tutional responses following the Kobe earthquake and the Aum-Shinrikyo
subway gas attacks in 1995. These pressures took their toll on Japanese state
paternalism. As Takeda discusses in this volume, in the late 1990s, and especially
after the election of Koizumi in 2001, neoliberalization was promoted as the way
forward for the Japanese economy. This allowed for an intensive deregulation of
company employment practices and the withdrawal of the pillars of post-war
social policy including, conspicuously, state housing loan subsidies (see Forrest
and Hirayama, 2009).
The restructuring of employment has been drastic and has helped undermine
standard family formation by destabilizing male breadwinner employment, on the
one hand, and increasing female labour-market participation on the other.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s corporations hollowed-out company welfare
commitments to employees. Workers were increasingly hired on ‘irregular’
contracts without benefits, employment security or guaranteed wage increases.
Consequently, between 1982 and 2006, the ratio of all workers in irregular
employment grew from 15.8 to 30.6 per cent (Cabinet Office, 2008). For older
workers on permanent contracts too, company benefits packages were residualized
and performance-based pay superseded seniority-pay structures (Genda, 2001).
Through these policies and practices, income security has been pulled away,
undermining the economic basis of male breadwinner households and, therefore,
standard family formation.
Those on the margins of society have been particular victims of economic
downturn and employment restructuring. Those outside the protection of regular
company employment and families have often ended up as day labourers, partic-
ularly in the construction sector. When the first economic shock hit in the early
1990s, these people were the first be laid off with many becoming homeless. A
2001 Tokyo survey of the homeless found that 98 per cent were men, 93 per cent
were over 40 years old and only 6 per cent had ever been married (see Iwata,
2007). Nishizawa’s chapter in this volume examines how those outside the family
system have been excluded from society, with many forming a particular under-
class in Japan’s urban yoseba districts.12 Young people are increasingly repre-
sented among the under-classes and a more recent social phenomena has been the
rise of what are called ‘net-café refugees’, or young homeless who shelter in
24 hour internet cafés and fast food outlets. Government figures estimate there
are more than 5,000 such refugees in metropolitan Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya
(MHLW, 2009).
Companies have been increasingly discriminative since labour market deregu-
lation in the late 1990s (Genda, 2001). While the rate of irregular employment
almost doubled between 1982 and 2006, the rate among those aged 20–24
increased from 11.4 to 41.2 per cent (Cabinet Office, 2008). Another related
phenomenon has been the rise of freeters and NEETs. Freeters are non-regular
workers aged 15–34 who typically staff places like convenience stores and
restaurants on low pay, whereas NEET is an acronym describing young people
Not in Employment, Education or Training. According to a Cabinet Office
Report, the number of freeters was 4.17 million in 2001, while the number of
NEETs was estimated at 640,000 in the 2003 Labour Force Survey, up more than
50 per cent from a decade earlier. Many young people have been protected
from harsh economic conditions by their families, but face very poor prospects in
finding secure, well paid work, which is normally a requirement for marriage
and starting a new family. Increasingly, young people have found conditions
difficult to bear and have subsequently withdrawn from society, many shutting
themselves away in their bedrooms. Families that contain such shut-in children,
or ‘hikikomori’, and the disruption they cause, are examined in Horiguchi’s
chapter in this volume.
Much of the gap formed by the erosion of regular male employment has been
filled by the expansion of women in paid work.13 Even though female educational
conditions have improved, women’s standing in the workplace remains inferior
and women continue to earn significantly less than men. Moreover, the majority
of women are employed in irregular positions without full benefits, and although
many work the same amount of hours as full-timers they are often designated as
part-timers to save companies money. This has, furthermore, been encouraged by
public policy, employment deregulation measures and the structure of govern-
ment tax incentives (Osawa, 2002). Although the erosion of salaries and income
security for men has forced many women into work, they have also been expected
to continue to fulfill the demands of housewife and caregiver for children and
elderly family members. Nakano’s chapter in this volume explores how these dual
pressures factor into the choices of growing numbers of women not to marry.
The reversal in economic conditions has been accompanied by shifts in values
and social attitudes. The Japanese salaryman has become a particular victim of
the recession. With the decline in economic power, those men once considered
Japan’s corporate warriors are now often portrayed as more miserable figures,
absent of masculine authority (see Dasgupta, 2000). The decline in hegemonic
masculinity and the reorientation in male-breadwinner identities are explored
further in Hidaka’s chapter, later in this volume.
More generally, attitude surveys have shown that changes in economic security
and loss of confidence in the competence of the state has promoted a collective
ennui and sense of anxiety, especially in regard to the future.14 Möhwald (2000)
argues that during the growth period of the 1960s and 1970s social value changes
were characterized by the transition to a ‘modern’ society. Alternatively, the
1980s onwards has seen greater differentiation and fragmentation of the Japanese
‘value universe’. Japanese people, especially younger ones, have grown increas-
ingly concerned with personal pleasure and consumption activities at the expense
of broader social links and commitment to the community. A suggestion has been
made that Japanese society is undergoing a historic shift as younger generations
are no longer adopting the life-choices or following the life-course patterns
forged by their parents’ generation (Mathews and White, 2004). How families
and family relations are now imagined, or reimagined, are explored in this volume
by White, who considers both attempts by the state to guide public attitudes and
the values extant in contemporary music cultures followed by young people.
Getting older
Another outstanding social transformation which is both shaping micro family
relations and impacting Japan on the macro economic and national policy-scale
is the ageing Japanese society. While many Western societies took nearly a
century to transform from an ‘ageing’ to an ‘aged society’,15 Japan took only
24 years. Older people are also living far longer than was expected only a few
decades ago. On average life expectancy is 79 years for men and 86 years for
women, approximately 30 years longer than in 1947. At the same time, declining
fertility rates have accentuated growth in the proportion of the elderly population.
By 2002, one-fifth of the population was already over 65, and this will likely
expand to one-third by 2040 (UN, 2008). Another expectation is that the ratio
between economically active to economically inactive (mostly pensioners) popu-
lations, which was 6:1 in 1990 and 4:1 in 2000, will increase to 2:1 by 2025.
The pressure of such considerable growth in the population of older people on
national resources has become central to debates on family and social policy. As
care of the elderly has been an obligation associated with the family under the ie
norm, the state has been keen to assist families in being self-reliant. Nonetheless,
the burden of care for older family members has proved to be yet another strain
on the already weakened constitution of contemporary families. Within families,
responsibilities and obligations are being tested while in the public sphere
increasing pressure is being brought to bear on the state as a provider of welfare
and care.
The object of home itself is significant in welfare provision as it provides,
especially in the context of modern home ownership, both a reserve of financial
wealth and a spatial node of informal exchange of welfare services. The bond of
property ostensibly appeared in the post-war context to support reciprocal care
exchanges and welfare self-provision based upon kinship networks. However,
arrangements within families have been, in reality, far more diverse and fluid. For
example, eldest sons have often chosen not to return to the family home and in
many cases another child, often a daughter, has taken on responsibilities for
elderly care and, where this has involved cohabitation, has often resulted in the
renegotiation of the ‘generational contract’ with the caregiver becoming the
nominated heir (Izuhara, 2002). The conflict between elderly parents and adult
children is often ameliorated when a daughter is responsible for care rather than
a daughter-in-law (Long et al., 2009) There has also been an associated conflict
between generations reflected in both declining rates of multifamily cohabitation
and the institutionalization of elderly parents, especially once they become
infirm. In regards to the former, the ratio of elderly over 65 cohabiting with adult
children dropped from 64 per cent in 1975 to 37.5 per cent by 2005 (Cabinet
Office, 2008). In many cases cohabitation has been replaced by practices of living
separate to, but ‘close by’ elderly parents. The pressures of elderly care are often
too much for the younger family who may institutionalize the elderly parent in a
care-home. This is often an expensive undertaking, with the high admission cost
representing a fee for discarding the parent.
As longevity is extending far beyond what was expected only a few decades
ago, old-age as a life-stage has become increasingly important to contemporary
Japanese lives. Expectations and negotiations of identities and roles in later life
also reflect shifting dispositions to kin and social networks. How elderly people
see relationships and obligations between family members is adjusting to shifting
demographic and economic conditions. This is leading to new ways of organizing
households and families and planning for later life. According to Platz’s chapter
in this volume, many people are beginning to imagine diverse possibilities
for post-retirement, such as relying more on friendship networks and not only
sharing their houses with children. Moreover, family plans are based on what is
most suitable for each generation and made in consultation. Changes in homes
and life-courses are thus parallelling changes in society.
Not getting married and not having babies

The other driver of social ageing has been the related and marked decline in
marriage and fertility, which has driven down the ratio of younger members of
Japanese society.16 Like most advanced societies, the average age of marriage has
increased in recent decades. In Japan this increase has been, between 1970 and
2008, from 26.9 to 30.2 years old for men and 24.2 to 28.5 years old for women,
and is now one of the highest in the world. A second and more dramatic change
has been the growing segment of people not marrying at all. In 2005, 59 per cent
of women aged 25–29 and 32 per cent aged 30–34 had not yet married, up from
18 and 7 per cent, respectively, in 1970. Among men the increase was from 47 to
72 per cent and 12 to 47 per cent (Cabinet Office, 2008). The divorce rate had
also increased among those in their late twenties and early thirties from around
two to five per cent over the same period. The knock on effect has been the expan-
sion of middle-aged singles made up of both divorcees and ‘never-marrieds’. The
impact on household formation has been remarkable with a staggering rise
of single households and in unmarried adult children staying on indefinitely in
the natal home as so-called ‘parasite singles’ (Yamada, 1999). The number of
single households almost doubled between 1980 and 2005 from 16 to 30 per cent
of households. The rate is as high as 43 per cent in urban areas like Tokyo (see
IPSS, 2008). Meanwhile the ratio of adult children living as non-married singles
in their parent’s homes increased over the same period from 24 to 43 per cent for
those aged 25–29, and 8 to 24 per cent for those aged 30–34.
It appears that it is not simply the case that people are marrying later or cohab-
iting. There are clear indications that processes of family formation are breaking
down or, for many, not happening at all. International studies of family change
have suggested that families in most advanced capitalist societies are in decline.
For Popenoe (1993) contemporary families have lost many of their past functions
as well as their significance in peoples lives. The cultural value of familialism has
thus disintegrated as many have turned their energies toward investment in them-
selves. Moreover, recent family decline is more serious than any decline in
the past because ‘what is breaking up is the nuclear family, the fundamental
unit stripped of relatives and left with two essential functions which cannot be
performed better elsewhere: childrearing and the provision to its members of
affection and companionship’ (p. 527).
Until recently, Japan had been exempt from associations with the family
decline characteristic of Western European and North American societies. This is
not only because of the emphasis put on familialism and the ie system in under-
standing Japanese society, but also because the main indicators of family break-
down, divorce rates and births outside of marriage, have been relatively low.
Indeed, the number of children born to unmarried mothers in Japan is less than
two per cent (MLHW, 2006), which compares to 34 per cent in the USA, 41 per
cent in Britain and 56 per cent in Sweden. This could be considered a sign of the
strength of the Japanese family system and its distinctiveness from other devel-
oped societies. Nonetheless, for Ueno (2009) there are other indices which are
functionally equivalent that demonstrate the erosion of the family and the weak-
ening relationship between sex and marriage. The first is the increased number of
unmarried singles and the extreme decrease in couples having children. Both
result in extreme low social fertility and a rapidly ageing population. While the
average number of children born to each woman was 4.3 in 1947, it dropped as
low as 1.29 in 2004. It has since recovered marginally to 1.34 in 2007, but
remains at levels categorized in demographic terms as lowest-low fertility.
In many western societies decline in marriage is not necessarily associated
with the decline in children being born. Indeed, According to the Office of
National Statistics (2009) of all children born in the UK in 2006, 44 per cent were
to unmarried parents. In Japan however, very few couples cohabit without being
married and the likelihood of them ever having children is small. According to
the Institute of Population and Social Security (2008), less than two per cent of
unmarried women of reproductive age live at any one time as an unmarried
heterosexual couple, and the small percentage of children born outside marriage
are not usually born into households of unmarried cohabiting couples. In coun-
tries like Britain, nearly a quarter of all children live with a lone parent while
the figure in Japan is 8.4 per cent, with single mothers accounting for the vast
majority of these households (MLHW, 2006). Moreover, among single mothers
in Japan, never-married mothers make up only eight per cent, which contrasts to
over 40 per cent in the USA. Hertog examines, later in this volume, why so few
women in Japan have children outside of marriage. The lack of state support is
one reason, although the reactions of families and the unwillingness of many
parents to support an unmarried daughter with a baby strongly influence decisions
on carrying through an unplanned pregnancy.
Unlike many other developed societies divorce rates in Japan actually declined
in the early post-war decades, but began slowly to increase after 1964.
Divorce rates have now essentially caught up with the level found in Western
societies, with the expectation that more than one in three marriages will not last.
Yet patterns of divorce in Japan have also retained indigenous characteristics
shaped by normative practices and legal frameworks as well as changing expecta-
tions of family life. These are examined in detail in Alexy’s chapter in this
volume, which focuses on the home as the spatial context of marital relationships
and a figurative ideal of divorce negotiations.
Evidence suggesting that the nuclear family is being stripped away has stimu-
lated concerns that not only the Japanese family but also the future of Japanese
society is in jeopardy. Ueno (2009) argues that such concerns are not new and,
indeed, similar claims were made at the end of the nineteenth century. Moreover,
then, like now, Japan was in a period of transformation and reformulation. The
family is changing form and function and many people cannot imagine any other
shape than the existing one. Although there are conservative calls to ‘protect the
family tradition’, this is misleading as family tradition has been consistently
changing throughout Japan’s modernity (Ueno, 2009: xxii).
An important feature that sustained the transformation from broader, stem-
family households to nuclear ones has been, according to Nishizaka (1991), the
shift in control of the family from the father to husband. The conjugal relation
between man and wife became, at this point, fundamental to the existence of the
family and its performance as a unit of reproduction, rather than production. With
this shift the ideal of ‘romantic love’ became an important value as it was
rendered the basis for the formation of couples and consequently the production
of children. ‘Omiai’ marriages arranged by parents or through a matchmaker
(nakōdo) were still widespread into the 1970s and 1980s, however the rate fell
from 29.4 to 6.4 per cent of marriages between 1982 and 2005 (IPSS, 2008). This
is not to say, however, that marriage choices were ‘liberated’. Indeed, the free
market system of marriage actually resulted in stronger class endogamy and less
geographic movement than arranged marriage (Yuzawa, 1987). This shift in
coupling was accompanied by a cultural shift involving the expansion of dating
culture and the growing significance of romantic love, companionate ideals and
sexual attractiveness of partners. For Ueno (1994), the criteria for family strategy
in marriage, which used to be judged by the parents on the couples behalf, have
now been internalized and are practiced by individuals as ‘free choice’. Arguably,
the effectiveness of a system of family formation based on choice and romantic love
has, in combination with recent socioeconomic transformations, diminished.
Dysfunctionality in the singles market has become increasingly evidenced by the
intensification of ‘partner hunting’ (konkatsu) (Yamada, 2008). Changing expec-
tations are central to understanding this market failure. Nakano and Wagatsuma
(2004) illustrate that whereas women in the immediate post-war period relied on
finding a good wage-earner in order to achieve status and security, contemporary
women’s expectations are shaped by their own educational and occupation
choices in an environment of relative affluence, making finding a good wage-
earner less important. There is a diminishing sense of urgency concerning
marriage, which has become one of many life projects. While not all women have
become focused on their careers, the necessity of marriage has diminished while
the perceived disadvantages of marriage have been enhanced. One of these disad-
vantages is the loss of freedom, as there are few expectations17 that men will
share housework or caring responsibilities for children or elderly parents.18
Another sacrifice associated with marriage is being forced to give up work or a
career, which in the Japanese employment system is typically the outcome for
women who get married or have children (Nemoto, 2008). According to national
surveys, in 1992 the ‘desire to concentrate on work or study’ was the main reason
to remain unmarried for 28 per cent of women aged 18–24, increasing to 42 per
cent in 2005 (IPSS, 2008).
Women have arguably become more concerned with the character of the
person they marry, giving more weight to personal compatibility and companion-
ship. Nevertheless, again according to the national survey, 60 per cent of singles
testify that not meeting an appropriate person was the main reason for not being
married. Nakano’s chapter in this volume concerns unmarried women in their 30s
and 40s. Most reported that they could not find someone with whom they could
develop ‘an intimate and mutually supportive relationship’. Most single men
failed to meet expectations; had personalities that were poorly matched; lacked
social skills, were domineering and unlikely to help around the house. This
suggests that women are not reluctant to marry, but rather that women’s expecta-
tions are poorly matched with social realities and that ‘romantic love’ as a driver
of family formation is insufficient. Even so, the desire to have children remains a
consistent motivation,19 which is strongly stigmatized outside marriage.
Another factor disturbing the marriage market has been the diminished
economic status of men, particularly younger generations hardest hit by employ-
ment restructuring. It is argued that men are reluctant to wed until they feel
financially secure enough to support a household (Yamada, 2005). As the capac-
ity of male breadwinners to support families has been damaged by the erosion of
the Company System, male dispositions to marriage have been undermined.
Among male singles outside full-time employment, the desire for, and perceived
merits of, marriage are much lower as demonstrated by differences in marriage
rates between securely employed and irregular workers. In 2002, the ratio of
unmarried men aged 30–34 in regular employment was 41 per cent compared to
70 per cent among non-regular workers (MHLW, 2006). Ironically, while a well
paid job enhances a man’s chances of marrying, highly educated women with well
paid jobs find it more difficult (Shirahase, 2005). Socioeconomic restructuring
has meant that the former has diminished and the latter has been enhanced,
constituting a rather hostile environment for cultivating marriages.
In recent years, government discourses on familialism have been influenced by
global economic imperatives in which the recalibration of familial relationships has

been considered necessary. Government reports since the 2001 have proffered
new ideals that suggest a shift from marital relationships based on economic
interdependence to those based on emotional interdependence, with family stabil-
ity based on individual choices made by an independent self rather than fixed role
fulfillment by age and sex. This discourse is examined in Takeda’s chapter later
in this volume. Such discourses however, have not yet been matched by policy
reforms, and while greater equality in breadwinner roles has been posited, conditions
for women remain in essence unimproved with strong pressures on them to be
‘birth-giving machines’, as a welfare minister recently suggested (Anon, 2007).
Indeed, policy reform lags considerably behind the needs of contemporary fami-
lies and continues to revolve around a normative male-breadwinner household
model rather than the reality of dual income and often dual career couples.
Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose

In many ways the Japanese family system has proved robust as evidenced by the
persistence of the ie norm. ‘The family system’ remains a formidable cultural
notion and normative social influence, despite the ways in which realities of
contemporary family life may be quite removed from this model. The exploration
of family and home in this volume illustrates that far from being and a ‘tradi-
tional’ institution or ‘feudal relic’ ie has sustained the modernization of families
and organized households as the basic unit of the modern state. Indeed, ie was a
concern of modern governance and remoulded around a non-traditional vision of
domesticity and production, gender roles and child rearing. While notions of
family tradition and continuity were maintained by stem family connections, this
too had to be reinvented and, initially, legislated.
The post-war period witnessed the dissolution of ie formally, but a reassertion
of the family as a focal unit of society. Housing and socioeconomic policies,
along with the company system and rapid economic growth, helped reassert ie
through a standardization of nucleated, male-breadwinner family households,
who, ideally, aspired to move up an urban housing ladder and join the middle-
class mainstream. Since the volatility of the bubble era, and particularly the
undermining of socioeconomic stability during the lost decade(s), the family
system has, however, come under formidable strain. Family lives and values have
become increasingly fragmented, with chasms emerging across society between
the old and the young, and between those within and without the social main-
stream. The failure of the social system to maintain standard families and
life-courses has made it increasingly difficult for new family households to form.
Meanwhile the types of family that are now emerging deviate ever more radically
from the ie norm.
Ueno’s research in the early 1990s set out to discover the new, diverse shapes
families were adopting. Emerging patterns reflected both unconventional forms
and unconventional perceptions of what a family is. They included, to mention a
few, families where each member lived in a different city; families that pushed
out dysfunctional members like senile elderly-parents and unruly step-children;

estranged couples that dwelled together but lived separate lives (katenai rikon,
about which Alexy discusses more later in this volume); ‘friend-like couples’
living together without having a sexual relationship; husbands with mistresses and
extramarital children; and households where children are raised by grandparents
or aunts and uncles. What is evident in Japan is that diversity within the material
home and among the physical structure of the family is well beyond the scope
prescribed by ie hegemony. The family also appears to be undergoing a stripping
of many of its functions as while single-households are increasing and couples
decreasingly fertile, individuals are also looking outside the family for the satis-
faction of sexual and emotional needs. Even within the home, members are
cutting themselves off from each other or shutting themselves in.
So what is the prognosis? Are contemporary Japanese families in crisis?
Certainly, some, often radical, transformations are underway in regard to how
consanguineous and affinal kin negotiate relationships and experience bonds
between each other, and how households are formed, shaped and dissolved. This
renegotiation is also surely being fashioned by, and impacting upon, wider
changes going on in polity, the economy and society at large. Nevertheless,
considering the persistence of ie norms and the assertion of family tradition in
Japanese social life, despite previous upheavals in the shape and constitution of
households, it seems likely that normative family relationships will persist, albeit
in terms of far greater diversity and in forms we may not yet recognize. What is
also important is that Japanese society and culture remains rooted to ideals and
desires concerning the absolute nature of family relationships. As actual marriages
and families have had their foundations eroded many people have set out to
discover or establish new foundations. Many seek to achieve this via fantasy
(Alexy 2007) or in virtual relationships, or by seeking out others like themselves
who long to make a connection as solid and involuntary as the family bond.
The structure of this volume

Given the context described above, this volume contributes to the understanding
of continuities and ongoing transformations in contemporary Japanese Society.
The chapters in this volume set out to address how houses, households and fami-
lies continue as contested, but vital, structures in contemporary Japan. Building
from ethnographic, public policy, architectural, legal, and historical examples,
the contributors examine the nature and direction of social change as it relates to,
and is expressed through, home and family. Each chapter describes the ways in
which rhetorics of ‘family’ and ‘house’ remain fundamental, even if, and at times
precisely because, they do not reflect lived realities.
This volume begins by examining how national policies and programs have
influenced family lives and discourse about norms. In the next chapter, Bruce
White analyses gaps between bureaucratic representations of family, as found in
national advertising campaigns, as well as lived negotiations by individuals
trying to construct ideal intimate relationships. Hiroko Takeda, in Chapter 3,
shifts the focus to explicit policy-making at the national level, examining how
recent Liberal Democratic Party administrations made family policy central to
their neoliberal structural reforms. Next, in Chapter 4, Karl Jakob Krogness
describes the administrative structures that require all Japanese citizens to register
as members of families with government authorities. He concludes that legal
norms strongly influence people’s expectations by constraining perceptions and
constructions of possible family relations. Without assuming policies to be
hegemonic or automatic controls over people’s actions, these chapters offer
detailed descriptions of the centrality of ‘family’ in political, legal and macro
ideological structures.
The next set of chapters introduces ethnographic analyses concerning how
gender shapes experiences and practices within families as well as imaginings of
intimate relationships. In Chapter 5, Ekaterina Hertog examines a demographic
trend particular to contemporary Japan – the extremely low birth rate among
women who have not married – by analyzing how single mothers experience and
understand social stigma in relation to their families. In Chapter 6, shifting the
focus to how normative masculinity has changed in the post-war, Tomoko Hidaka
relates the ways in which three generations of salarymen describe the intersection
of changing employment opportunities and family relationships. These changing
gender norms also impact unmarried women who, in Lynne Nakano’s analysis in
Chapter 7, both resist and reinforce images of the family. Nakano considers
how women understand what is to be won or lost by either getting married or
remaining single. These discourses are put in context of forming an independent
home, which for long-term single women constitutes a particular challenge.
Popular and academic attention continues to focus on how gender norms are
changing, and these three chapters explain how these changes simultaneously
reshape relationships in families and homes.
Although family and gender norms have been changing in the post-war, the
next three chapters address how the structures of literal houses and patterns
of dwelling and home ownership have undergone similarly significant transfor-
mation. In Chapter 8, Yosuke Hirayama describes post-war patterns in home
ownership to analyze how younger generations are increasingly excluded from
the housing ladder, which, in turn, is eroding a fundamental pillar of Japanese
social formation. Richard Ronald extends this discussion in Chapter 9 by examin-
ing the metamorphoses of houses and families, in sociological, historical, and
architectural terms, across the modern period. Next, Akihiro Nishizawa provides
a historical overview on homelessness in Tokyo, from the Meiji period to
contemporary ‘netcafé refugees’, by describing how people without permanent
residences have been simultaneously alienated from families. By focusing on how
the actual structures of homes have changed over time, and how these changes
are related to government policies and shifting social norms, these chapters firmly
link families with material structures.
The volume ends with three chapters concerned with difficult family relation-
ships that become manifested within the spatial context of the home. Sachiko
Horiguichi describes how family relationships are commonly understood to be
both a fundamental cause of, and possible solution for, young people who refuse
to leave their houses or rooms (hikikomori). In her discussion of how houses
matter in contemporary divorce experiences, Allison Alexy suggests that people
leverage both material space within homes, and figurative symbols created
through ideas of ie, as they negotiate divorces. Finally, Anemone Platz describes
how married couples in their 50s plan to deal with advanced old age, and their
methods for striking the right balance between space and distance from
their extended family. Each of these chapters concerns the ways in which kin
relationships are intimately tied to the spaces in which families live.
Inevitably, or even by definition, edited volumes are neither exhaustive nor
definitive. This volume contributes to some of the more important debates that
have emerged in Japanese society related to fluctuations and continuities in fami-
lies and home life. The chapters assembled represent eclectic contributions from
academics in divergent, although often overlapping, disciples. The focus is
social–anthropological, which we adopt in its most inclusive sense in order to
incorporate diverse perspectives and insights. The contributions collectively
constitute a broad insight not only into Japanese families but also the relationship
between the organization and meaning of home and family, and processes of
social change, which, considering ongoing restructuring and shifting expectations
of the family across advanced societies, appears to have a growing and universal
salience. While the emphasis of analyses of ‘The Japanese Family’ may have
once been ‘tradition’, contemporary Japanese families are being both shaped by
and impacting upon other dynamic social transformations. These changes reflect
the uneven interaction of conservative political and institutional forces with
neoliberal economic and ideological restructuring, during a period of radical
economic and political reorientation.
Notes
1 Stem families are a form of vertically extended family in which households typically
contain multiple families connected along, in the patrilineal case, the line of fathers
and sons. They thus normally include the conjugal family living with their children
and the husband’s parents and, sometimes, even grandparents.
2 Although the first bill was drafted in 1878 an agreed version was not enacted until
1898.
3 A nuclear family constituted of a married couple with their children only.
4 Contributors to this volume have been careful to gloss terms for readers unfamiliar
with Japanese. Nevertheless, kazoku, katei, ie and uchi (the latter being a literal trans-
lation of the Japanese character for ‘inside’), are all common terms denoting families
and while their usage is subtle, English translation is inevitably slippery.
5 Tatami is the typical straw matting found in Japanese homes, while washitsu is the
common term for a Japanese style room in a contemporary home. Genkan describes
the space (vestibule) by the door where people take off their shoes.
6 Government housing loans were not available to single-person households until 1981
and only then to those aged over 40 (see Hirayama, 2007).
7 In fact, such employment has barely covered half of all workers and it has been
estimated that only about 20 per cent of Japanese employees actually work for
the same company until retirement (Takanashi et al., 1999 [cited in Mathews and
White, 2004]).
8 The bubble itself was driven by land price increases that reflected intensive demand
for family housing (see Waswo, 2002).
9 At the peak of the boom in 1988, the average condominium price in Tokyo increased
by 29 per cent in that year alone (Housing and Land Survey, 2003).
10 The stock market shed around 80 per cent of its value between 1989 and 2003, while
urban property values dropped by 40 to 50 per cent.
11 Japan’s economy contracted at an annual pace of 12.7 per cent in the October–
December quarter of 2008 (OECD, 2009).
12 Yoseba districts are characterized by flophouses and open-air labour markets where
individuals compete for daily employment in the construction and transportation
industries. In recent years they have been increasingly inhabited by homeless and
dispossessed middle-aged men (see Gill, 2001).
13 Female labour market participation increased from 58 to 68 per cent between 1980
and 2005 (MHLW, 2006).
14 An Asahi Shinbun survey (Japan Almanac, 2002) reported that when asked about
their feelings towards the future, 18 per cent responded ‘hope’ whereas 73 said
‘misgivings’.
15 With the share of those aged over 65 increasing from 7 to 14 per cent of the population
(Cabinet Office, 2008).
16 Less than 13.5 per cent of the Japanese population was under the age of 15 in 2008,
down from 35.4 per cent in 1950. It is expected to reach 8.6 per cent by 2050 (Cabinet
Office, 2008).
17 The national attitude survey of singles showed that for 59 per cent of women, finding
a husband willing to help with housework and childcare was a main criterion for
selecting a partner (IPSS, 2008).
18 A Cabinet Office (2001) survey of women reported that men spend on average
5 minutes a day on housework and less than 30 minutes on childcare.
19 This is the main reason to marry (45 per cent) for unmarried women aged 18–34
(IPSS, 2008).
References
Alexy, A. (2007) ‘Deferred Benefits, Romance, and the Specter of Later-Life Divorce’,
Contemporary Japan 19: 169–188.
Anon. (2007) ‘Yanagisawa calls women child-bearing machines’, Japan Times. Online.
Available HTTP: <http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20070128a3.html> (accessed
1 February 2010).
Cabinet Office (2008) Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Population
Census. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.stat.go.jp/english/index.htm> (accessed
31 December 2009).
Daniels, I. M. (2001) ‘The Untidy Japanese House’, in Miller, D. (ed.) Home Possessions:
Material Culture Behind Closed Doors. NY, Oxford: Berg.
Dasgupta, R. (2000) ‘Performing Masculinities? The “Salaryman” at Work and Play’,
Japanese Studies, 20(2): 189–200.
Forrest, R. and Hirayama, Y. (2009) ‘The uneven impact of neoliberalism on hous-
ing opportunities’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(4):
998–1013.
Genda, Y. (2001) Shigoto no naka no aimai no fuan [The vague uneasiness of work],
Tokyo: Chou Korou Shinsha.
Gill, T. (2001) Men of Uncertainty: The Social Organization of Day Laborers in
Contemporary Japan. New York: State Univ. NY Press
Hayakawa, K. (1990) ‘Japan’, in Van Vliet, W. (ed.) International Handbook of Housing

Policies and Practices. Westport, Greenwood Press.
Hayashi, M. (2002) Kazoku no fukken [The Restoration of Family], Tokyo, Chuukou
Shinsho.
Hendry, J. (1995) Understanding Japanese Society. London: Routledge.
Hirayama, Y. (2007) ‘Reshaping the housing system: home ownership as a catalyst for
social transformation’, in Hirayama, Y. and Ronald, R. (eds) Housing and Social
Transition in Japan. London: Routledge.
Hirayama, Y. and Ronald, R. (2007) Housing and Social Transition in Japan. London:
Routledge.
Hirayama, Y. and Izuhara, M. (2008) ‘Women and Housing Assets in Context of Japan’s
Home Owning Democracy’, Journal of Social Policy, 37(4): 641–660.
Hobsbaum, E. and Ranger, T. (eds) (1983) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Housing and Land Survey of Japan (2003) Tokyo http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/
jyutaku/1520100.htm
Ikegami, E. (1995) The Taming of the Samurai: honorific individualism and the making of
modern Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Institute of Population and Social Security (IPSS) (2008) ‘Population Statistics of
Japan 2008’, Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.ipss.go.jp/index-e.html> (accessed
1 February 2010).
Ito-, K. (1982) Kazoku kokka-kan no jinruigaku [An anthropology of the pseudo-family
state ideology], Kyoto: Minerva Shobou.
Iwata, M. (2007) ‘Social exclusion and homelessness’, in Hirayama, Y. and Ronald, R.
(eds) Housing and Social Transition in Japan. London: Routledge.
Izuhara, M. (2002) ‘Care and Inheritance: Japanese and English Perspectives on the
“Generational Contract”’, Ageing and Society, 22: 61–77.
Japan Almanac (2002) Asahi Shinbun, Tokyo, Toppan.
Kishimoto, S. (1978) Churyu no Genso [Phenomenon of the Middle-class], Tokyo: Kodansha.
Long, S. O., Campbell, R. and Nishimura, C. (2009) ‘Does it matter who cares?: a
comparison of daughters versus daughter-in-laws in Japanese elder care’, Social Science
Journal Japan, 12(1): 1–21.
Mathews, G. and White, B. (eds) (2004) Japan’s Changing Generations: Are Young
People Creating a New Society? London: Routledge.
MHLW (2006) Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s Heisei 18 nendo zenkoku boshi
setai tou chousa kekka houkoku [Results of the 2006 national survey on lone mother
and other households], Tokyo.
MLHW (2009) ‘Annual Health, Labour and Welfare Report’, Online. Available HTTP:
<http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/wp/index.html> (accessed 31 December 2009).
Möhwald, U. (2000) ‘Trends in value change in contemporary Japan’, in Eades J.,
Gill T. and Befu H. (eds) Globalisation and Social Change in Contemporary Japan.
Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.
Murakami, Y. (1984) Shin chukan taishu no jidai [The Age of the New Middle Class],
Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha.
Nakagawa, T. (2002) Nihon no ie: ku-kan, kioku, kotoba [The Japanese House: In Space,
Memory and Language], Tokyo: TOTO Shuppan.
Nakano, L. and Wagatsuma, M. (2004) ‘Mothers and their unmarried daughters: An inti-
mate look at generational change’, in Mathews, G. and White, B. (eds) Japan’s Changing
Generations: Are Young People Creating a new Society? London: Routledge.

Nemoto, K. K. (2008) ‘Postponed marriage: exploring women’s views of matrimony and
work in Japan’, Gender and Society, 22(2): 219–237.
Nishikawa, Y. (2004) Sumai to kazoku o meguru monogatari: otoko no ie, onna no ie,
seibetsu no nai heya [A Tale about House and Family: House for Men, House for
Women, and no Space for Discrimination], Tokyo: Shyueishya-shinshyo.
Nishizaka, Y. (1991) ‘Kindai kokka to kazoku moderu’ [The modern state and the family
model], in Kawakami, R. (ed.) Yusutitia 2, tokushuu: kazoku, shakai kokka [Justitia 2:
‘family, society, state], Kyoto: Minerva Shobou.
Ochiai, E. (1989) Kindai kazoku to feminizumu [Modern family and Feminism], Tokyo:
Keisou Shobou.
Ochiai, E. (1994) 21-seiki kazoku e [Toward a Twenty first Century Family] Tokyo,
Yuuhikaku.
Ochiai, E. (1997) The Japanese Family System in Transition: A Sociological Analysis of
Family Change in Postwar Japan, Tokyo, LTCB International Library Foundation.
OECD (2009) Economic Survey of Japan www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/japan
Office of National Statistics, U.K (2009) ‘Births and Fertility’, Online. Available at http://
www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/index.html> (accessed 31 December 2009).
Osawa, M. (2002) ‘Twelve million full-time housewives: The gender consequences of
Japan’s postwar social contract’, in Zunz, O., Schoppa, L. and Hiwatari, N. (eds) Social
Contracts under Stress: the Middle Classes of America, Europe and Japan at the Turn
of the Century, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Popenoe, D. (1993) ‘American family decline, 1960–1990: A review and appraisal’,
Journal of Marriage and Family 55(3): 527–542.
Rohlen, T. (1974) For Harmony and Strength: Japanese white-collar organization,
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ronald, R. (2007) ‘The Japanese home in transition: housing, consumption and moderni-
sation’, in Hirayama, Y. and Ronald, R. (eds), Housing and Social Transition in Japan.
London: Routledge.
Saito, O. (2000) ’Marriage, family labour and the stem family household: traditional Japan
in comparative perspective’, Continuity and Change, 15(1): 17–45.
Sand, J. (2003) House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space and
Bourgeois culture, 1880–1930. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sato, I. (2007) ‘Welfare regime theories and the Japanese housing system,’ in Y. Hirayama
and R. Ronald (eds.) Housing and Social Transition in Japan. London: Routledge.
Sato-, T. (1978) Katei no yomigaeri no tame ni: houmu dorama ron [For the rebirth of the
home: theorizing soap operas], Tokyo: Chikuma Shobou.
Shirahase, S. (2005) Shoshi korei-ka no mienai kakusa: jendaa, sedai, kaiso no yukue [The
Unseen Gaps in an Aging Society: Locating Gender, Generation, and Class in Japan]
Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.
Takahashi, T. and Someya, Y. (1985) ‘Japan’, in Dixon, J. and Kim, H.S. (eds) Social
Welfare in Asia. London, Croom Helm.
Takanashi, A. and Sado, K. (eds) (1999) Japanese Employment Practices, Japanese
Economy and Labour Series, no. 4, Tokyo: Japan Institute of Labour.
Tamaki, S. (1974) ‘Mochiya shiko to shakuya shiko [Directivity towards owner-occupied
housing and rental housing]’, in Nishiyama Kenkyushitsu [Nishiyama Research Unit]
(ed.) Gendai no Seikatsu Kukan [Modern Living Space], Tokyo: Keiso Shobo.
Ueno, C. (1994) Kindai Kazoku no Seiritsu to Shuen [Establishment and Closure of the
Modern Family], Tokyo: Iwanami.
Ueno, C. (2009) The Modern Family in Japan: Its Rise and Fall, Melbourne: Transpacific
Press.
UN (2008) United Nations Population Projections http://esa.un.org/UNPP/index.
asp?panel=3
Vogel, E. F. (1971 [1963]) Japan’s New Middle Class: The Salary Man and his Family in
a Tokyo Suburb. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Waswo, A. (2002) Housing in Postwar Japan: A Social History. London: Curzon
Press.
White, M. (2002) Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Era of Upheaval. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Yamada, M. (1999) Parasaito Shinguru no Jidai [The Age of the Parasite Singles], Tokyo:
Chikuma Shobou.
Yamada, M. (2005) Meisou suru kazoku: Sengo kazoku moderu no keisei to kaitai
[Runaway family: Decline in the post war family model] Tokyo: Yuhikaku.
Yamada, M. (2008) Konkatsu jidai [The Age of Partner Hunting], Tokyo: Deisukabaa
touenteiwon.
Yuzawa, Y. (1987) Zusetsu Gendai Nihon no Kazoku Mondai [Family Problems of
Modern Japan] NHK Books Nihon Housou Kyoukai.

Home and Family in Japan Continuity and Transforma... - (1 Continuity and Change in Japanese Homes and Families) PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Home and Family in Japan Continuity and Transforma... - (1 Continuity and Change in Japanese Homes and Families) PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

1 Continuity and change in

Japanese homes and families

research while others use documentary and quantitative sources to demonstrate

The formal dissolution of ie

Housing properties became a feature of intergenerational exchanges of welfare

Trouble at home and work

1975 13.5% 12.7% 12.4% 45.7% 5.8% 9.8%

1980 15.8% 12.8% 13.1% 44% 6% 8.1%

1985 20.8% 11.9% 13.7% 40% 6.3% 7.3%

1990 23.1% 10.6% 15.5% 37.3% 6.8% 6.8%

1995 25.6% 9.2% 17.4% 34.2% 7.1% 6.5%

2000 27.6% 7.5% 18.9% 31.9% 7.6% 6.4%

2005 29.5% 6.1% 19.6% 29.9% 8.4% 6.5%

Single household Married couple with child(ren) and parents

Figure 1.1 Household change in Japan.

Not getting married and not having babies

global economic imperatives in which the recalibration of familial relationships has

Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose

out dysfunctional members like senile elderly-parents and unruly step-children;

The structure of this volume

Hayakawa, K. (1990) ‘Japan’, in Van Vliet, W. (ed.) International Handbook of Housing

Generations: Are Young People Creating a new Society? London: Routledge.

You might also like