Satsuki Kawano is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Guelph, (Canada).
Glenda S. Roberts is professor and director of international studies at Waseda University (Japan).
Susan Orpett Long is professor of anthropology at John Carroll University (U.S.).
Differentiation and Uncertainty
Satsuki Kawano, Glenda S. Roberts, and Susan Orpett Long
How have people in Japan lived with the nation’s growing instability and widening disparity during the 2000s? Japan was only beginning to recover from the economic recession of the 1990s and the effects of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008 when it was hit with the earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant of March 2011. The tragedies of the tsunami and the Fukushima meltdown heightened the anxiety surrounding not only the status quo but also future directions the country might take. Politically the influence of the long-standing Liberal Democratic Party had waned, and the Democratic Party came into power, although it was unable to provide consistent leadership to guide the nation back toward prosperity. Economically Japan has seen a widening gap between the haves and have-nots, and the emerging discourse of kakusa shakai (disparity society) has redefined the ways in which people understand their place in society. The worldwide recession has further challenged certain practices and patterns of employment that were once considered legendary of Japan during the postwar period (1945–1989). Among these, for example, were the security of life-time employment; seniority-based wages; “corporate welfarism,” such as the provision of spousal, child, and housing allowances; and bonuses and other benefits.1 Such benefits used to be taken for granted in large firms, but in the aftermath of the economic bubble, even many large firms, which had been assumed to be unassailable, retrenched and reduced their workforces, bonuses, and benefits and drastically cut the numbers of new hires for regular employment. Furthermore, there was a shift toward performance-based evaluations rather than strictly seniority-based wages (Osawa 2011), which we can see as a variant of the “self-responsibility” trend favored by government and business since the 1990s (Hook and Takeda 2007). Many firms increasingly globalized their operations, shifting production offshore to take advantage of cost savings. Employment and livelihood insecurities have hence increased steadily over the past two decades.
Recent decades have also seen a sharp increase in more precarious forms of employment, with many young people left out of stable jobs altogether and instead entering short-term contracts, dispatch work, or part-time work, none of which offer a stable livelihood (Fu 2012). These short-term, contract, dispatch, or temporary jobs―defined here as irregular or non-regular work―are characterized by low salaries, limited or no benefits, and almost no chances for advancement. Osawa (2011, 72) notes that among women, the ratio of non-regular workers to all workers rose from 32.1 percent in 1985 to 46.4 percent in 2002 to 54.2 percent in 2008. In 2011 it stood at 54.7 percent (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare 2011b). For men, who have long been expected to be the main breadwinners in families, the proportion of those engaged in irregular jobs also rose, from 7.4 percent in 1985 to 11.7 percent in 2002 to 18.7 percent in 2008 (Osawa 2011). The 2011 share was 19.9 percent (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare 2011b). The worldwide recession in financial markets (the so-called “Lehman Shock” in Japan) of 2008 only exacerbated these trends.
Japan’s demographic decline, characterized by rapid aging and a birthrate well below replacement level, poses further challenges, such as the hollowing out of regional communities, strains on the pension system, and the looming question of health care for the growing numbers of senior citizens, including the extremely old (chōkōrei) (Coulmas 2007). The middle-class model of family in postwar Japan, consisting of a salaried white-collar worker/husband, a homemaker/wife, and two children, is neither easily attained nor necessarily ideal. Life courses have become increasingly diverse.
Recession, unemployment, the proliferation of precarious work, and demographic decline are problems shared by most advanced industrial societies today. But how have Japanese people in particular experienced and responded to such conditions? What opportunities and options have become available? What new identities or lifestyles have people created in an increasingly globalized Japan? What old themes and conceptions have been revived or persist in a new context? While many societies share the same challenges under globalization, one might argue that Japan’s situation is more acute because of the rapid pace at which the society is aging, coupled with the fact that Japan is not a country of substantial immigration and so cannot expect an immigrant population to shore up birthrates or assist in economic revitalization or caregiving for the elderly (Roberts 2012; Vogt and Roberts 2011). All humans respond to situations based on some combination of new information, rational calculation, social relationships, and habits and values that carry symbolic meanings in their culture. Japanese today thus respond with a range of tools that incorporate past ideas and values as well as new concepts absorbed through globalization and subsequently modified to fit Japan’s social and increasingly neoliberal economic environment. This book provides lively accounts of people’s responses and experiences by featuring recent ethnographic research conducted during the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Toward Differentiation and Uncertainty
As we look back to the earlier postwar period of the 1960s and 1970s, we can describe the changes Japan has gone through by the 2000s as an objective and subjective shift toward differentiation and uncertainty.2 Immediately after World War II came years of recovery, but from the late 1950s until the oil shocks of 1973–1974, the Japanese experienced an “economic miracle,” with double-digit growth for much of that period, enabling the country to rapidly recover from the war and even thrive. While the oil shocks caused a slowing of growth, the economy revived and then barreled into the investment and consumption craze known as “the bubble” from the mid-1980s until the bubble collapsed in 1991. By the 1970s, backed by the strong economy, the white-collar middle-class urban model had taken a strong hold. For a man, rather than working on a family farm or in a family business, obtaining a diploma (preferably a university degree) and becoming a salaryman was the course leading to a stable lifestyle. For a woman, marrying such a man and becoming a full-time homemaker and mother of two children was seen as more desirable than joining a family farm or small business as an unpaid worker. Of course, not everyone was able to achieve such a goal, but it was the taken-for-granted standard in the mainstream society. Because of the nation’s strong economy until the 1990s, the differences among classes did not become a major social issue; it was possible for blue-collar families to emulate a middle-class lifestyle, particularly if wives supplemented their husbands’ incomes. The class ideology during the postwar period was that Japan was an “all-middle-class” society, and it reflected not only the society’s improving economic conditions, but also minimized the differences in income, prestige, and power in pre-bubble Japan.
In contrast, present conditions in Japan can be understood in terms of the shift toward differentiation and uncertainty. The recession during and after the 1990s and the outsourcing of many manufacturing jobs decreased the number of regular jobs and replaced them with more irregular positions. It is no longer sufficient to obtain a degree from a university to find a regular job. A large number of young people cannot secure lifelong employment, thereby making it harder for them to realize the postwar ideal of salaryman or full time homemaker. Since a stable job and a two-parent family remain desirable conditions for child rearing in Japan, lower incomes and unstable working conditions raise the bar for marriage and children. Meanwhile, the once taken-for-granted middle-class standard is increasingly being questioned. Do I really want to be a salaryman or a homemaker? What do I want to do with my life? What suits me or makes me happy? Such questions should not be dismissed as sour grapes but should be examined as emerging alternatives to the former ideals. In the current economic climate, a regular employee might be dismissed or a reputable company might go bankrupt. A homemaker might have to get a job if her husband’s income is reduced. Divorce rates have risen, and marriage no longer provides “lifetime employment” to women. The middle class, which used to be backed by the thriving economy, is no longer as attainable, secure, or predictable, and this change certainly provides a context in which people have begun to reevaluate the postwar ideals. Moreover, as in other postindustrial societies (see Giddens 1991), self-realization and individuality have become much more important in today’s Japan.
As noted, the growing socioeconomic disparities are commonly expressed in the discourse on kakusa shakai, a term that was coined during the 1990s and that had become one of the most popular expressions by 2006. Kakusa shakai indicates a shift in the way people think about their society, rather than strictly referring to objective structural shifts alone. In other words, as a postindustrial capitalist society, Japan has always had class stratification based upon differences in income and assets. Yet in postwar Japan, the dominant theme was that everyone belonged to the mainstream, or ichioku sōchūryū (Kelly 2002). Toward the end of the decade-long recession of the 1990s, there developed a recognition that the all-middle-class society had ended. Kakusa shakai thus conveys an amplified sense of uncertainty and insecurity.
This volume explores the diverse voices and experiences of men and women in contemporary Japan, where postwar middle-class ideals have become increasingly contested or inaccessible. The contributors draw on their rich fieldwork data to examine work, schooling, family and marital relations, child rearing, entertainment, lifestyle choices, community support, volunteering, consumption and waste, material culture, driving manners, well-being, aging, death and memorial rituals, divination, and sexuality. These topics are explored through the eyes of various social actors positioned differently in the Japanese social world, including schoolgirls, teachers, single women, career women, organic women farmers, mothers of young children, small business owners, middle-aged and older men and women, people with disabilities, and the frail elderly.
Work Conditions and Experiences
Once the economic bubble burst and ended the consumption-oriented affluence of the 1980s, Japan faced a long economic recession during the 1990s and a slow economy during the 2000s. By then, deregulation in the workplace dramatically increased the number of irregular jobs that supported the neo-liberal regime, which required an ever-flexible labor force. Glenda Roberts’ (chapter 1) story of Sachi, a blue-collar worker in her fifties, and her adult children in their twenties and thirties provides a stark contrast between Japan’s economy before and after the long recession and its impact on working conditions and opportunities. Despite the fact that Sachi had only a middle-school education, a strong economy offered her a stable job in the early 1970s, and by working hard and well, she was able to keep it until she retired. With her husband, also a blue-collar worker with a regular job, she was able to buy a modest house and educate her children in private schools, thus achieving some aspects of a middle-class lifestyle. However, in Japan’s slow economy, only one of Sachi’s three adult children could find a steady job.
Despite the tougher economic climate that has overshadowed even the most well-known conglomerates, the corporate hierarchy still shapes workers’ experiences in a significant way. Workers at prestigious large corporations continue to have better working conditions, higher incomes, and superb benefits, while those working for the subsidiaries and contractors of the large corporations are not so fortunate (see Kondo 1990). However, the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL), introduced in 1986, opened up career-track jobs to women. Formerly, as Sawa Kurotani notes in chapter 3, regardless of education or talent, new female recruits were given clerical-track jobs with limited opportunities for advancement; their main job was to support career-track men (see Ogasawara 1998). Although some women are still hired as clerical-track workers, others are now hired for the career track. Kurotani reveals that the corporate hierarchy has thus become more complex, involving not only a growing disparity among long-term female workers, but also a persistent inequality between male and female workers.
Employment insecurity is particularly the case for aging women workers, a situation examined by Lynne Nakano (chapter 6). There are many single women who are long-term workers in the labor force. Those in their thirties and forties during the 2000s were aware that as they aged, it would become more difficult to find a new regular job with benefits, and they keenly felt the need to keep themselves competitive by strategizing and developing new, specialized skills. In their struggles in the employment market, which continues to celebrate women’s youth, docility, and ability to assist male career workers, these women have developed alternative values―“perseverance, independence, innovation, hard work, and initiative,” as Nakano puts it. Many countries have experienced problems of inequality and youth unemployment during the economic downturn in recent years. In societies where timing is less emphasized, young people have a bit more flexibility in pursuing their futures. Furuichi Noritoshi notes that in Europe, young people have long had a “gap year” after graduating from university before they were expected to find work; however, Japanese young people face the (increasingly unrealistic) expectation that employment will immediately follow graduation (Furuichi and Toivonnen 2012, 20). Mary Brinton (2011) has pointed out that Japan experienced its heyday and a rapid downturn in a very short period of time. As a result, a deeper-than-normal generation gap between parents and adult children is not unusual. A newspaper article indicated that seminars are now available to parents of young people seeking jobs to give them the latest information regarding the job market (MSN Sankei News 2012). The article explained that many applicants turned down job offers from less prestigious medium-sized companies or newer, unknown companies because their parents encouraged them to reject such offers. These parents were typically the beneficiaries of the nation’s past strong economy, and their expectations had not adjusted to the current reality of shrinking opportunities. We can hear the echoes of the resulting frustration in some of our chapters (e.g., chapters 1 and 2).
The decade-long recession and slow economy particularly affected young people negatively, increasing the number of “freeters” (frītā), young people in irregular employment. Some consciously took that path, while others failed to obtain stable jobs after graduation (Mathews 2003). How do young people in irregular positions see their jobs and themselves? Some of them ask an important question about personal happiness in today’s Japan: Which is important―pursuing the lifestyle of a salaryman (seen as stable but uninteresting) or finding a job that is unstable and pays little but offers a promise of personal fulfillment? If one cannot have both security and personal satisfaction, one might take the latter. The personal “fit” with a job is increasingly important among young people, as shown in chapters 1, 2, and 4 below. The celebration of a personally satisfying career is not limited to young adults but is also found among some older individuals (chapter 2). While the large major companies still offer more secure jobs with superior working conditions and stability is still valued by many, as expressed by the accounts of older men and women interviewed by Gordon Mathews, doubts have also been expressed about the salaryman way of life (chapter 2). Personal satisfaction and compatibility are important not only in the choice of careers, but also in other life transitions, such as marriage and death, as we shall see below.
Some young people have consciously abandoned the middle-class mainstream path and explored new work possibilities. Nancy Rosenberger (chapter 4) describes a female organic farmer’s attempt to be self-sufficient and environmentally responsible. Her lifestyle relies on a face-to-face
exchange relationship with consumers, called teikei, and she delivers boxes of produce to customers who have signed up. Such a lifestyle not only challenges the salaryman way of life, but also contests the larger capitalist system of mass production.
While organic farming represents a radical departure from the salaryman model, Gavin Whitelaw (chapter 5) describes a less radical alternative that is still deeply embedded in the neoliberal economy: that of small business owners. Members of the merchant class in premodern Japan were historically known for their distinctive cultural ethos and pride; they lived an alternative lifestyle to that of the warrior class, which was in charge of running the local and national governments (see Umesao 1990). Theodore Bestor’s classic ethnography, Neighborhood Tokyo (1989), delineates the ways in which postwar merchants during the late 1970s and 1980s strategically constructed “traditional” images of themselves as the old middle-class, juxtaposed against the new middle-class, the salarymen. Small-scale, self-employed business people were central to community affairs and local religious activities in neighborhood shrines until the mid-1990s (Kawano 2005; Kondo 1990). What are their lives like today? Whitelaw’s account provides a glimpse into their lives in Tokyo: many specialized mom-and-pop shops used to grace Tokyo’s streets in the late 1970s, but they have disappeared or turned into franchise convenience stores.
As their own bosses, small-scale business owners sometimes characterize themselves as more “independent” and “free” than their mainstream salaryman counterparts (Kawano 2005; Kondo 1990). It is not unusual for non-salarymen to criticize salarymen in order to construct a positive self-image. For example, day laborers examined by Tom Gill (2003) emphasized their “independence” and “freedom,” while they saw salarymen as tied down to their companies and suffering from long work hours that they could not control. Do small business owners have more “freedom”? Whitelaw reveals equally tough, or perhaps tougher, working conditions among convenience store owners in Japan’s stagnant economy. By the 2000s many more convenience stores had opened, thereby increasing the competition and decreasing a store’s profits. The exploitative franchise contract set by the convenience conglomerates further decreases store owners’ profits, making it harder to establish a new, successful convenience store during the 2000s. Uncertainty and insecurity thus overshadow not only corporate workers’ lives, but those of small business owners as well.
Consumption and Emerging New Services
Consumption is not simply for the meeting of daily needs; what, how, how much, how often, and why we consume reveal the social world in which we live. The flourishing of convenience stores in Tokyo’s neighborhoods (chapter 5) points to fussy consumers who seek convenience, speed, and variety. Selling everything from underwear to tofu and allowing customers to send express packages, pay utility bills, and buy concert tickets, convenience stores in Japan are indeed convenient, and as such, they are as necessary as air to many people. They carry one-person food portions, thereby catering to the increasing number of single and couples-only households that do not need the larger portions sold at supermarkets. In particular, boxed meals or lunches (bentō) are extremely popular, and they account for a large share of a store’s sales. Whitelaw reports that ordering too few varieties of prepared foods makes a convenience store unattractive to its customers, who look for a wide selection, while ordering too much means many unsold items and reduced profits for the store owners. Store owners are forced to shoulder the cost of unsold food items under the current franchise contract. Wasteful practices are built into the state-of-the-art retail system and are thus unavoidable for the owners. Many owners try to cut their losses by consuming expired food items or giving them to their employees, even though this is against the terms of the franchise contract.
As a business, the convenience store can be seen as the antithesis of the business model adopted by the organic farmer examined in chapter 4. As noted, she and her fellow organic farmers, who belong to the Japanese Organic Agriculture Association (JOAA), attempt to return to a local, self-sufficient economy in which people in a community grow and exchange food among themselves. It is hard to follow the JOAA ideal in a capitalist market economy. Consequently this alternative lifestyle implies living in a small house without consumer luxuries or the latest gadgets, in sharp contrast to the mainstream consumption-oriented lifestyle that many desire.
People consume not only to live, but in many cases they also live to consume. For example, young women participate in the consumer economy not only by buying cosmetics, brand-name accessories, and clothes, but also by investing in themselves to remain competitive in the job market (chapter 6). Consumption provides a way for unmarried women to construct something positive in their lives because they, unlike their married peers, are not taking care of others. Those living with their parents without making full-fledged contributions to household expenses can easily save for overseas travel or consumer luxuries. It is worth noting that single women are more often publicly criticized for their spending habits because the public feels they should be married and devoting themselves to family (Miller and Bardsley 2005; also see chapter 6). This is especially so because there is a substantial bachelor population, men in their late thirties whom these women could have married. As caring for others (in particular family members) was such a central aspect of femininity in postwar Japan (e.g., Jenike 2003; Lock 1993; Long 1996; Rosenberger 2001), it is not surprising that men are less likely to be criticized for remaining single and being dependent on their mothers for meals and other domestic tasks so long as they remain in the labor force.
Some of the consumption activities examined in this volume are individual, while others are explicitly aimed at social bonding. Laura Miller (chapter 10) describes contemporary divination, a bonding activity for making and maintaining social ties among schoolgirls and young women. There is a bewildering array of Web-based divination services, and they emphasize cute illustrations and aesthetics that appeal to young women. While older men and women also participate in divination, the new forms of divination are popular among younger women and are strategically packaged to target them. Miller notes that critics often dismiss divination as superstitious and unscientific, and its consumption is seen as a form of “addiction.” Furthermore, even though the market for feminized divination is enormous, like the beauty industry (see Miller 2006), it does not receive the attention it deserves. Miller notes that the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry does not even publish statistical information on the divination industry; the divination market generates some $8.5 billion per year (see also Brasor 2006). Like Nakano, therefore, Miller reveals negative views of consumption practices among women. While divination affords young women entertainment in a social setting, the consumption of a particular service or product does not necessarily produce social bonds. While the organic farmer examined in chapter 4 made an effort to form strong relationships with her clients to build an environmentally sound, self-sufficient rural community, her attempts were not always welcomed.
Joshua Roth (chapter 12) examines a new pattern of consumption among women and the use of gender metaphors in the world of automobiles. Since the late 1960s the number of female drivers has grown―from 17 percent of all drivers in 1969 to 42 percent by 2004―and it has made K-cars (keijidōsha,lightweight, small cars) popular. One might imagine that as driving was formerly a masculine activity, the increase of female drivers would have led to more gender-neutral images of driving. On the contrary: there developed feminized car interiors and driving manners. Women personalize their K-cars by adding pink and frilly décor and use them to fulfill their domestic duties, such as shopping for groceries or transporting children. Roth argues that the popularity of the K-car among women drivers in contemporary Japan thus fails to destabilize the mainstream gender ideology that assigns domestic roles to women and public roles to men.
Several chapters in this volume touch upon services for the socially dependent. Peter Cave (chapter 11) discusses the persisting popularity of private tutorial services and test preparation programs (juku). The dual education structure common in postwar Japan, consisting of regular schools and private after-school academic programs (see Rohlen 1980), has continued. Some of these programs are intended to help slower learners (also see chapter 1), while others aim to prepare students for high school or university entrance examinations. Cave notes that a typical exam-focused program for middle-school students, with three to five lessons per week, may cost ¥25,000–35,000 per month ($300–420 at $1 = ¥80). The market for after-school academic programs and tutoring is vast.
Compared with tutoring and after-school academic programs for school-age children, paid child care for preschool children is not as widespread. Kawano (chapter 9) has found that mothers of preschoolers in Tokyo are reluctant to use non-family caregivers. This reluctance is shaped in part by the state’s definition of mainstream child care, offered at public child care institutions (hoikuen), and in part by its limited availability; municipalities determine whether or not a child needs institutional care by evaluating, for example, his or her parents’ working conditions and the availability of co-resident caregivers. Child care is provided to those who qualify rather than being chosen and obtained freely by consumers. Furthermore, perhaps it is considered
acceptable to have tutors teach children in their homes while parents (or really mothers) watch over the children, but a paid babysitter―in particular a non-family caregiver―is not considered an acceptable substitute for a mother.
Unlike child care, however, elder care by non-family caregivers at home has become socially accepted and much more widespread in twenty-first century Japan than in the past, when elder care too was a family member’s―usually a daughter-in-law’s―duty. However, the deregulation of social welfare diversified elder-care services during the 1980s (Adachi 2000). With the creation of a public long-term care insurance program (kaigo hoken) in 2000, older persons can obtain non-family care more easily as choosers of elder-care services rather than dependent receivers of welfare support. In contrast to child care, then, elder care by non-family caregivers has come to have a more neutral image (Jenike 2003; Kawano 2010). Despite these new developments, non-family care assistants have not completely replaced family caregivers, as allowing the elderly to live independently without family support was not the primary goal of the long-term care insurance. Nonetheless, the care insurance is intended to offer non-family support to those who are still able to live independently and to provide relief for co-resident family caregivers. (For recent studies of elder care and the long-term care insurance program, see, for example, Long 2008 and Long et al. 2009).
New services have also been developed for the ritual care of the deceased. Older persons commonly wish to avoid an overdependence on family as they age (Long 2005; Traphagan 2000; Wu 2004; also see chapter 13), and some also wish to avoid overburdening family members after their deaths (Kawano 2010). By the 2000s, new burial systems had evolved to assist those without descendants or who did not wish to depend on family caregivers to maintain their graves. These new options are provided by religious and non-profit organizations, and Kawano (chapter 13) examines one such system, ash scattering. In the late postwar period conventional internment typically required a family grave, which ideally accommodated the cremated remains of generations of married couples. In this system, only one child, or the successor (most likely the eldest son), remains in the natal family to perpetuate the family line by taking an in-marrying spouse, while non-succeeding children marry into their marital families, are adopted into other families, or form new branch families. Thus in a family grave, there should be remains for one married couple in each generation, although it sometimes accommodates a couple’s deceased unmarried children. A family grave would be passed on to the successor, who would
pay annual fees and hold memorial anniversary rites (typically Buddhist) to transform the deceased into benevolent ancestors. A grave without a family caretaker would be abolished, and the dead would become pitiable homeless souls. Due to demographic shifts, many elderly persons today have no culturally preferred successors who can continue to venerate the family dead. A married adult son who has a son is an ideal successor, while a son without children, a married-out daughter who took her husband’s family name, and unmarried adult children are not considered preferred successors. Thus older persons’ choices in mortuary matters must be understood in the current social and demographic context, where conventional practices no longer provide a
sense of certainty and security.
The recent developments in expanded support services for the elderly to some extent parallel advances in support services for people with disabilities. As in the case of the elderly, although there are paid non-family attendants, people with disabilities are often cared for by family members. To reduce the sense of dependence, people with disabilities are encouraged to see their attendants as their arms and legs. They should not feel they have to thank their attendants every time they receive help, for example, with eating or having their wheelchair pushed. Yet Karen Nakamura asks (in chapter 8) whether people with disabilities have the right to receive assistance to meet their sexual needs. Formerly they were assumed to be asexual. The 2000s saw lively public debates concerning the sexual identities of people with disabilities.
Life Courses: Education, Marriage, and Aging
What changes have occurred in life course transitions in contemporary Japan? Among the major phases of life, the transition to school is still taken for granted, yet the average duration of schooling has grown longer, and the quality of one’s post-secondary education has become even more important in making a successful transition to work. Unlike in the early postwar period, when the number of university graduates was comparatively small, by the 2000s the majority of high school graduates proceeded to a post-secondary education. Such a step became possible in part following the establishment of more lower-level junior colleges and universities whose diplomas were of limited value on the job market (see chapters 1 and 11). In the current competitive job market, with a decreasing number of permanent, career-track jobs, a diploma from a mediocre university does not guarantee a regular job. Furthermore, with the EEOL educational credentials are now relevant to women as well; indeed going to a good high school and getting a degree from a prestigious university are much more important for female corporate workers, some of whom remain employed until they retire (see chapter 3).3
How have school curricula and pedagogical approaches shifted? Cave shows that in the past twenty-five years several attempts have been made to change the educational system in Japan (chapter 11). To “internationalize” students, a limited number of English lessons were introduced in the primary schools, and to encourage exploratory, individualized learning, the number of hours spent on academics was reduced. However, declining scores in international academic attainment tests led to a reconsideration of reduced hours; these were again increased (but not entirely). Small class sizes and differentiated learning via proficiency groups were also introduced in a limited manner. Despite these attempts at change, however, Cave maintains that a striking number of practices have endured since the late postwar period. Primary schools continue to provide opportunities for learning in academics as well as socialization, centering on group participation and cooperation. In junior high schools, working together continues to be important, and despite the introduction of small class sizes and differentiated learning, students most likely experience little differentiation through their nine years of compulsory education. Some high schools use competitive exams to select talented students who want to get into the nation’s most prestigious universities, while others (usually private) employ interviews and other methods to admit students regardless of their academic record. At the same time, graduates are ranked according to the schools they attended, a factor that in turn largely shapes their occupational choices and life trajectories.
Just because some pedagogical approaches persist does not imply that the meaning and value of schooling have stayed more or less the same. The media have sensationalized students who refuse to attend school and problematized the hikikomori, or the young people who have socially withdrawn (see Borovoy 2008). In the postwar middle-class ideal, schooling was the path to mainstream success. Given the recognition of disparity and the declining value of a college degree in the job market, it is not surprising to find that some students are not motivated to do well. Cave makes the point that rather than looking ahead, the Japanese educational system has been driven by a longing for the idealized past.
During the 2000s, the transition from school to work, as well as to marriage and childbirth, has not occurred in some people’s lives. Previous studies conducted during the 1970s and the 1980s (see Plath 1980) examined age-related ideologies defining life course transitions and the narrow age ranges for each life transition that were culturally acceptable. These studies noted that women were pressured to marry before they reached the age of twenty-five (see Brinton 1992). This was a culturally constructed “cutoff ” date, after which, like Christmas cakes that are no longer desired after December 25, women became unwanted marital partners. However, the average age for first marriage has risen dramatically: from 24.2 to 28.8 years for women and 27.2 to 30.5 years for men between 1965 and 2010 (Cabinet Office 2011). Consequently, the proportion of unmarried people in the life stage formerly associated with childbearing and child rearing has increased dramatically. For example, in 2005, 32 percent of women aged between thirty and thirty-four and 18.4 percent of women between thirty-five and thirty-nine remained unmarried, as did 47.1 percent of men between thirty and thirty-four and 30 percent of men between thirty-five and thirty-nine (Cabinet Office 2011). Despite such changes, the age-related ideologies persist to some extent, and now thirty is considered a new “cutoff ” date for single women, as evidenced by Lynne Nakano’s account in chapter 6. The difference today, however, is that an increasing number of women never transition to wife- or motherhood.
While many single women are interested in marriage, compatibility with one’s partner has become highly valued, and they are not willing to compromise (see chapters 3, 4, and 6). In their mothers’ time, marriage was seen as a woman’s permanent job and marrying a salaryman was the ideal. Today, however, marriage is not the only path, and an increasing number of women remain in the corporate world as long-term workers. Moreover, as divorce rates rise and men’s jobs in the post-bubble economy are not as secure as they used to be, marriage no longer provides a permanent position for a woman (Ochiai 1997). In this context, young people have developed alternative values. Nakano states that the “personalities” (hitogara) of husbands matter a great deal to women, and they are not willing to marry unless a potential partner is “appropriate.”
Some older people also value compatibility, companionship, and communication in marriage in today’s Japan, as Gordon Mathews indicates (chapter 2). Personality and value differences, as well as inadequate financial support from husbands, are reasons for divorce. Marriages are no longer satisfactory when husbands and wives simply fulfill the social roles of breadwinner and homemaker, as defined in a social contract, and lead relatively separate lives (Alexy 2011; Borovoy 2005; Nakano 2011). Due to this shift in ideals, the couples described in Mathews’ chapter seem disenchanted after years of marriage. In contrast, Roberts (chapter 1) examines a couple with a close, loving relationship at a time when marriage was seen as a social contract. It is thus important to note that the quality of marital relations varies, and we need further in-depth research on the variations.
In the early 1990s, Japanese women tended to hold a series of non-overlapping roles, moving sequentially from student to worker to homemaker (see Brinton 1992). In the twenty-first century, despite the growing number of women in the workforce, many women still prefer not to be students and mothers at the same time or full-time workers and mothers at the same time, particularly when their children are young. Student, worker, and mother are all full-time “occupations,” and a person is expected to fully devote oneself to each job. A married man, too, is primarily seen as a breadwinner by his employer and co-workers, and his participation in family life is consequently limited. Such postwar middle-class expectations are still alive in the 2000s. Long work hours are taken for granted, making it difficult for regular employees to balance family and work. The media often state that more women work today, but this does not imply that there are more married women with children in regular employment. A more accurate picture is the bifurcation of women into unmarried, full-time workers and mothers with part-time or irregular
employment. A mother should primarily mother, at least when her children are young, and if she also works, ideally the work should not interfere with her primary role of nurturing her children.
The expectation that a mother should devote herself fully to child rearing continues to discourage women from staying in the labor force during the child-rearing years. Kawano (chapter 9) examines some of the consequences for a woman in the transition from a full-time worker to a stay-at-home mother; among these are social isolation and a need to build a network of child-rearing support. As their husbands often work long work hours and non-family babysitters are neither common nor popular (Holthus 2011), metropolitan mothers are usually left with only their own mothers, if available, to count on. (In a way, the situation of new mothers that Kawano examines is similar to that of new retirees: they lack a strong peer network and reciprocal support [see chapter 2.) To improve the child-rearing environment and reduce the social isolation, in 2002 the state initiated tsudoi no hiroba jigyō, or the drop-in play centers project, for parents and preschoolers. By creating these centers, the state aimed to address the major demographic problem of declining fertility rates. Hovering around 1.3 children per woman for the past sever-
al years, low fertility rates are seen to threaten the long-term stability of Japan’s social security. However, the current structure of employment continues to assume that it is men who are first of all full-fledged workers. Kawano maintains that the development of new community-based child-rearing support systems among women, therefore, does not destabilize the persistent gender asymmetry that assigns them a domestic role, volunteer work, or irregular employment.
As life courses have become differentiated, household composition has become more diverse as well. For example, the number of single-person households almost doubled between 1975 and 2009, from approximately 6 million to 12 million, and the proportion of such households increased from 18.2 percent to 24.9 percent (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare 2011a). Moreover, as marriage rates are lower now, households consisting of parents and their unmarried adult children have also become more common. The adults living with their parents, who often fail to make adequate contributions to household expenses, are seen negatively as “parasite singles,” a widely used disparaging term coined by the sociologist Yamada Masahiro (1999) that the media used to capture the phenomenon. Yet the prolonged dependency on parents by adult children must be understood in the increasingly precarious labor market, where the number of regular jobs has decreased. Several chapters in this volume include examples of single adult children still living with their parents, some of them already middle-aged (chapters 1, 2, and 6).
Households that include older adults have also become more diverse. Older adults, who commonly co-resided with an adult child in three-generational households in early postwar Japan, are now less likely to live in such households. In 2001, the International Survey of Lifestyles and Attitudes of the Elderly indicated that 22 percent of those aged sixty and older lived in three-generational households (compared with 2 percent in the United States) (Ogawa, Retherford, and Matsukura 2006), but the proportion of the elderly so doing had markedly declined from 37 percent in 1981. Three-generational households have not disappeared, but their proportion has markedly declined from 16.9 percent in 1975 to 8.4 percent in 2009 (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare 2011a). As discussed in chapter 13, many older adults now prefer not to live with their adult children’s families. Nonetheless, when older people
become too frail or ill to manage on their own, the expectation remains strong that they will be cared for by a family member living in the same household. In 2005 approximately three out of four primary caregivers for the elderly were still family members, and two-thirds of them were living with the elderly person in their charge (Maruyama 2006, 52–53). With demographic and cultural changes, family caregivers are more diverse in the 2000s, with wives, husbands, sons, and daughters (rather than only daughters-in-law) more often giving hands-on care (Long 2008). In recent years an elderly person has been more likely to receive care from his or her spouse as prolonged life expectancies have contributed to the co-survivorship of older couples (Ogawa, Retherford, and Matsukura 2006). Unmarried women living with aging parents sometimes express concern about future care for their co-residing parents, reflecting the diversification of caregivers during the 2000s (e.g., see chapters 3 and 6).
Longer life expectancies allow a growing number of older persons to get to know their grandchildren and potentially even great-grandchildren as individuals. Susan Long (chapter 7) explores how the meaning of grandchildren and grandparents has changed in a society where life expectancies are exceptionally long and a growing number of the elderly live away from their adult children and grandchildren. She finds that the frequency and quality of interactions vary greatly; a few grandparents rarely see their grandchildren, while others are involved in their lives. Frequent interaction does not necessarily lead to strong bonds between them, however. At times frequent encounters led to a criticism of the grandchildren, but grandparents who were actively engaged with their grandchildren tended to have closer relationships with them. Grandparents had more positive ties with grandchildren if they had taken care of them when they were young, had grandchildren who visited informally rather than only formally on holidays, or traveled with them. However, the grandchildren also reminded the elderly that the world had changed around them. The grandchildren were more materialistic, had different tastes in food, preferred different TV shows, and had different ideas about free time. Nevertheless, the grandchildren were often sources of great pleasure and provided the grandparents with a significant sense of continuity in twenty-first-century Japan.
As life courses have become increasingly diverse, the posthumous trajectories have as well. In postwar Japan, the living family members’ ritual efforts and maintenance of a family grave were essential to ensure the peaceful rest of the deceased. However, Kawano (chapter 13) describes the rise of a new mortuary practice of ash scattering, which enables a deceased-to-be to ensure his or her peaceful rest embraced in nature, rather than having his or her remains interred in a conventional family grave―the ideal destination for the postwar middle class.
In summary, the chapters in this volume collectively reveal the questioning of postwar middle-class ideals and the exploration of new identities as well as some enduring practices and values maintained through people’s daily lives during the 2000s. The voices in these pages are diverse in gender, social class, occupations, and generations. It is hoped that through this rich diversity one can glimpse the cultural resources people use as they craft new means to adjust and live in these challenging times.
Notes on Research Methods
Many scholars in social and cultural anthropology, in which all the contributors to this volume specialize, value both in-depth qualitative data collected during fieldwork and individual interviews. Anthropological fieldwork typically consists of firsthand observations of people’s behavior in natural social settings. This method is known as participant observation. If an anthropologist wants to study the importance of dance in a particular culture, he or she will conduct participant observation by going to a dance hall to collect data. He or she will observe dancers and talk to them. The researcher will even try to learn the latest steps from the dancers. When a researcher finds some aspects of the culture puzzling, he or she will ask informants about them. The researcher is thus a participant-learner who engages in a social situation. The process of anthropological fieldwork is to some extent similar to a child’s being socialized in a given cultural setting. Socialization results in the accumulation of knowledge through concrete, face-to-face interactions in various social contexts. To some extent an anthropologist acquires knowledge about a culture in a similar way, though there are a number of important differences between the two modes of learning. For example, unlike with the socialization of a child, the process of participant observation is not meant to make the researcher a full-fledged member of the society he or she is studying. The researcher is more self-consciously involved in social situations to gather data and make sense of them.
In-depth interviews are well suited to explore people’s experiences and perceptions of the world. For example, what does it mean for a woman to remain single in her thirties? By interviewing (say) forty unmarried Japanese women in that age group, an anthropologist can gain a complex, situated account. Unlike survey results from a large, nationally representative sample, the researcher cannot use the results of in-depth interviews with a relatively small sample to make generalizations about single women in Japan. Nonetheless, qualitative interviews offer rich, nuanced data that large-scale surveys cannot easily provide. By using observational and interview data, the contributors to this volume thus convey concrete, rich examples of people’s real-life
engagements and struggles.
Notes for Instructors
This book contains thirteen chapters, divided into five sections. Chapters that address certain similar themes are grouped together, although except for chapters 1 and 2, which shed light on long-term changes, it is not necessary to assign the chapters sequentially. To facilitate the adoption of this volume for the teaching of Japan-related classes, the following provides the key themes covered in each chapter.
Chapter 1 (Roberts): economic change, family, work conditions and opportunities, blue-collar employees, marriage, cultural capital, class reproduction, parent-child relations
Chapter 2 (Mathews): marital satisfaction, marital ideals, men’s experiences, aging, retirement, divorce, religion, disability, child rearing
Chapter 3 (Kurotani): the bubble generation, female corporate workers, the EEOL, career women, gender and work, habitus
Chapter 4 (Rosenberger): organic farming, women farmers, alternative lifestyles, resistance, identity, food safety, environment
Chapter 5 (Whitelaw): work culture, moral economy, convenience stores, small-scale business owners and retail systems, consumerism, loss and waste, prepared foods, urban lifestyles
Chapter 6 (Nakano): single women, employment opportunities and strategies, marriage opportunities and choices, meanings of singlehood, values, life courses
Chapter 7 (Long): grandparents, grandchildren, generational relations, aging, longevity, the frail elderly, elder care
Chapter 8 (Nakamura): sexuality, sexual services, people with disabilities, prostitution, men with physical disabilities, welfare organizations,
Chapter 9 (Kawano): child-rearing support, young mothers, preschoolers, metropolitan communities, social networks, non-profit organizations, female volunteers
Chapter 10 (Miller): divination, the occult, young women and girls, social bonding, entertainment, consumption, technology, communication
Chapter 11 (Cave): education, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, private tutorial and test preparation programs, academics, moral values, socialization, pedagogy, curriculum changes, educational reforms
Chapter 12 (Roth): car culture, K-cars, gendered driving manners, driving metaphors, femininity, masculinity, structuralism
Chapter 13 (Kawano): mortuary rites; ancestors; ash-scattering ceremonies; dependence and late adulthood; the elderly living alone; attitudes toward death, family ties, and burial; attitudes toward religion; afterlives
We intend this volume to be read by students in tandem with recently published handbooks, ethnographies, and collections on aspects of life in contemporary Japan. Chapters from this book could be assigned to complement these other books in order to give students a feel for the people behind the sociological narratives. In recent years several handbooks on contemporary Japan have been published, systematically explicating various facets of social life today (for instance, Bestor et al., Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society, and Robertson, A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan). There are also several multi-author volumes that deal with various issues facing Japanese society today, such as Mathews and White, Japan’s Changing Generations; Matanle and Lunsing, Perspectives on Work, Employment and Society in Japan; Hashimoto and Traphagan, Imagined Families, Lived Families; Ishida and Slater, Social Class in Contemporary Japan; and Ronald and Alexy, Home and Family in Japan. In Capturing Contemporary Japan, social transformation during a time of increasing globalization and challenging economic circumstances is the plumb line, while the topics covered vary depending on the ethnographic research of each author. The volume strives to provide a slide show of people in diverse positions during the first decade of the twenty-first century, but it does not attempt to cover all the major themes or topics important to contemporary Japan. For instance, in recent years, Japan has seen an increase in international marriages, as well as in its resident foreign population. While accounts of these groups are certainly important, we ask readers to visit other works, such as Willis and Murphy-Shigematsu, Transcultural Japan, in order to understand these populations. In a way Capturing Contemporary Japan is reminiscent of Imamura’s Re-imaging Japanese Women as it attempts to highlight the diverse experiences of Japanese people during the 2000s, although there are a number of differences in scope and approach. Gender is not the primary focus of this volume, although many chapters attempt to provide gendered accounts as well as age- and class-sensitive accounts of people’s experiences. None of the chapters in the volume are reprints; all are newly crafted to feature ethnographic data collected during the 2000s.
