PART THREE—
INTERNAL FAMILY PROCESSES

Chapter VIII—
The Decline of the Ie Ideal

The Concept of Ie

Until the end of World War II, the Japanese government saw that all its citizens, through school and mass media, learned in great detail about "the family system." As a whole the government was amazingly successful. Not only did everyone learn about the ideal family, but many attempted to model their family on this ideal. Even today, Mamachi residents, like other Japanese, remember clearly the main outlines of what they were taught about the ideal family and the model of the ie^[1] still has an important impact on family behavior. At the heart of the system was the ie , the single unbroken family line, including both living and dead, and the concept of filial piety. The basic goal of ie members was to care properly for departed ancestors and to preserve the continuity and prosperity of their ie . Selling land, for example, was considered a grave misfortune, both because it was a disgrace to the ancestors and because it might seriously affect the family's fortune for generations to come. Family members sacrificed personal pleasures and wants for the ie , not only to gain respect or rewards in this life, but to attain immortality, for the idea of after life was contingent on the continuation of the ie .^[2]

[1] The same word, ie , is also used to mean simply home or a family, but in this chapter it is used only in its meaning as a family line.

For a brief but authoritative account of the ie , see Kizaemon Ariga, "The Family in Japan," Marriage and Family Living , 1954, 16:362–368. The term dozoku is used to denote a locality kin group comprising main and branch families sharing the same work. The main and branch families were sometimes linked not by blood but by fictitious kin ties. Cf. Michio Nagai, "Dozoku^[*] : A Preliminary Study of the Japanese 'Extended Family' Group and Its Social and Economic Functions," Report No. 7, Project 483, Ohio State University (mimeographed).

[2] Cf. Nobushige Hozumi, Ancestor Worship and Japanese Law , Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1912.

Small children belonged to their parents' ie . When the children of a family attained maturity, one son, usually the first, was given the honor and the responsibility for preserving the ie . The other children had to find another ie or, if given permission, they could start a new branch to the main ie into which they were born. When a daughter married, her name was crossed off her ie 's register and entered into the register of her husband's family. The ie gave daughters sizeable dowries and assisted younger sons in starting out in life, but the bulk of the family land and treasures was given to the son who had the responsibility for looking after the family line.^[3] In theory, the family head did not own the property, but was merely the trustee^[4] in the present generation who looked after the property of the ie , past, present, and future. If the head of the household died, normally his son would inherit the headship. If no son were available, a younger brother of the deceased might become head if he had not yet gone to another ie , or a wife might take over the headship until an heir was selected.

When a bride entered a new family, she was expected to learn her new family's customs (kafuu ) and by hard work, automatic obedience, and enthusiastic submission to prove that she was sufficiently loyal to deserve family membership. If she failed, she was returned to her original home.^[5] An adopted son-in-law had to go through the same process.

The bride was not simply a bride of her husband but of his ie , and his ie referred to her as uchi no yome (our bride). In many ways she was regarded as an adopted daughter, and she referred to her parents-in-law as mother and father.^[6] She was chosen not by

[3] It may be suggested incidentally that this practice played a crucial role in capital formation which was necessary for modernization. Many characteristics of modern developments (thrift, hard work, and even economic rationality) were often intimately associated with the attempt to develop and preserve the ie . Hozumi, op. cit. , notes that formerly rules existed against the ie giving too much away since this might interfere with family continuity.

[4] Cf. the works of Carle Zimmerman.

[5] Returning a bride was very common, especially in certain areas of northern Honshu, and it was this practice which made such a high divorce rate in the Meiji Period. The rate was even higher than statistics indicate because many brides were returned in the first months after the marriage before it was officially registered.

[6] In Tokugawa census registers, a young wife is often listed as daughter without being distinguished from a true daughter of the household. For this information I am indebted to Robert J. Smith.

her husband but by his ie , on the basis of her willingness and ability to work hard and transfer her loyalty to her new family, and of her having the health, vigor, and wisdom necessary to produce and rear a desirable heir. Similarly, an adopted son was selected on the basis of his ability to continue the family line. Often it was more important for him to have skills necessary to operate the family farm or business enterprise than the attributes necessary for a good husband.

The son or adopted son who became the family head theoretically had absolute legal authority over the other family members. Just as children were to obey their parents, so the wife was to obey her husband, and when her son became family head, she was to obey him. Younger brothers were to obey the elder brother. The Japanese government held the family head responsible for the behavior of family members, and he was expected to use his authority to ensure that all members behaved properly.

Just as his authority was the greatest, so was his responsibility greatest. In addition to supervising the family enterprise, he had the onus of deciding on marriage and work arrangements for his children or younger siblings. He was responsible for the health and welfare of ie members, living and dead. He provided for his parents in their retirement. If his sisters or daughters were divorced and sent back because they were not acceptable to the new ie or if sons or brothers lost their jobs, he provided temporary food and housing and assisted them in finding a new opening. As preserver of the ie , he supervised the care of family shrines and graveyards and made certain that each summer, at the O-bon festival, lanterns were lighted so that the spirits of departed ancestors could find their way from the grave to the ancestral home.

A prosperous family might boast of a family genealogy and a family graveyard dating back several hundred years, although some families candidly admit doubt about the authenticity of some of the early part of the record. Yet the living members of an ie were usually limited to a stem family of father, mother, unmarried children, a married son, his wife, and their children. In a certain stage of the life cycle, if the grandparents died before the eldest son married, the household might consist only of parents and children. If a family were prosperous and wanted to expand, then a second

son would be allowed to form a branch family (bunke ) which would remain within the ie , but be subordinated to the original family (honke ). In a farm family, the second son might be given a small plot of land, or, in a business family, he might be given a small part of the business or a branch office to provide support for his family. One of his children would be selected as his heir and would become head of the branch line. Theoretically, a main family could have many branches, and branches could have branches. Officially, there was a clear hierarchy of power, the branch family being subordinated to the main family. In fact, except for communities in which the main and branch families had close contact, these relationships had little significance beyond two or three generations. Usually the branch family which migrated to the city obtained virtual autonomy over its own sphere. Sometimes a second son who set up a family of his own did not even go through the formal procedures of setting up a branch family. This son officially retained membership in his original ie , but once he had a wife and children, he was granted virtual autonomy.

The Branch

The concept of ie continues to provide an important model for family behavior, but it is no longer imperative to sacrifice one's self for the ie , and some families without children are even willing to go without an heir. The desire to continue the ie is particularly weak in branch families, and in Mamachi, as in other urban areas, the overwhelming majority of families are branch families.^[7] Because the main family (except for new main families formed by second sons who became independent) has a much longer tradition, it is natural that more effort will be put into its preservation than into the attempt to preserve the branch. The second son who migrates to the city has no responsibility to his ie . When he moves, he brings with him virtually no family treasures, he has no family graveyard or ancestral tablets and no family business to look after. Not only

[7] My survey data indicate that of 63 salary-man families, 86 percent were branch families; of 81 small shopkeeping families, 75 percent were branch families; of 172 farm families, 54 percent were branch families. Unfortunately, the designation of branch family does not indicate how many generations ago the branch split off from the main family. One may suspect that in many farm families this happened many generations ago.

does he himself have no ie responsibility, but when he dies, his heir has a very shallow lineage heritage since it began only a generation before.

Even if the son in the city does not leave an heir or if his heir leaves no heir, it is not considered a tragedy. The main family from which the branch split off will not only continue to look after the ancestors and the prosperity of the ie , but they will look after the tablets and graves of the abortive branch family. Most branch families would like to have an heir, but it is difficult to get a satisfactory heir if parents do not give birth to a male child. Some families with only daughters still adopt sons-in-law, but a family can find a more desirable husband for their daughter if they do not require him to become an adopted son-in-law. Most Mamachi branch families consider a good son-in-law more important than the continuation of their branch line. Similarly, Mamachi salary-man families with no children have no family enterprise to offer an attractive young man in return for becoming their adopted son, so many branch families, rather than accept a successor who might lower the quality of their branch line, prefer to be buried at the place of their ancestors with the knowledge that their graves will be cared for by the main family.

In some businesses and crafts, an economic bond joins the branch family to the main family. If a drug business expands, for example, a second son might be given financial support in setting up a branch shop, and the heirs of the branch family would continue to operate a branch shop of the larger shop directed by the main family. In such situations, the economic bond between the main family and the branch family would bring them close together, extending far beyond the business ties. No such economic interest binds the rural family attached to the land and the salary man in the city, nor is there any economic bond between an employee of a large corporation and his son, who is likely to be working in a different corporation or government office. In times of great need, the main and branch families may help each other and, if amiable, they may visit each other occasionally, but typically the tie between the main family in the country and the branch family in the city is little more than a sentimental attachment.

Main and branch families may disagree about how much to help

each other, but the feelings of independence of each other have now become so strong that they rarely ask each other for aid, even in need. A more critical problem confronts the branch family if the head of the main family dies leaving no heir.^[8] Family fortunes can be dissipated quickly in such instances, and the branch family is expected to see that family property is protected and the main family line continued. Sometimes a second son who is not yet firmly established in the city is called back to take over the family line after the death of his elder brother. However, we have heard of no cases in recent years where a man already established in the city has returned to take over the family line in the country. Life in the city is considered more attractive, and the urban wife and children are reluctant to go back to the rural areas under any circumstances. In two families in which an older brother died leaving small children in the country, the younger brother remained in Mamachi but assisted his brother's children until one could take over the duties of the heir. In one instance, a man got permission from his company to take his full vacation time during the busiest rice-harvesting seasons to return to his rural home and help with physical labor as well as finances. In effect, he temporarily shared the family headship with his deceased brother's wife until the children were in their mid-teens and old enough to carry out the farm work themselves. But in fulfilling this responsibility to his ie he created serious strains for his own wife and children who were reluctant for him to spend so much time, energy, and money looking after the ie in the country with which they did not feel identified. The husband felt caught between the pressures from the ie on the one hand and his wife and children on the other and unsuccessfully tried to resolve the conflict by remaining faithful to both.

In another case, in which the main family in the country owned no land and the heir to the family died, the branch family in Mamachi became the main family with all its responsibilities, but the location of the main family was shifted from the country to Mamachi. It was possible to remove the family heirlooms, tablets, and other property, and to preserve some of the family traditions in

[8] This problem, although not so common now, was an acute issue in families where a son died during World War II and was in general more common in the previous era when the death rate was higher.

the city, although not to the satisfaction of all the relatives. Arrangements were made so that the family grave plot in the country could remain there and be cared for. In this event, the branch family was forced to assume the responsibility of the main family, and the concept of ie could not be dismissed so lightly.

Many people in Mamachi not only find little positive value in the ie , but they object to concern with ancestors and family lines. They regard the family system, especially the arbitrary rule of the family head, the domination of the branch family by the main family, and the emphasis on family tradition as remnants from the feudalistic past which should be done away with as quickly as possible. But part of the desire to forget tradition comes especially from families of humble origin who now enjoy higher positions. A rich family with a long history still draws respect, but families which have entered the middle class only in the last generation are usually anxious to overlook their humble backgrounds. They seem to acknowledge the importance of the family line as a basis for respect, for they not uncommonly exaggerate the length of time their family has lived in the city or the status of their ancestors, and are eager to tell of a rich or famous relative of theirs. Not only do humble families have shorter family genealogies and fewer family treasures to preserve, but their family tree gives them little to point to with pride. It is not surprising that many of them show so little interest in ancestors.

The Decline of the Ie Authority and Welfare

In many respects, the ie has been like a corporation. Traditionally, it had a set of offices under the direction of a head, a definite membership with set relationships to each other, and regular rules of procedure. Some of the larger or more prominent families actually had written rules, which the ie followed to the letter of the law. One of the responsibilities of the head of the main family of the ie was to provide for the welfare of all its members. As long as the major wealth of the ie was held by the main family and could be allocated or at least controlled by the head, the system worked well. Quarrels or a shortage of funds may have existed, but the family head clearly had the power and responsibility to see that family mem-

bers gave assistance to needy members. As the power of the ie has become weaker, however, the head of the main family finds it difficult to control the allocation of funds to needy members. The power of the main family has been especially weakened by the urban branch families' becoming richer than the main family. As it became harder for the family head in the rural areas to request assistance from the richer branch family in the city, it also became more difficult for the branch family to obtain help from the main family in time of need. The bitter feelings between relatives who sought or gave aid immediately after World War II is adequate testimony to the collapse of the ie welfare system.^[9] Some, of course, still help needy relatives, but this is no longer common and is usually limited to close relatives. Furthermore, whether help is given no longer depends so much on whether a relative is an ie member but on whether he is liked and judged needy and worthy.^[10] The decision is controlled by sentiment, not duty to the ie .

Under the old system the family may have been dominated by an autocratic head but there was clarity and integrity to the system. The main family inherited the major share of family property and accepted the responsibility of providing for needy members. The eldest son, the trustee of family property, naturally cared for the elderly parents. According to the postwar revisions of the Civil Code, responsibility is to be shared by all children. Precisely how the responsibility should be shared is sufficiently debatable to cause considerable ill-will between siblings. Many still feel the first son should bear most of the burden.^[11] Even if inheritance is divided

[9] See the polls in Yoshiharu Scott Matsumoto, Contemporary Japan: The Individual and His Group , Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1960.

[10] Even before World War II, the old ie system was under severe attack by those who supported the democratic principles of family equality. The sections in the postwar Constitution dealing with family law represented a clear-cut victory for those who believed in equality of inheritance. The new law accelerated the dispersal of family wealth; among salary men, where no attempts are made to get around multiple inheritance, it has marked an end to the ie 's ability to control family money and provide for the assistance of needy members. Cf. Kurt Steiner, "The Revision of the Civil Code of Japan: Provisions Affecting the Family," Far Eastern Quarterly , 1950, 9:169–184.

[11] In a study conducted in modern Tokyo apartments as many as 20 percent feel that the eldest son should have the main responsibility in caring for the support of needy family members, and 40 percent still feel the eldest son should inherit the majority of the property. In a nearby farming area, where the idea of ie is still much stronger, 74 percent felt the eldest son should have the major responsi-bility, and 84 percent felt the eldest son should receive the majority of the inheritance. Takashi Koyama, Gendai Kazoku no Kenkyuu (An Investigation of the Contemporary Family), Tokyo: Koobundoo, 1960.

equally, the responsibility for caring for parents cannot be divided equally. In a family of three children, for example, it is not easy for retired parents to spend four months living with each child. It is expected that financial help from the children will be based partly on their ability to pay, but there is no standard formula for deciding how much ability each child has. Furthermore, regardless of a married daughter's desire to help out, her husband may refuse to help support her parents. Even if the children can come to an agreement about the care of elderly parents, those providing the assistance feel it as a burden which the other siblings might have lightened.^[12] And even if the children provide plentifully, the parents often feel that they are imposing on the younger couple; and the spouse who is not the child of the elderly persons is likely to make them especially uncomfortable. The prevalence of this problem was made clear to us because one of the most common questions we were asked about family life in America concerned the provision made for older people. The pattern of single inheritance and care for elders was a stable system; the pattern of elderly parents having enough means to support themselves might be a stable system but the area between, where parents require support from various children, appears to lead to inevitable difficulties.

Parents in their forties face a difficult decision about what to do in their old age. Although they recognize the problems of living with children in their old age and want to avoid difficulties, many are afraid that if they live alone they will be lonely and unable to make ends meet. Some bravely assert that they will live alone trying to convince themselves that such a life may not be lonely. Others admit they would be pleased if their children asked them to live together. Despite the problems in the new system of multiple inheritance and weakened ie , no one expects the power of the household head to be revived. Furthermore, the problem of supporting aged parents is mitigated by the father's membership in a large organiza-

[12] One Japanese movie which we saw centered on the theme of siblings deciding how to care for their aged widow mother. The most touching scene was when the mother overheard the children arguing that not one but the other should be responsible for her care.

tion. Because the company will provide a pension or at least a large lump sum on retirement, the elderly couple need not be such a financial burden on their children. Having parents live with the younger couple is considered as more natural and less of an imposition than in the United States, and now that the ie has declined, increasingly large numbers of parents are able to depart from the traditional ie pattern and live with a daughter where there is sufficient positive feeling between the women at home to avoid the conflicts commonly found between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law.

As the capacity of the family head to control welfare activities has declined, and as the branch family has grown in wealth, security, and prestige, the main family's sanctions have lost their force. No longer is the threat of expulsion from formal ie membership so frightening. The family head is especially weak in Mamachi salary families because of the combination of loss of ie consciousness in the branch family and the feeling of independence which comes from the economic security offered by the husband's firm.

The power of a household head above his power as a husband and father now are so insignificant that the transfer of position of household head is virtually meaningless.^[13] In the local community an elderly father will simply continue to be listed as head of household if he lives with a son. Similarly, the distinction between the heir and other sons has been lessened, not only in matters of inheritance, but with respect to the position of children within the family. In the past, the elder son, as heir apparent, was treated with considerable respect by other members of his family, even before he assumed the position. Not only did parents give preferential treatment to the child who would become the heir, but grandparents openly preferred uchi mago (children of their heir) to soto mago (children of their other children). While the oldest child still may exert considerable authority over younger siblings, especially in a large family, authority today is derived more from relative age

[13] Formerly, in rural areas, at a certain time the household head stepped down and passed on the position of family head to his son. From this day on the father was officially retired and the responsibility was officially in the hands of the son. In some cases the elderly couple moved on the day of retirement to a small separate dwelling on the same land or to a separate room, passing on their own home to their son. See John Embree, Suye Mura , Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1939.

than from the prospect of becoming the heir. An older sister ordinarily has more authority than a younger first-born son.

Formerly the ie had considerable power in arranging marriages and jobs for the young. Since marriage was viewed as a change of ie for a girl or an adopted son-in-law, it was considered appropriate that the decision be made both by the ie receiving the member and the ie giving up the member. This attitude has not entirely disappeared, and wedding negotiations, arrangements, gift exchanges, and even the formal ceremonies still distinguish between the ageru hoo (the family which is "giving up" a person) and the morau hoo (the family which is "receiving" a person).

The investigations and negotiations leading to marriage, generally were carried out by a go-between (sometimes one for each side), who performed his services at the request of the ie . The view and temperament of the young man and young lady were considered, but it was expected that their wishes should be subordinated to the ie . This was not without some reason, for in the case of the first son, the young bride, after all, was coming to live with her husband's family, and might spend more time with her mother-in-law than with her husband. Even in the marriage of a second son, over which the family exercised less supervision, the family had to bear the responsibility for marital difficulties. Hence, the parents felt that their children (who until the time of marriage had virtually no opportunity for meeting with members of the opposite sex) required their help in selecting a spouse.

The young people of Mamachi now regard such marriage arrangements as remnants of antiquated feudalistic society whereby the ie imposes its will on the young people who must sacrifice themselves for the good of the ie . While the Mamachi young people no longer are expected to conform to the wishes of their ie as such, their parents still retain influence in deciding whom the children should marry. The residents of Mamachi differentiate between two kinds of marriage: the miai (arranged marriage) and the renai (love marriage). In the miai, typically the parents, and sometimes relatives and family friends, have more influence, and in renai the young people themselves have more say.^[14] While only about half of the

[14] Regarding these two forms of marriage, see Ezra F. Vogel, "The Go-Between in a Developing Society," Human Organization, 1961, 20:112–120. The distinction betweenthese two types of marriage will be explored more fully in a forthcoming work by Professor Robert Blood.

recent marriages are officially arranged, in the overwhelming majority parents take an active role, checking on details of the other family. Some families will engage friends or private detectives to investigate the other family. Families frequently argue about the degree of independence that young people should have in selecting a spouse, but the range of freedom subject to dispute is relatively narrow if one considers the overwhelming power of the family in the Japan of an earlier era or the much broader freedom given most young people in the United States.

Yet, compared to the previous age, siblings and friends increasingly are replacing parents as sources of introductions, and coeducational schools and places of work provide limited opportunities which did not exist a few decades ago for respectable middle-class children to meet on their own. Nevertheless, there are few acceptable ways for young people to meet without some kind of introduction. Too much freedom is still suspect. A girl who has had dates with more than two or three men before marriage is still considered a bit free and worldly, and some will wonder whether she will make a good wife. What is emerging to some extent is a combination of miai and renai —a combination considered desirable by most parents. Under this combination, an appropriate person whom the family already has investigated thoroughly and found acceptable is introduced to the young person. The young people are permitted a few meetings (preferably not too many) to fall in love and make a decision. Under such arrangements they feel they have the best of two worlds: responsible arrangements and romantic love. If a child were given freedom to make his own decision, few discussions with his parents would be necessary, but in Mamachi where the decision is typically shared between the child and his parents, the selection of a spouse may dominate family discussions for years. Certainly both parents and the older children will be included, and sometimes knowledgeable or thoughtful friends. These discussions (or arguments) turn on such questions as what kind of person is desirable, who can help locate a promising candidate, what are the relative assets and weak points of various candidates, how can they get a desirable candidate to agree, what kind of arrangements can

be worked out for the marriage and living arrangements afterward. Particularly if the child is a daughter, these items are discussed, rediscussed, investigated, and reinvestigated. A family tries to arrive at a consensus on each minor step along the way. Indeed, they must arrive at a consensus if arrangements are to proceed smoothly. These discussions give the parents, and especially the mother, a purpose and function which they do not enjoy in many Western countries.

Considering how vehemently some adolescents insist on the freedom to find their own spouses, a surprisingly large number later acquiesce to arrangements or suggestions made by their parents. Many young people, especially the overprotected, the bashful, the cautious, those with high standards, those with a proud family history, the undesirable urenokori (leftovers) who did not find a spouse on their own, find the miai their best opportunity to get married and accept this pattern even if opposed to it ideologically. The willingness of children to let parents take an active part in the decision is undoubtedly related also to the close mother-child relationship and the fact that mothers have sacrificed so much for the children.^[15] Furthermore, because children have had little opportunity to meet contemporaries of the opposite sex, they have little confidence in their own ability to make a proper decision. The modern parent of Mamachi does not object in principle to a child's selecting his own spouse; nor does a parent insist that the child follow his parents' choice out of duty to them and their ie, but by questioning the wisdom of the child's choice or questioning what the child would do if something went wrong, they can instill sufficient doubt so that he is willing to accede to the parents' advice.

A daughter is especially responsive to her parents' feelings because she would have to turn to them for help in case of marital difficulty. A generation ago divorce was not simply a separation of man and wife, but the husband's ie returning her to her parents' ie . It was necessary for the divorced woman to have the support of her

[15] Evidence for this, based on projective test material given to Japanese, is presented in George De Vos, "The Relation of Guilt to Achievement and Arranged Marriage among the Japanese," Psychiatry, 1960, 23:287–301. Judging from De Vos's work, even in rural Japan the willingness to follow the mother's wishes has less to do with the concept of duty to ie than with the emotional bond between mother and child.

ie if she were to have a source of livelihood and a reasonable chance of finding another spouse. Even today, because a widow or a divorcee has few chances for earning a living or finding a new spouse, the wife generally is reluctant to get a divorce. The rate of divorce among residents of Mamachi is still very low.^[16] Even today a wife with marital difficulty, in effect, puts her case before her family and secures their approval before she decides to divorce, no matter how serious the trouble.

The Mamachi family has less direct control over occupational choice than over marital choice. Indeed, it has little reason to interfere with the son's occupational choice as long as it fits with the family's standard of respectability. Farmers and members of lower socio-economic groups placing a son in a small business concern still have considerable responsibility for making the necessary personal contacts. In the salary-man family, because hiring is largely determined by examinations or introductions, the child requires parental support only for preparing him for admission to a good academic institution. Once admitted, even if the boy does need financial help from his parents, his career plans are essentially outside the scope of his parents' planning. An academic degree and school contacts give a boy security so that he will not have to call on his parents for assistance in finding a new job if something should go wrong in his present place of work. Thus, even the first son in the salaried family has gained considerable freedom from his parents' domination without the necessity of rebelling against his parents, a situation in striking contrast to the first sons of farmers, owners of small businesses, and independent professionals.

Symbolic Remnants

Despite the massive inroads into the authority and economic significance of the ie in salaried families, there still is a strong attachment to this concept. Even branch families have a strong desire to continue the family line and an overwhelming hope that the family have at least one son to continue the family name. In fact, most families say they would like two sons and one daughter, so that if

[16] Though I do not have adequate survey data, my impression is that it would be somewhat lower than the national average, which is about 10 percent.

something should happen to one son they would still have one to continue the family line. The feeling remains that an ie has a tradition and that the person becoming a member of the ie should learn the family's customs and share the feeling of belonging to a long line of ancestors.

As much as they would like to adopt a son or son-in-law, few are willing to accept the problems this raises.^[17] But there is a common compromise solution in Mamachi to the problem of having no heir: a family finding someone who accepts no other family responsibility than that of taking on the family name and looking after the family ancestral plots and plaques. If a family has only a daughter, at the time of her marriage they may work out an arrangement with her husband whereby she would enter her husband's ie and take on his name and family line, providing that one male child of theirs be given her maiden name to continue the ie into which she was born. According to another arrangement, if a man has no children to continue his name, he may ask a second son of one of his brothers or other near relatives to take on his family name. In some main families with no children, a child of relatives may still be adopted, but increasingly among salaried families agreements are reached whereby someone will continue the family name without being required to change residence.

Even the branch families often have a feeling of attachment to their ancestral home, although separated from it by generations. Many modern salary men, when asked where their home (kuni ) is, will answer not their birthplace or their father's birthplace but the rural village where their grandfather or even great-grandfather was born. They may not expect to visit there, although if necessary they usually will be willing to help look after the family graves and ancestral tablets, but they retain a feeling of sentimental attachment which helps define their place in the world for now and ages yet to come.

[17] This conforms to Professor Koyama's findings that only 21.8 percent of the dwellers of an urban apartment project (largely salary men) would be willing to adopt a son-in-law if they had only daughters, while as many as 90.1 percent of farmers living in a community within commuting distance of Tokyo would adopt a son-in-law. If a family had no children, 35.6 percent of the city apartment dwellers think it necessary to provide for an heir, but 89.4 percent of the farmers think so. Koyama, op. cit .

The Decline of Family Principles

The ie was not simply a companionship family as in the West. It was a set of rules about how members were to behave and how the organization was to operate regardless of the sentiment or the convenience of the family members. One person had to be chosen as family head and all other members were to relate to each other depending on their position within the ie . It was a set of principles that governed the relationship of family members to each other.

Family relationships are now less governed by principles than by sentiment, power, and convenience. If the branch family has more wealth and power than a main family, it no longer is obliged to subordinate itself to the main family simply because it is the branch. A young man looking for a job or a marital partner may listen to his parents because of their authority, because he is fond of them, or because he respects their judgment. He is no longer obliged to follow his father's or his elder brother's wishes simply because of an obligation to obey the head of the ie . A person seeking financial assistance may go to his relatives for help, but he does not necessarily go to the family head, nor is the family head necessarily responsible for looking after the welfare of all members of the ie . He goes to relatives for assistance, not because of their position in the ie but because he feels close to them or because they are in a position to offer assistance.^[18] If one visits the main family, it is not because it is part of a required formality. If the oldest son has the major responsibility of looking after the parents, it is likely to be because he has the kind of job and housing situation that make him most able to bear this burden.

The power of ie principles has given way under the impact of new ideology: of forming branch families with a shallow sense of tradition and the growth of large firms providing security and welfare services. The weakening of ie principles has not led to chaos, because a new familial order has arisen based on sentiment and a sharp division of labor and authority. It is to the nature of this new order that we turn in the next chapters.

[18] Evidence from historical materials indicates that Japanese kinship terminology does not distinguish between relatives of one's father and one's mother. Cf. Robert Smith in Robert J. Smith and Richard K. Beardsley, eds., Japanese Culture, New York: The Viking Fund, 1962. With the decline of jural relationships between ie members, there appears to be no clear predominance of relationships with one side of the family as opposed to the other.

Chapter IX—
The Division of Labor in the Home

In Japanese coastal villages, some fishing boats are strictly for men, and the idea of a woman even boarding a ship is so abhorrent that many myths and superstitions dramatize the punishments for such a transgression. To many traditional Japanese, the idea of a man working in the home is as repulsive as the idea of a woman boarding a fishing boat, and while I know of no myths about the horrors awaiting a man who enters a kitchen, many Japanese young adults cannot recall ever having seen their fathers in a kitchen.

Even the terminology which has been passed down to today makes it clear that the wife's place has been in the home: The husband still refers to his wife as his kanai (literally, inside of the house), and friends and acquaintances call a housewife okusan (literally, the person in the back, i.e., of the house). Just as a captain stays on the ship when others leave, the wife looks after the house while others are away. In the past, the division of labor within the home was so complete that, when a husband helped in the home, it was thought peculiar and even improper.

This basic pattern of division of labor has been widely accepted even by urban branch families. Traditionally, the husband did not have to make use of his authority to maintain the division of labor because it was thoroughly accepted as just and natural by the wife as well as the husband. It was so highly internalized that many men could not prepare themselves a cup of tea in their wife's absence, and, if one did, women who heard of such incidents spontaneously responded with sympathy for the poor man left in such a predicament.

This division of labor remains strong even in contemporary Mamachi. What characterizes the salary-man family is partly that the husband is beginning to offer assistance in the home and, more

important, that the wife no longer helps the husband with his work. In the farm family, in the small shopkeeper family, and sometimes even in the independent professional and the successful business family, the wife is expected to work alongside the husband and give him assistance in earning the family livelihood. She participates in his sphere even if he does not participate in hers. She shares his work load, and in this way is subjected to his authority. In the salaried family, the husband has exclusive domain over his sphere and the wife has almost exclusive domain over her sphere. In some ways, the division of labor is more symmetrical and complete in "modern" than in most other families.

Creeping Co-Operation in the Home

Although, in comparison to other families, salaried families are in the forefront of breaking down the pattern of the husband abstaining from household work, the amount of change has been infinitesimal. Some "modern" Mamachi husbands occasionally look after the children or put up their own bedding, and a few have swept the yard, run the electric sweeper, or run a few errands, but very few have ever assisted their wives in dusting, cleaning, preparing food, setting or clearing the table, or doing the dishes; and it is unthinkable for a husband to assist in serving guests. Many husbands are still unable to prepare their own meals in the wives' absence, and a few will still go without tea if their wives are away.

The wife even does the house repairs. If necessary, she takes care of the coal or charcoal. She does the yardwork. Usually she buys and cares for the husband's clothes, and some husbands are unable to locate their own clothes if they are not laid out for them by the wives.

Considering that most couples strongly believe in the equality of the sexes, that many young husbands resolve at the time of marriage to help their wives, that even the Crown Prince has set the example by assisting his wife with washing the dishes, and that husbands spend many evenings at home, it is surprising not only that the division of labor has remained so strong, but that wives have not wanted their husbands to help more in the home.^[1]

[1] In a national Mainichi poll of the "Wife's Wishes of the Year" in 1953, in answer to the question, "What do you desire most of your husband?" wives gave the follow-ing answers: increase of income 20 percent, abstinence from excessive drinking and smoking 15 percent, repair of house 13 percent, keeping regular time 12 percent, co-operation with stability of living 7 percent, giving up too lavish spending of money 5 percent, saving money 3 percent, and other 7 percent. Takashi Koyama, The Changing Social Position of Women in Japan, UNESCO, 1961, p. 63. The desire for a man to help in housework is notable by its absence.

In part, the explanation lies in the forces of tradition.^[2] While in principle, Mamachi couples want to be "modern" and not "traditional," attitudes associated with the division of labor have not entirely disappeared. Husbands often understate the extent to which they help their wives in order to avoid being teased by their friends, and some are angered or embarrassed when accused of doing housework. It is still a bit unseemly for a man to be caught helping his wife, and many wives are equally afraid of being thought incompetent for needing help.

A few wives feel burdened because they must work so hard in the home, but most take it for granted that husbands, like children, cannot look after their own possessions or prepare their own food. Almost every household has at least one story of a time when the husband tried to do something for himself such as prepare a meal or find his clothes, only to make a bungling mess which the wife had to resolve. Most wives genuinely sympathize with a man who is left alone at home for a day or two while she is away visiting relatives.

However, the persistence of a strict division of labor cannot be explained entirely as a result of "traditional" attitudes, because older couples, who would presumably be more influenced by tradition, often share household tasks to a greater extent than younger couples. Even a generation ago, some elderly men helped their wives, and now, because the division of labor is not considered sacred, adjustments can occur on the basis of convenience. One American study found that an important determinant of division of labor in the United States was simply convenience, based on the relative amount of time the husband and wife were home.^[3] In part these same ecological forces of time and space would seem to

[2] In a national sample in 1951, 31 percent of Japanese men and 34 percent of women approve of a man assisting in kitchenwork; 42 percent of men and 46 percent of women disapprove. The remainder gave no response or said it depended on the situation. Koyama, op. cit., p. 63.

[3] Robert O. Blood, and Donald M. Wolfe, Husbands and Wives, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1960.

account for some of the variation in the division of labor among Mamachi families; and because the over-all pattern in Mamachi is that the wife spends so much more time at home than the husband, the wife accepts the predominant burden of tasks in the home.

In part, the persistence of the division of labor is a method of keeping the husband-wife equilibrium. Even the wife who expresses the wish that her husband help around the home becomes upset when he follows her wish. As he begins to work, he often makes suggestions about how things should be done, and even if he does not, the wife feels uncomfortable because she knows her husband will be more observant and perhaps more critical of her management. Because the husband does not help much anyway, wives often consider it simpler to do a little more work and avoid the husband's interference.

While the husband and wife cannot usually consciously verbalize the reasons for their feeling of discomfort, it appears that the wife is concerned about her autonomy and that without directly discussing it, her cues of discomfort are sufficient to preserve her autonomy and, hence, the more strict division of labor.

To the extent that the division of labor is changing at all, perhaps the sharpest inroads are made when the wife is sick or away. In the stem family system, if the wife became sick, another woman was often available in the household, and if not, a female relative or friend would be called in to substitute. With the urban nuclear family relatively isolated from relatives, such substitutes are often not available. At the same time the modern salary man's wife now has occasional outside activities such as PTA meetings or, on rare occasions, trips to friends or relatives which take her from the household. If there is an elder daughter in the family not busy studying for examinations, she can help out, and with the "instant" food boom many boys are willing to try their hand in the kitchen. If the mother is sick or absent for an extended period, a female relative may still be called in. But frequently the husband acts as substitute for his wife. Once he makes the break and does the housework in his wife's absence, he becomes more eligible for co-operating with his wife after she returns to assume her old position.

As long as the mother is well, however, no one really substitutes for her and no one is delegated any major responsibility for the

housework. Even a grandmother living in the home may not baby-sit for an infant when the mother goes out; the mother takes the infant with her. Boys frequently look after their own belongings, and sometimes help with home repairs or gardening, but they rarely help with cleaning and almost never in the kitchen. A girl in senior high school can typically cook a few dishes, but is unprepared to take charge of preparing a whole meal, using all electrical equipment, or taking full responsibility for supervising younger children in the mother's absence. Girls are thought to mature slowly and since they are busy with school work, the mother is slow to delegate responsibility.

Nor is the mother enthusiastic about passing on responsibilities to part-time maids or baby sitters. A home is defined as too unique and too personal to hire out part of the mother's work. Some families are willing to hire a full-time live-in maid who becomes, in effect, a member of the family, but even then she assists and does not replace the mother. The vast majority are not even interested in hiring a stranger for a few hours a week. The gap between family member and stranger is too great to be bridged by mere contractual arrangements. A mother's relationship with the children is considered so special that even other members of the family are rarely left to care for children. The mother is irreplaceable, her major responsibilities indivisible, and her daily schedule inflexible.

Housework:
The Daily Round

Because housework is so exclusively in the hands of the wife, she does not have to co-ordinate plans with others. She is free to plan her own schedule. Even if she has no schedule, she has regular daily activities like getting the family fed, cleaning the house, shopping, greeting her children when they come home, or serving her husband after his arrival in the evening. Most Mamachi housewives have sufficient time to perform their work without rushing, and because they usually have no special place to go if they work faster, they generally think of housework as an ongoing activity rather than something to be organized rationally and attacked with efficiency.

As in earlier times, one day's activities are hardly distinguished from another's. The one exception is Sunday and holidays when

the children and husband are free to join in family recreation, shopping, or relaxation.^[4] Most Mamachi wives perform all household tasks daily, including washing clothes, shopping for groceries, mopping and sweeping the floors. The ice box is sufficiently small, the floor where one sits sufficiently dusty, and laundry sufficiently tedious that the Mamachi wife finds it advisable to do the work daily. Only if she plans sewing, an outing, or some special activity will she skimp on other work. To give an idea of the daily activities we may take a fairly typical day of a Mrs. T:^[5]

She rises at 6 A.M., a full half-hour before anyone else stirs, and opens the wooden storm doors so the house becomes light and airy. She lights the fire for cooking, and since it is winter, she lights the charcoal for the kotatsu . After preparing the food, she wakes up the rest of the family. Her husband eats before the children, and she eats part of her breakfast with the others while preparing their lunch. While the husband and older children are dressing, she frantically rushes to find her husband's lost sock and to prepare their shoes and outer garments at the front doorway. She helps them in their coats and sees them off. The older children will have put their own bedding into the closets, but she puts her husband's and small children's away.

After both older children are off to school, she straps her one-year-old on her back and begins cleaning up the dishes. She then washes out

[4] See David W. Plath, "Land of the Rising Sunday," Japan Quarterly, 1960, 7:357–361.

[5] A larger national sampling on the housewife's daily schedule in early 1959 shows the favorable position of the wife of the salary man in having free time to devote to herself and her family.

From Fujin no Jiyuu Jikan ni Kansuru Ishiki: Choosa (A Study of Opinions on Women's Free Time), Roodooshoo Fujinshoonen Kyoku, No. 28, 1959, p. 43.

the daily items of laundry and rushes to hang them out on the bamboo poles for fear the clouds might turn into rain. She even takes a few items from the closet to hang outside to prevent them from getting moldy, but she leaves the heavy quilts for a sunnier day. Although it is cool she opens the sliding glass doors to air out the house and begins her cleaning. By now her baby has fallen to sleep and she is pleased to relieve her back by laying him down for his morning nap. She fluffs the dust off the windows and sliding panels, sweeps the tatami mats and the wooden floor, gets down on hands and knees to pursue every speck of dust with concerted determination, and sweeps the path outside the house leaving fresh broom marks in the dust.

By the time she finishes her cleaning, the errand boys from the canned-goods shop and the fish store, along with the errand girl from the fruit and vegetable store will have taken her orders and delivered their goods, the milk man will have brought the half pint of milk for the morning, the ice man will have brought ice for the small ice box, and she will have turned away the errand boy from the butcher shop explaining that she didn't need anything. She catches a brief glimpse of the morning paper which the husband read so leisurely at breakfast, and by the time the baby wakes up she has only a few minutes to play with him before going down the street, baby on back, for two or three items at shops which do not send errand boys. While shopping she stops to chat with a few neighbor ladies and hear the morning gossip.

She returns home and prepares a small lunch for herself and the baby and, after cleaning up the dishes, rests and plays with the baby a few minutes while awaiting the return of the older children. She greets the youngest at the door, but as she is busy with the baby, she responds to her older child's announcement of his arrival by yelling her greeting from the kitchen. Both older children join the mother sitting around the kotatsu to relate their school exploits for the day, a conversation that is frequently interrupted by the baby who has awakened from his afternoon nap. By the time the older children are through with their snack and a half hour of studying they are off to play, but only after the mother extracts a solemn promise that they will complete their homework immediately after supper. She digs a few weeds from the garden, brings in some flowers and puts them in a vase, sews a few rags into a dish rag, but postpones the other jobs like sewing her daughter's skirt, pickling radishes, pasting paper on the torn spots in the sliding panel, and running a few errands.

Her afternoon half pint of milk is delivered, but she must go out for the rest of the shopping herself. About five o'clock she rushes out, baby

on back and basket under arm, to do her evening shopping for bread, crackers, seaweed, bean curd, and spices, but she resists the temptation to talk with her friends in order to get back and prepare supper before the children start nagging. By giving the children a few extra snacks she manages to keep them from starting to eat before the father's usual arrival time, but when he is late, she allows the children to eat first. While waiting for the father, she fills the bathtub and lights the gas fire to heat the water. Since the food requires no heating, she serves her husband his food as soon as he arrives and sits down to chat with the children. She eats with the father and chats with him as the children resume their studying, occasionally answering some questions which the children bring while the husband catches a few glances at the evening paper.

She interrupts washing the dishes to turn off the gas under the bath and give the bath water a few quick stirs. She announces that the bath water is ready, and the children, who by this time have completed their homework and are sitting talking with the father, in turn take their baths. After finishing the dishes, cleaning the table, and sweeping the floor, she gets out the bedding and lies down a few minutes alongside the children to wish them a good night. While the husband is reading the evening paper, playing with the baby, taking his bath, and watching TV, she lays out the children's clothes for the next day, shines the shoes, closes the wooden doors, puts the baby to bed, and takes her own bath. Unlike her country cousin who must stay up a half hour or so after everyone else retires in order to complete her work, the modern wife of the salary man retires with her husband.

The daily schedule is more demanding in the winter because of the problem of getting the fires going. Otherwise, except for the extra work at times of examination, the annual New Year's cleaning, the display and storage of various dolls for the different festivals, the more frequent airing of clothing and bedding in the damp season, and the assistance she gets from her daughters during vacation, her schedule is much the same in one season as the next.

A wife with small children usually has no time to watch TV or read magazines or books that are not connected with the children's schoolwork. Once all the children are in school, however, her work is sharply reduced, and though she then spends more time visiting with neighbors, reading, attending PTA meetings, and pursuing the housewifely arts, she often finds it difficult to adjust to the sudden increase of free time.

Housework:
Inglorious and Glorious

When Americans hear about the daily life of the Japanese woman, centered so completely on the home, they are inclined to assume that the Japanese wife is discontented with her restricted life. This may accurately reflect the attitude of middle-class American women, who are "cooped up in the home," but not that of Mamachi women. Few Mamachi women are aware of any conflict between home and work or between home and personal enjoyment. The Mamachi wife is pleased that in comparison with poorer families she is able to devote herself to her home and family. She does not aspire to escape the home but to obtain a better and fuller life within the home, and the women she hopes to emulate are those who can enjoy and ably manage their activities in the home.^[6]

A small percentage of Japanese women are now being trained in specialties which they hope to continue after marriage, but most Mamachi wives do not consider it possible or even desirable to find outside work after marriage. The number of girls attending college is relatively small^[7] and high-school and college education of women is primarily focused on training which would not be useful for a vocation. Even those who attend college frequently attend private junior colleges for girls only, and even those who attend more famous universities often major in household management. In contrast to American women who feel frustrated in not being able to continue activities for which they were prepared in college, the young Japanese wife does not have to experience a discontinuity between a

[6] In a national sampling of 1863 Japanese women in 1959 only 38 percent go out for anything beyond neighborhood-shopping more than twice a month, and the most common activity for going beyond the neighborhood is still shopping. Yet in answer to the question of what you would like to do if you had more free time, 32 percent said there was nothing that they particularly hoped to do, 26 percent said sewing, 8 percent would take in work, 7 percent reading, 4 percent children's education, 4 percent flower-arranging or tea ceremony, 3 percent cooking, 2 percent rest, 2 percent movies, 1 percent newspapers, 1 percent women's club activities; 16 percent gave other replies, but virtually none said go out to work. While these percentages were not confined to salary-men's wives, they reflect the fact that the desire to find other activities within the home are far greater than the desire to find activities outside the home. Ibid., p. 27.

[7] While nearly as many girls attend high school as boys (in 1957, 1,275,931 girls were in attendance compared to 1,621,718 boys), fewer girls attend universities. The ratio of girls to boys attending colleges in 1957 was 1 to 4.5 (115,600 to 521,991 but the ratio is 1 to 7 when junior colleges are excluded from the calculation of colleges (71,152 to 493,302) Fujin no Genjoo (The Status of Women), Roodooshoo Fujinshoonen Kyoku, No. 44, 1959.

broad range of social activities before marriage and a limited range of social activities after marriage and the birth of children. While most American parents make little effort to limit their daughter's range of social activities before marriage for fear it might make them discontented after marriage, Mamachi mothers are aware of this problem, and try to restrict their daughters' activities so they will not be disappointed after marriage. A young man and his parents want a girl who has not had too broad experiences for precisely this reason. Even well-educated men attending the best coeducational universities often do not want to marry girls who attend the same university or who have traveled abroad because they might be discontented with the life of a mother and housewife.

Despite increased opportunities for girls to move freely on their own, social circles in Japan are sufficiently restricted so that most Mamachi parents have been able, with effort, to meet the challenge of restricting their daughters' freedom. The young Japanese wife is faced, not with contraction of her social activities upon marriage, but with a move from one narrow group to another narrow group. While this change causes her to feel lonely, it does not make her dissatisfied with her new role but rather encourages her to devote herself to her home and the rearing of a family.

To the extent that Mamachi women are satisfied with their lot in life, it is partly because of the romanticization of the horrors of the life of the Japanese woman in the past. If an old lady is asked about her experience as a wife or the life of her mother, one hears a story of difficulties, often mitigated with special qualifications: in her case, the husband was kind and it was not so bad; or in her case, the mother-in-law was kind; or she herself was strong-willed. Yet when one asks a general question, such as how was the life of a young wife a generation or two ago, one almost invariably hears a stereotyped story filled with suffering. For example, when the family sat around the hearth to eat, the young housewife sat on the side where the smoke blew, but often she was too busy waiting on the family to sit at all. She ate in snatches or when others were through, and then immediately set to work again, cleaning up and preparing for the next meal. She was the first up in the morning, the last to bed at night, and always at the service of her family. Not only did

she wait on the men, but on her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law.^[8] Stories of a young wife proving herself or suffering abuse if she failed are filled with pathos. The image of the newly married housewife in a strange home, exhausted from long hours of work, fighting to keep herself awake while lying in bed in the early hours of the morning to make sure she would be awake when it was time to prepare breakfast, is an image which still pulls the heart strings of the Mamachi resident.

On the basis of present stories it is difficult to hazard a guess as to how bad conditions actually were, except that the discrepancy between concrete stories and the generally romanticized stereotype suggests that at a minimum the stereotype is overstated. But regardless of the truth of the past, the image of the horrors of yesteryear is used by Mamachi wives as a basis of comparing their lot and in considering themselves fortunate.

Yet most of them do not consider their life a bed of roses. Some even resent their husbands having such good times, spending so much of the family money, or not providing more for the home and the children. But the path to better their position is not seen as going outside the home, but getting the husband to provide more for the home. While most Mamachi wives are not dissatisfied with staying at home, they are dissatisfied with laborious and dirty tasks of housework and do want to have more time free to enjoy their children and their own pleasures. Although traditionally a wife was supposed to take pride in her sacrifice and hard work, the Mamachi wife no longer considers it admirable or even necessary to carry coal to build wooden fires by hand, to cook rice in traditional pots, or to wash laundry by hand outside in cold weather. She would much rather use new electrical equipment and have time to spend reading, caring for the children, sewing, or cultivating the housewifely arts.

Electric machines are desired for their utility and because their newness imparts elegance to the housewife's life. Yet there is an

[8] Westerners usually think of traditional Japan as a land of female servitude. To the extent that the image is correct at all, it would be more accurate to say that it was a land of servitude of the young wife. An older wife, particularly the traditional mother-in-law, could hardly be described as servile.

even more important kind of elegance which is based on the art, not the mechanics, of the housewife's role. Housewifely arts like flower-arranging and tea ceremony originally required so much time and training to perform properly that only the wealthiest wives could aspire to such heights. Now such arts are within the reach of the average salary-man's wife, and it is to this elegance that Mamachi women aspire.

Nearly all Mamachi wives have had lessons in some housewifely arts. If they have not learned the tea ceremony and flower arrangement, they have learned knitting, Western- and Japanese-style sewing, crocheting, food-cutting and -arranging, or, more recently, Western-style cooking. They sometimes learn calligraphy, painting, or sketching. These talents are intimately connected with the housewife's role, and many girls spend two or three years after high school learning them rather than attending college, somewhat like the more limited number of American girls who attend finishing school. It is difficult for a young housewife to continue these lessons with small children but, once the children are in school, many form groups to attend special classes. There is an almost limitless variety in techniques of such skills as tea ceremony and flower arrangement. Many wives who have studied such arts for years will say modestly but sincerely that they are mere beginners. The acquisition and improvement of these skills is often a life-long goal which never ceases to be a source of inspiration.

The housewifely arts have had an enormous influence, not only on how the specific acts are performed, but on many other household activities. Those who have learned tea ceremony often serve guests with the grace and care of the tea ceremony, and those who have learned flower arrangement not only arrange their flowers and branches, but prepare and arrange food and dishes with the same eye to aesthetics. Those who have not had formal lessons are influenced by the style of those who have. It is this style which lends a touch of dignity to the housewife's role which is rarely found, for example, in the United States. The housewife's aspirations are found by perfecting the housewife role, not by escaping it.

The wife's aspirations are contained by the sharp division of labor just as the husband's aspirations are contained by membership in

the large firm. Just as the man has a limited optimism about the opportunities within his firm but does not expect to leave the firm, so the wife has a limited optimism that she can expect somewhat greater comforts for self-fulfillment within her role as housewife.

Chapter X—
Authority in the Family

The Tradition of "Male Dominance"

In the official ideology of "traditional Japan," the wife not only obeyed her husband, but showed that she enjoyed obeying him. According to traditional guidebooks on women's behavior, a woman's pleasure and freedom came not from asserting her independence, but from learning to want to do what she was required to do. She had no conception of rights, only of duties, and the only way to change her life was by attuning her character to the position she was expected to occupy.

However, when one asks concrete questions in Mamachi about a person's own parents and grandparents, one is often told that in their case the stereotype was not nearly so absolute, that the woman in fact had considerable say in how the house was run. In practice as well as in theory, the woman did show respect to her husband in public, but not necessarily at home. Even in traditional Japan, the husband often took little part in directing household affairs, and if the wife was supervised, it was usually by the mother-in-law rather than the husband. Even a generation ago, there was often a sizeable gap between the "beautiful virtue" of absolute obedience and actual practice.

Although the male dominance never approached the ideal, unquestionably male dominance has declined. As the popular saying goes, "since the war, stockings and women have grown stronger." Even the traditional saying, "fushoo fuzui," ("when the husband calls out, the wife jumps," the same pronunciation "fu" meaning either man or woman) is now sometimes interpreted by punsters as meaning "The wife sings out and the husband jumps." Others jokingly comment that even husbands who give orders to their wives

in public now apologize to their wives when they return home. While the power of the Japanese woman within the family has unquestionably increased with the growth of democratic ideology and women's political rights, these jokes, like wartime American cartoons showing rich ladies rushing to obey their maids, should not be taken to mean that the power balance has completely changed.

The contemporary Mamachi wife does have more freedom and power than the wife a generation ago. Because she receives the largest portion of the husband's regular salary without daily pleading, she controls the family budget. With new electrical equipment she has free time to use as she wishes. The increased possibilities open to her in shopping, in outside activities, and in friendships have broadened her range of personal choice. Because the Mamachi wife has no commitments outside the household, and is usually free of direction from her mother-in-law and other relatives, she has effective control over her own sphere of activities.

Maintenance of Decentralized Authority

Farmers, small shopkeepers, and even independent professionals do not have a sharp separation between family activities and business activities. Since the father conducts his business in the home and the wife helps him in his work, she is constantly subjected to his authority. In those homes the father's centralized authority remains effective even though it is increasingly resented.

In the Mamachi salaried family, however, authority is decentralized, with the wife managing the home and the husband managing his work and recreation. In general, this principle of separate spheres of authority has been highly successful in maintaining harmony and satisfying the desires of both husband and wife.

The husband's sphere presents no problem. The wife knows little about the husband's work and therefore has virtually no opportunity to exert influence over his activities, nor does she have to help him with his work.

There is, however, a problem in the wife's maintaining authority over her sphere. As the husband has more free time to spend at home, and as the relative isolation of the nuclear family from relatives permits a closer relationship between husband and wife, the

wife has more difficulty retaining exclusive power over the household. The impact of democratic ideals has raised her status in relation to her husband's, but, paradoxically, by encouraging the husband's participation in the home, she restricts her own sphere of free activity. The husband still has more authority than the wife, and while he must also be sensitive to her wishes and may try to refrain from giving her orders at home, he finds it hard to avoid it entirely. And as much as the wife wants to please her husband by being gentle and obedient, she resents her husband's interference. The Mamachi wife's real concern about power is not about women's rights in political and economic affairs, or even equality within the home, but about protecting her right to manage the household without the husband's interference.

Major family issues, like the children's schooling and choice of marital partner, usually pose no jurisdictional difficulties. Such issues are considered legitimate concerns of both husband and wife, and discussions begin before either has a firm opinion and continue until a consensus is achieved. A couple may passionately disagree on the content of these issues, but there is no disagreement about the process of reaching a decision.

Often the minor issues lead to serious marital disagreements because they most clearly raise the question of who has the authority to make household decisions. Even minor queries from the husband about the method of food preparation or about the allocation of money for children's clothes can arouse a wife to a vigorous defense of her autonomy.

Eventually, if the trend toward husband-wife closeness and mutual understanding increases, it might be possible to arrive at a new principle of allocation of authority: the co-operative sharing of decisions on issues now resolved separately by either husband or wife. Such a principle, however, would require much more intimacy and mutual discussion than now exists in most Mamachi families, and a conviction on the part of the wives that they can achieve as much by open expressions of opinion as they can by subtle manipulations. This seems unlikely in the near future because Mamachi families solidly dislike extended mutual exploration of emotion, particularly the more primitive sentiments of love and hate, and consider it best for each to control his feelings and to limit his

expression of personal demands. The principle of shared authority may be possible at some time in the future, but, at present, the families' efforts are directed at maintaining the principle of decentralized authority. The wife in particular has developed subtle means of preserving her autonomy. If, for example, the husband raises questions about her household methods, she is likely to act so surprised by his intrusion that she must pause and think for a minute. Then she gives either a noncommital answer that indicates she does not quite understand the question, or a brief factual answer. In either case her reply is polite but rather stiff so that the husband does not feel comfortable in probing further. She prefers to avoid questions altogether, and to this end she practises concealment and evasion. Just as the husband does not inform his wife about his work, so she omits many details of household events in their conversations. She values preserving a desired type of relationship with her husband more than reporting carefully on household affairs. Most wives would even prefer that their husbands not give any help, rather than risk raising questions that might threaten their autonomy.

A good illustration of wifely technique of putting aside hesokurigane (literally navel money, i.e., secret savings) to preserve independent management of household finances is the case of one clever wife who decided that sizeable house repairs were necessary and in due time broached the subject to her husband. When he learned the estimated cost, he said it was too high and they could not afford the repairs. When the wife wondered what he would consider a reasonable price, he announced his estimate. A few days later the wife happily reported that she had found a place which would do the repairs for slightly lower than the husband's estimate, and he consented to the work. In fact, the wife had not found a cheaper firm, but she had been saving regularly in a private account and used her own money to make up the difference between her husband's figures and the cost of repairs.

The husband's increasing participation in home life does constitute a threat to decentralization of authority and requires the wife to use such clever techniques to prevent interference. The wife's eternal vigilance in preventing the husband's intrusions and his conscious restraint in expressing views about problems of household management are the price of her autonomy in the home.

The Nature and Exercise of the Husband's Authority

The fact that the husband's status is superior to his wife's is reflected in a variety of ways. Although he may call her by her first name, it is not proper for her to reciprocate but she may call him anata (a term used between spouses), or a term indicating parenthood, like otoochan (father).^[1] A group of Mamachi mothers went into gales of laughter when talking about an American wife calling her husband's name from across the room and the husband calmly responding to her call. They explained that a Japanese wife would neither use her husband's first name nor call across a room to him, although a Japanese man could do both. When the husband arrives home, he expects and receives the family's attention. His wife and children hustle about getting his pipe and paper and if he wants anything else they are prepared to fetch and carry for him. If he wants an evening in town at the movies or at a bar, this is his privilege. But it is not a privilege which extends to the wife. Today both husband and wife laugh at the old tradition of a woman walking three paces behind the man, but in public women still defer to men. In mixed gatherings a woman speaks when spoken to, and then she often simply agrees with others rather than adding ideas or opinions of her own. When guests visit, the wife is more of a servant than a hostess. Of course the wife's deference and demeanor do not mean that she submits to all her husband's whims, but in a showdown, if the husband is insistent, the wife yields.

The average husband is most likely to express his arbitrary authority on matters of his personal pleasure or his wife's handling of the children. He is quick to anger if his comforts are not properly attended to at home and, lacking a clear conception of the work involved in housekeeping, he may become furious if the wife seems to spend more time cleaning or caring for the small children than attending to his pleasures. At the same time he wants the children to receive adequate maternal attention, and if a favorite child complains to the father that the mother has been harsh or that she was

[1] Cf. Takashi Koyama, Gendai Kazoku no Kenkyuu (An Investigation of the Contemporary Family), Tokyo: Koobundoo, 1960. The fact that differences in kinship terminology continue to reflect differences in relationships is indicated by the fact that more modern than traditional couples use first names and Western terms like "papa" and "mama."

not home when the child returned from school, the father is likely to explode and demand that the wife provide proper care for the children. Often he lays down the rules which the mother must enforce concerning the children's discipline, their friends, and their social functions. On such matters, and sometimes even on various idiosyncratic matters, he can express his rights even if the rest of the family considers him arbitrary. Although they may not be aware of how much he must yield to his superiors at work, some wives have suspected that the husband's arbitrary outbursts might have more to do with problems in the office than with problems at home.

Since the husband's superior authority is no longer supported by the democratic ideals espoused by many husbands and wives, it is noteworthy that she accords him so much prestige and so many privileges. What most wives fear in their husband is not some kind of ultimate sanction like cruelty or divorce but his more immediate flashes of anger. Few wives have experienced physical violence, but since men are considered by nature more volatile, more explosive, and less able to endure hardships and sacrifices than women, wives feel they must be cautious not to arouse this anger. Aside from the fear of the husband's explosions, the continued subservience of the wife is undoubtedly related to the lack of alternatives for her in case of divorce or separation. But it is not simply the economic dependence of the woman on her husband, as emphasized by Marx and Engels, that gives the husband superior authority; it is the lack of socially acceptable alternatives that makes her more dependent on him than vice versa. Even if the wife is not consciously aware of these ultimate sanctions, they do serve to support the customs which give the husband his superior authority.

Despite his occasional explosions and more frequent dogmatic pronouncements, the typical husband thinks of himself as considerate and most of the time he is. While he wants to be sufficiently forceful to command the respect of his family, generally he is genuinely fond of his wife and children and wants to enjoy their love and admiration. He feels unhappy if his children regard him as frightening and he tries, not always successfully, to overcome their fears. Not only does the husband want to behave as a kindly father and husband, but he also feels sympathetic and sometimes

even guilty about the sacrifices they make for his pleasures. It is precisely his sympathetic human feeling toward his wife and children and his desire to be liked by them which constitute the most effective curbs on the arbitrary exercise of his authority. Many a salary man is slow to demand what he considers his rights, out of consideration for the family's conveniences.

The Art of Husband Management

Because the husband is accorded a superior position, he can be direct in stating his wishes. Wives can be direct in stating their children's needs and basic household requirements, but most are reluctant in stating their own personal desires. However, some modern young wives enjoy frank discourse with their husbands, and in some older families the woman runs the household either because she has higher social status or stronger temperament.

Still, most Mamachi wives attain their wishes by subtle strategy rather than open request. The strategy is not always conscious, for in many ways a woman deals with her husband as she deals with anyone: by keeping a harmonious relationship and avoiding any show of unpleasantness. But this often requires such planning that it takes on the quality of an art—the art of husband management.

The Mamachi wife's arts for managing the husband are similar to those of an experienced American secretary in dealing with her boss. She studies his character and knows his moods. She knows when he must be left alone, when he can be humored, when she can take advantage of his "good days." She knows what issues she can decide on her own, what issues she can discuss openly, what issues she can discuss providing she hides certain facts and exaggenerates others. In face of his anger, she knows how to plead innocence or misunderstanding and how to lighten the anger by criticizing her own stupidity, ignorance, or inattentiveness, or by simply waiting until the anger has dissipated.

But the Mamachi wife works much harder to please her husband than a secretary does to please her superior, and in some ways she treats her husband as her eldest child. As in dealing with her child, she tries to keep him continuously happy and satisfied, because then he will respond automatically to her wishes.

A young bride searches out every little indication and listens

carefully to every phrase to discover what things please her husband. She tries to avoid any direct criticism of his behavior and any assaults on his masculine ego. At most, within the hearing of her own husband she might give him a hint indirectly by complimenting another wife on something that wife's husband had done. If the husband presents a view as fact, she will not offer contrary evidence even if she is convinced he is wrong. When she wants something, she makes vague suggestions that appeal to his desires rather than to logic or her own desires. If she wants an item for the home, she is not likely to talk about its use or cost, but about how beautiful it would look or how magnificent an important friend thought it was. These hints and vague suggestions do not require the disapproving husband to make a definite refusal, a refusal that might be embarrassing for him to change later.

Yet, many a wife who is reserved and self-effacing is amazingly persistent over time, continuing to find new examples, or new authorities, or new ways to point up the advantage of her plan. Some husbands yield not because they have been sold on the advantages or have been taken in by the cleverness of the wife's strategy but because they are not strongly enough convinced of the disadvantages to be able to withstand the wife's persistent efforts.

A persistent campaign may be illustrated by the woman who decided that it was time for their family to have a television set. One day she commented to her husband that a neighbor had just bought a nice-looking Hitachi television set through a dealer friend for only 48,000 yen. A few days later she incidentally told her husband that she had heard of another family who bought a television set at a different place for even less money, but that it did not look quite as nice as the first set. Since the husband still showed no interest, she dropped the topic. But a few nights later she called his attention to an article about a special educational television program being run and she openly wondered whether such programs really helped the children's studying. In the meantime, she and the children talked about how nice it would be if the father would buy a television set and the children began asking him for one. It was not long before the father announced that he had decided it was time to buy a television set.

It is usually difficult for the father to refuse his children directly,

and it is not unusual for a mother to coach a child on how and when to make a request of the father or to stimulate the child's desire so much that he will ask the father for it without the mother's urging.

Not all husband management is positive, for there are times when the wife must cope with ill temper and anger. When a man is critical of his wife she suggests, but does not openly state, her self-sacrifice to the husband by working harder, paying more attention to the husband's desires than usual, heaving an extra sigh or two, or by looking haggard, tired, and harrassed. Other wives respond to anger or criticism with somber quiet, or great surprise and innocence at the husband's criticism, or with self-accusations of inadequacy. Rarely does a Mamachi wife stand up directly against her husband to defend herself.

Some housewives are so skilled at husband management that the household runs smoothly. The husband feels flattered by his wife's hard work and devotion, retains his superior status, and yet the wife is, with proper subtlety, able to manage the household. In other cases, the wife, unable to charm him, deal with his rages, or get permission to buy things she wants, will run to her friends for help in interpreting her husband's behavior or in devising a more suitable strategy.

To some extent the skill is acquired as she gets to know her husband. Although some modern couples try to have frank discussions in their meetings before marriage, these discussions are often theoretical and do not fully cover all the aspects of the couple's actual attitudes. Even today, newly wedded couples often meet only three or four times before their wedding. Some brides try to follow their modern beliefs and express their views openly, but many are still reserved for the first months or even years of marriage until they feel it safe to begin expressing opinions or making personal requests. Some cautiously test their husbands' attitudes by dropping hints or talking about a neighbor family in which the wife has certain privileges or possessions. Many wives, after several years of marriage, recall how frightened and pitiful they were shortly after their wedding, afraid to make any requests, worried that they would not be able to satisfy their husbands. As they become more familiar

with their husbands, prove their faithfulness, and produce a child (particularly a male), they acquire more confidence in their wifely ability.

The art of husband management is essentially an adjustment of the wife to the superior position of the husband. Because household affairs are more important to her and she has less authority than her husband, she spends more time trying to understand him than he does trying to understand her. She acquires more information relevant to the management of the household and spends more time devising plans to achieve her aims. The art of husband management, which is the outgrowth of these efforts, increases the likelihood that her wishes will be realized. It is an art which helps equalize the power of husband and wife without upsetting the superior position of the husband. In some ways, despite her lower status, she has more power over the activities of the home than the middle-class American wife who consults more closely with her husband.

The Mother-in-Law and Daughter-in-Law

Most homes in Mamachi do not include a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law, but if they do, the difficulties between them are almost certain to dominate the family scene. In private conversations and in newspaper columns, the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is commonly recognized as the most serious problem facing the modern family.^[2] Some girls agree to marriage on the condition that the husband make arrangements for his mother to live elsewhere. Some wives have pleaded with their husbands to prevent the mother-in-law from moving in. Some wives and mothers-in-law have tried to adjust to each other, but the arguments have been so vicious that they have been forced to separate. Some wives, who might otherwise be unhappy, console themselves with the thought that at least they do not live with their mothers-in-law. Yet, as much as they both try to avoid living together, the cost of setting up separate households combined with the limited financial resources, the filial feeling toward parents, and the lack of

[2] The common American stereotype is that the Japanese wife is rebelling against her husband, but it would be more accurate to say that the focus of rebellion, if present at all, is not the husband but the mother-in-law.

other satisfactory arrangements for elderly people sometimes leaves no acceptable alternative, especially when the young couple is just getting started or after the mother-in-law is widowed.^[3]

In traditional Japan, the only hope of the daughter-in-law for success was to prove her loyalty to the mother-in-law by learning how to satisfy her every wish. Not only was it virtuous for a young bride to obey her mother-in-law, but it paid off in the long run. Only after proving her devotion could she hope to have the freedom to do things on her own. If she failed badly, she was sent back to her original home in disgrace. Divorces were commonly initiated not by the husband but by the mother-in-law. Some Japanese have observed that in America relations with the mother-in-law are a kigeki (comedy), in Japan a higeki (tragedy).

Compared to the problem of the mother-in-law, the problem of the father-in-law seems almost inconsequential. Because the salary man has no business connection with his father-in-law, there is no serious authority problem between them. The daughter-in-law generally has little problem with her father-in-law because he takes little interest in the home. Often there is a positive attraction between daughter-in-law and father-in-law, which is not entirely dissipated even though it is often dealt with by avoiding any situation where the two of them would be alone. Even when the father-in-law is harsh and demands that the daughter-in-law cater to his wishes, she generally finds this much easier to adjust to than the harassment of the mother-in-law.

Although the wife would prefer to live with her mother than with her mother-in-law, if they live together the husband may have a power struggle with her mother, especially if the wife and mother give each other mutual support in resisting the husband's wishes or in making demands on him.^[4] But the fact that he spends so little time at home restricts the scope of this conflict. Although the wife's mother usually has considerable authority and the wife sometimes

[3] On the average, husbands are about three or four years older than their wives, and women live about five years longer than men. Hence, in the average family, a woman lives about eight or nine years as a widow. During this time she is likely to live at the home of one of her children.

[4] In two or three families where the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law got along relatively well, they likewise gave each other mutual support and sympathy in trying to get the husband to be more diligent in fulfilling family responsibilities.

resents being dominated, the positive feelings between mother and daughter are strong enough to bind their negative feelings. Especially if the wife has never lived apart from her mother, she feels dependent on the mother for advice and therefore readily follows her suggestions.

But there is no such positive bond to control the wife's feeling of annoyance with her mother-in-law. If the daughter-in-law does make a serious effort to serve the mother-in-law and is able and loyal, she may at times be treated almost as if she were a daughter instead of a daughter-in-law. But if she is not very competent or comes from a family of lower status than the husband, she may still be treated more like a servant. But even the best relationships are strained, and the strain is likely to be especially severe if the mother-in-law is a widow and lives with her only son.

Unlike the situation in traditional Japan, the critical problem in present-day Mamachi is not the harsh work load required of the daughter-in-law, but the lack of clarity of lines of authority. The mother-in-law has legitimate bases for arguing that the daughter-in-law obey, and the daughter-in-law has legitimate bases for expecting certain privileges. The ideal daughter-in-law is supposed to yield to the mother-in-law, but the ideal mother-in-law should not be harsh with the wife. In contrast to the situation in the United States, where the wife has primary authority, or to the situation in traditional Japan, where the mother-in-law had primary authority, there is no clear guiding principle. The object of the husband's primary loyalty is equally unclear. The answer to the traditional question, "Whom should a husband save if his wife and mother were drowning?" was "His mother" because he could always get another wife. Now the wife and mother are much more on equal grounds in competing for the husband's loyalty, and since there is no clear solution, the situation is one of continuing competition.

Although the mother-in-law occasionally goes out, most of the day both she and the daughter-in-law are at home. The latter generally does the heavy work and the mother-in-law often performs the more complicated tasks of cooking and sewing. But there is no such clear way for dividing up authority. If, for example, the mother-in-law has no income of her own, it is not clear who should decide how much spending money the mother-in-law should have. Since

each typically has few interests outside the home, it is hard for the mother-in-law to refrain completely from supervising her daughter-in-law. The latter, in order to avoid the mother-in-law's disapproval, is cautious about going out of the home, buying things for the home, preparing food, and cleaning the house. Even a mere question from the mother-in-law sometimes makes the wife anxious. It is not only the actual commands of the mother-in-law which create the difficulties but the daughter-in-law's feeling of being unable to run the house as she wishes. As some wives put it, they feel as if they are forced to live with an enemy in their home.

The mother-in-law sometimes acts out her annoyance by being more critical and less willing to let the wife go out to visit friends, attend PTA meetings, or buy clothes for herself. The daughter-in-law may act out her annoyance by following the letter of the law laid down by the mother-in-law while defeating the spirit of the mother-in-law's wishes.

The battleground for the dispute is often the children. The grandmother tries to enforce her wishes on the children and to encourage them to resist their mother. The mother tries to win the children to her side and subtly encourages them to disobey their grandmother.

The wife fortifies herself for the struggle by keeping up with the latest information from newspapers, magazines, and books. She tries to keep up with the modern advice, and in discussions with the grandmother she relies heavily on "modern scientific information" to support her point of view and show that the grandmother is old-fashioned and superstitious. The grandmother typically respects scientific information, but sometimes suspects the daughter-in-law of manufacturing the things which she "read in a recent magazine." The mother-in-law relies on her superior experience and her moral conviction that because the daughter-in-law is joining her family, she should learn the family's custom (kafuu ). The mother-in-law, after all, knows her son's likes and knows what it means to rear children. Many a daughter-in-law, not confident of her own ability to please her husband or handle the children's problems, reluctantly yields to the mother-in-law's experience.

If the husband supports either his mother or his wife against the other, his opinion is decisive, and in one way or another, the wife and mother frequently appeal to him for his support against the

other. The husband, however, ordinarily tries to stay out of the dispute. He tries to play down the seriousness of the dispute, and to encourage each to be more sympathetic to the other. Only when the husband regards the situation as unbearable or judges one side as being particularly unreasonable does he take the initiative in settling the dispute by encouraging his mother to accept modern ways or the wife to be kind to the aged.

The most commonly suggested solution to the conflict between the two women is for both to show reserve, and to contain themselves even when angry. Many advice columns include hints for how the two could adjust to each other, but the crux of the advice is usually another way for humoring the other one or a way for containing one's own feelings of annoyance.

But the problem involves fundamental attitudes and status relationships. Like the Negro in the American South, the daughter-in-law no longer feels compelled to accept a subservient position. But the price of her emerging freedom is a breakdown of the old social order and an uncontrolled competition between her and her mother-in-law. The Mamachi daughter-in-law has not yet been granted complete freedom even in the most modern family, and a stable new order of relationships has not yet been established except for avoidance, a solution which is not always possible.

Chapter XI—
Family Solidarity

The Household Unit

Although the nuclear family has replaced the ie as the basic social unit in Mamachi, loyalty to the family remains strong. One rarely hears of sacrificing for ancestors or descendants, but nothing is more virtuous than sacrificing for parents or children.^[1] It is true that family loyalty is not sentimentalized in talk about "our happy home" or "home sweet home," but this reflects a lack of sentimentality, not an absence of sentiment. Family altars and treasures have declined in importance, but the modern family's photo albums, souvenirs from trips, festival dolls, and the family kotatsu are probably equally meaningful symbols of family solidarity.

Just as the Mamachi resident makes a sharp distinction between friend and stranger, so a large barrier separates family members from outsiders. Outside the home, one must be more formally dressed, more polite, more cautious, and more suspicious. In accord with the well-known proverbs, "If you meet a stranger, regard him as a robber," and "Outside your gate, there are seven enemies," a person is on his guard outside. In the annual bean-sowing ceremony each family scatters beans in its house and yard while repeating the traditional phrase, Fuku wa uchi, oni wa soto (May good fortune stay in and misfortune get out).^[2]

[1] It would be possible to argue that the husband's loyalty to the firm is at least as important as his loyalty to the family. But ordinarily these loyalties do not conflict, and there is certainly no clear-cut primacy of outside loyalty to compare with the samurai ethic which placed loyalty to the lord before loyalty to the family.

[2] In a study of festival practices in Nagano-ken, David Plath noted that while many annual celebrations have declined, the bean-sowing ceremony remains almost universally practiced. While we did not survey the frequency of this ceremony in Mamachi, it is our impression that it is still widespread. One may speculate that inJapan, with tightly-knit groups, there is more of a tendency for splitting objects into good and bad. This would help account for some of the strong in-group feeling and the suspicion of the outside. It would also help explain the great difference in the attitude of a wife toward her mother and her mother-in-law. An analysis of psychological aspects of object-splitting can be found in the work of Melanie Klein.

The home is a haven from the outside world. Aside from relatives and the wife's intimate friends, guests are rarely invited to a home, and if invited they are usually confined to the guest room. Other rooms are reserved for the family, and a spontaneous tour of the house is almost inconceivable. Mamachi residents prefer that their home be unknown to outsiders, and some take comfort in the fact that their house number is difficult to locate without precise directions from the family or the police substation (kooban ). (Houses are not numbered consecutively, and the numbering is based on an area, not on a street. Because numbers were assigned to a plot of land years ago and further divisions have taken place, it is possible for several homes to have the same house number!) Nearly all homes have high fences and many have a watch dog. The gate (mon ) to this outside fence is locked during much of the day and can be opened only from the inside. The gate is left open for errand boys, but they do not enter the house, and visitors remain at the door of the house (genkan ) with their shoes on, until invited to come in.

Within the home, a family member takes his shoes off, stretches out on the tatami mats, and changes to more comfortable robes. In the winter time, everyone sits in the kotatsu, enjoying the warmth of the family circle, both literally and figuratively. Here, under the same quilt, family members eat, read, talk, and watch television. Older children may study while others in the same kotatsu are talking or watching TV, and younger children may lie back and fall asleep with their feet hanging in the kotatsu . Generally, a family with two or three children will sleep in one or two rooms. Though many people explain that this is because Japan is such a poor and crowded country, even families that have more rooms generally have the whole family sleeping in one, two, or at most three rooms, their mats lined up close together, everyone enjoying the comfort of being close together.^[3]

[3] In answer to a sentence-completion question which read, "When the family gets together . . . ," the most common response was that it was yukai (a lot of fun) and nigiyaka (bustling with activity). Both replies have positive connotations indicating that people think of the family as a pleasant and comfortable place.

In relation to the outside, the family feels like, and is viewed as, a single unit. Family members do not ordinarily air their quarrels to any but the most intimate friends who can be relied on not to repeat secrets.^[4] Indeed some caution about inviting guests springs from the fear that family weaknesses might be revealed.^[5] While family members often politely derogate their family to outsiders,^[6] they carefully avoid saying anything that would reveal their family's true weaknesses. After many months of close contact with us, two or three people mentioned some item of disparaging information about a relative; until that time all members had been vague when discussing topics that might have revealed this family weakness. When the family is worried that a child may not get into a specific school, even the other children will try not to reveal to what school he is hoping to be admitted.

Gifts to a family member are regarded as a gift to the entire family. When, for example, my wife gave a gift to a child his mother did not tell him to thank us for the gift. She thanked us directly herself, and later my wife and I were thanked by the husband and the grandfather who lived in the same home. The thank you was not in the form of "Our child enjoyed your present," but "We thank your family for your kindness." Similarly, a child may bring back a memento from a school trip for a family which had done a favor for his parents.

Families rarely go out together, except for occasional Sunday outings to visit relatives, a park, or a department store, but the fact that almost all inns now have a family bath indicates some increase in families visiting inn houses. Perhaps one reason why families do not travel together more frequently is the lack of money and a

[4] One exception is the case of third parties who were informed of internal family problems with the hope of bringing outside pressure on another family member to behave properly. The most common example is the wife who tells a close friend or relative about the husband's failure to meet his responsibilities to his family, hoping that they will try to encourage the husband to mend his ways. Conditions must be had, however, to warrant such a step.

[5] One lady explained that it was unwise to give maids a day off, not because they would get used to too much leisure, but because they might spread family secrets or rumors in talking with others in the community.

[6] For example, a family routinely calls its house its "small dirty house" and among friends a husband may refer to his wife as his gusai (foolish wife). It is even permissible for a husband to illustrate how foolish his wife is, providing this is not really likely to affect the listener's estimate of his family's status.

convenient means of family transportation, that is, the automobile, for wealthy families who have cars do more traveling together. Probably, however, the more important deterrents to family travel are the feeling that someone in the family must always be left as rusuban to protect the house and the feeling that it is easier for a family to relax at home than in public.

As united and relaxed as the family feels at home, it is considered improper for family members, especially husband and wife, to display affection in public. Husbands and wives holding hands or walking arm in arm are still regarded as a bit unseemly. In public, a husband carefully avoids saying anything complimentary to his wife about her cooking, appearance, or cleverness and it is equally inappropriate for the wife to compliment her husband in public. Nor is it polite for husband and wife to talk privately in the presence of guests unless they obviously discuss the care and comfort of the guests. Family solidarity is thus beyond the purview of outsiders. Some young husbands are known by their friends to be madly in love with their wives since they spend most of their free time with them, but even a man's close friends often have only very indirect clues of how fond he is of his wife. This is not because family solidarity is weak, but because in contacts with outside groups, the family wants to display its loyalty to the larger group. Just as whispering is sometimes considered impolite in Western societies because of its exclusiveness, so family members displaying mutual fondness in public are regarded as impolite. It is neither desirable nor necessary to display the inner family solidarity in public.^[7] Like an eagle who hides his claws, the family hides its reserve of solidarity from public scrutiny.

The Basic Alignment:
Mother and Children vs. Father

Within the family, various coalitions unite or divide the members. However, before considering the diadic relationships of husband-wife, grandparent-grandchild, and parent-child (the latter discussed

[7] One may speculate that because of the tight in-group feelings, people are especially sensitive to being excluded. With such sensitivity to feelings of exclusiveness, a cardinal principle of true consideration is to avoid arousing the feeling that another person is an outsider.

in the next chapter), it is necessary to consider a basic pattern of emotional alignments. Internal cleavages are not unique to the Japanese family. To turn the traditional Japanese proverb around, even though brothers are united against the outside, they do quarrel within their gates. It is not always the person of low status who has difficulty gaining acceptance within the group. In the office clique, for example, the boss who senses that his men strain to be polite to him and stop their joking when he arrives, also feels left out. This is precisely the problem of the typical Mamachi father in relation to his family. He is treated in many ways as a high-status guest in the home, a welcome, friendly, and even jovial guest, but one who stands on the periphery of the intimate circle of mother and children.

The linkage of the children and mother and the exclusion of the father is not an entirely fixed and stable pattern. Sometimes family coalition patterns change from day-to-day or year-to-year. At times the father may have a particularly strong relationship with one of the children, and at other times the mother and father may be united against the children. A teen-age daughter may unite with her father to complain about the mother's strictness at the same time she unites with her mother to plot how to get the father to buy more things for the home. But in almost all families we saw or heard about in some detail, the most common emotional cleavage was between the father on the one hand and the mother and children on the other.

One woman, for example, explained that she dislikes Sundays because her husband is home the whole day and consequently she and the children cannot relax. Another woman confessed that it is better for the father to come home a little late and eat supper separately because when he is home the children must be more restrained. They cannot talk, bustle around, and enjoy the supper hour when the father is at home. Another lady who suffers from psychosomatic difficulties has a husband who does some traveling as part of his work; her difficulties become worse when he is stationed at the home office and comes home early every night, and improve when he is away.

The coalition of mother and child is not necessarily hostile to the father. It may mean only that the mother and children share things

which are not shared with the father and that they see themselves as united for common objectives which are different from those of the father. The basic alignment is manifested in many ways: the reserve of the wife and children in the presence of the father, the secrets they keep from him, the plots of the mother and children for dealing with him. The children and the wife are to some extent on perpetual good behavior when the father is present. Like American students with their professor, they may joke and talk freely with their father about many topics, but they may relax more freely and tell other kinds of jokes in his absence.

The cleavage with the father is further reflected in the discussions of allocation of family resources. Since the budget is divided between the husband and the home and the salary is limited and regular, everyone is aware of how much he spends and how much everyone else spends. The consciousness of which expenses are "for father" and "for the rest of the family" is perhaps heightened by the fact that the father's recreational activities are completely separate, and neither the wife nor the children share his pleasures. Among friends, a man is expected to spend freely, as if he had no concerns about money, and membership in a company gang inevitably involves expenses. From the point of view of the wife and children, the important fact is not whether he spends to satisfy his own pleasures or to meet social pressure, but that the more he spends the less they have for their use. The mother spends virtually nothing on herself, but she wants to maximize the amount of money available for the children and home. The cleavage may be smaller if the husband goes out rarely and spends little but larger if he drinks a great deal, frequents company hang-outs, and maintains a girl friend. In either case, however, the mother and children are interested in minimizing the husband's outside expenditures, and children tend to feel that the mother is on their side in wanting to buy them more toys, clothes, or candy if only the father would bring home a larger portion of his pay check.

The cleavage between father and family is accentuated by the amount of time the mother and children spend together without the father. In comparison with the American middle-class mother, the Japanese mother spends more time with the children, the father less time. As one would expect, following Homans, this time dif-

ferential alone would make the children and mother more attached to each other than to the father.^[8] Indeed, the intensity of the father's attachment to his work group makes it difficult for him to have the reserve of energy required for an equally intense involvement in internal family affairs. Because the wife and children center virtually their entire world in the home, they have an intensely close relationship which it is virtually impossible for the father to share.

The father's power also contributes to the emotional distance between him and the rest of the family. Because the wife and children know that the father may become firm or demanding, they are cautious, reserved, and rarely completely at ease in his presence. It is true that the salary man's authority is not so great as the authority of small shopkeepers or others whose wives and children work alongside them. But compared to the United States his power is a compelling force in family life.

Some fathers at times try to break into the mother-daughter coalition. When the children are in bed the father may talk with the mother about her problems and lend a sympathetic ear to her difficulties in dealing with the children. Or he may try to upset the coalition by telling the mother to stop babying the children so much and to make them do things on their own. Or he may respond sympathetically to the children's wishes or their complaints about their mother's treatment of them, thus getting one or more of them aligned with him against the mother. Such solutions are generally temporary. More commonly the father accepts the coalition of mother and children as a fact of life, treats them kindly while keeping his distance, and satisfies himself that they are considerate and look after him. Although the father is sometimes sorry to feel left out and would like to feel closer, at other times he prefers to keep some distance and is pleased that the family does not try to encroach on his life.

Although this coalition of father versus the rest of the family involves strains, it almost never leads to an open rupture for there are

[8] The argument would be consistent with the work of Homans that more interaction increases liking but that authority inhibits liking. See, for example, Henry W. Riecken and George C. Homans, "Psychological Aspects of Social Structure," in Gardner Lindzey, ed., Handbook of Social Psychology, Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1954, pp. 786–832; George C. Homans and David M. Schneider, Marriage, Authority, and Final Causes, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1955.

many satisfactions in the familial system as well as social restraints preventing an open break. Without the family, the father would be lonely. At the barest minimum, it provides him a group where he belongs and can turn to in time of sickness, trouble, and retirement. The family looks after his welfare, sees that he is properly fed and clothed, and properly cares for his belongings. Children run to look after his comfort. He derives stable emotional support from his wife which is not equaled by any of his shorter-term contacts with women outside the home. He derives pleasure from having children and he takes pride in their accomplishments.

The wife and children are less likely to turn to him for emotional support, although they do rely on him for economic support. Furthermore, wives do turn to their husbands for help in making difficult decisions regarding the children, and young children do enjoy their relationship with their father. Older boys commonly look to their father for guidance, and older girls respond to the flirtatious joking with the father and enjoy listening to his exploits as a way of finding out about the outside world.

Part of the reason that the relationship between the father and the rest of the family is so stable despite the distance is that difficulties can be contained without disrupting the basic pattern of relationships. If, as in many modern young couples, the husband and wife desire to be closer, this is possible. But if there are difficulties and the father is disappointed with the mother and the children, he can simply enjoy more of the pleasures of the bars and the company gang and spend less time at home. Similarly, because the wife ordinarily expects to get much of her emotional comfort and support from her children and her intimate friends, she is not so disappointed if she and her husband do not have an intimate relationship.

Because the mother and children are not very dependent on the father for emotional support, they can more easily tolerate separation from him as long as he provides the family with money and assistance in placing the children. In a number of families, the husband's work separated him from his family for several months or even a year or two. Although the husband's absence did cause problems of adjustment for the family, the fact that the emotional mutual dependency was not so great as in the United States made separation easier to tolerate. The mother and children remained to-

gether and the father simply relied more heavily on work associates and visits to the local entertainment quarters.

Even if the wife and children are annoyed at the father for avoiding his family responsibility, they still have enough sympathy for him to contain their feelings. Even if the father is authoritative he generally reveals enough of his need for emotional support that the wife and children genuinely sympathize with him and recognize that he needs humoring, support, and attention.

One important consequence of the mother-child coalition is that it serves to minimize the differences between generations. In many societies with rapid social change, the difference between generations is so great that there is a sharp cleavage between the parents and the children. The common cleavages between father and the rest of the family militate against this generational break because it closely links the children with the mother, a member of the older generation, making them more receptive to her teachings.^[9] Even though Mamachi youth complain about the older generation in general, they are almost invariably sympathetic with their mothers. This close tie to the mother puts an effective damper on what might otherwise lead to more serious ruptures between generations as found, for example, in the cleavages between parents and children of many immigrant groups in American cities.

Husband and Wife:
Increasing Privacy and Intimacy

When the ideals of ie were still strong and the bride belonged to the ie and not to her husband, no great value was placed on the privacy of the married couple. In the evenings, if free time were left after the bride finished her work, while others were awake, it was thought improper for the young couple to leave the family circle and retire to their own room, if, indeed, they had a room of their own. This does not mean that husbands and wives had no affectionate relationship; on the contrary, almost like illicit lovers

[9] It may be argued that the same is true of many business organizations. While peer groups have in recent years increased in power, cliques combining older and younger people still remain important. To the extent that such cliques exist, cleavages based strictly on age differences are less likely to become disruptive. It may be said that cliques linking older and younger members are important for maintaining integration in a society of extremely rapid change.

they sometimes took advantage of moments of privacy. Yet on the whole, although emotional distance between husband and wife remains greater than between couples in America, opportunities for closeness have increased. They have more free time to be home alone now than a generation ago, and even if relatives live in the home, it is accepted as perfectly proper for a couple to have a chance to be alone together. The growth of opportunity for privacy is reflected in the courtship period as well as later during the marriage.

The common pattern of courtship in the previous era was for the families to investigate each other and then introduce the couple at a formal meeting (miai ). If the miai went well, the families would proceed with the arrangements for engagement and marriage, but all arrangements would be handled by the family and go-betweens. The young couple would have no further opportunity to meet until the marriage. When people recount their own family's history, however, a sizeable minority of cases do not fit this pattern, either because there was no official miai , or because the couple or their families had known each other before serious arrangement began, or because the couple was given some opportunity to meet alone before marriage. However, even couples which did not have a miai usually had little opportunity to meet before marriage.

In recent years young people's freedom to meet before marriage has increased. It is now considered proper for a girl to have several dates with a boy between the miai and marriage,^[10] but it is still rare to date without an introduction by a close friend or relative who can provide assurance that the other person comes from a respectable family.

Although Mamachi residents believe that love marriages (renai ) are getting to be the same in Japan as in the United States, the amount of freedom given to young people for dating in Mamachi is still very limited. Not only is high-school age considered too young for dating, but too young for any heterosexual interests. Many private high schools prohibit girls from wearing make-up, having permanents, or being on streets with boys. In psychoanalytic terms,

[10] For some statistical information on the frequence of miai (arranged marriage) as opposed to renai (love marriages), cf. Ezra F. Vogel, "The Go-Between in a Developing Society: The Case of the Japanese Marriage Arranger," Human Organization , 1961, 20:112–120.

the Mamachi adolescent in his late teens has not yet resolved his Oedipal attachment to his parents and does not have a reservoir of unattached emotional energy available for falling in love with the first object he sees. As one girl put it, as much as she wants to date and form love relationships, she simply could not imagine the pleasure of suddenly just throwing herself into some boy's arms.

Parents implicitly encourage this caution because they feel it dangerous to give young people the opportunity to form love relationships without a solid objective basis in terms of social position, family background, education, and expected future life. Once there is this solid basis, however, it is considered desirable for love to proceed rapidly and for the marriage to be concluded within a few months, because a long courtship can lead to doubts and faultfinding which would interfere with eventual happiness. Besides, the extent of involvement would make it difficult to form a new relationship if the present one were terminated.

In their dating, young people now look for qualities compatible with personal companionship as well as objective qualities of family status, earning capacity of the husband, general good character, reliability, and health. Ambitious girls bent on a career are suspect by most young men. As one young college man said: "We want wives who are smart so that they can understand us, but not too smart." In a previous era, it was considered desirable for a man to marry a naïve, innocent, eighteen- or nineteen-year-old girl. It was thought that by taking such a bride, it would be much easier for the wife to adjust to marriage because she would not have developed hopes which would later lead to disappointment.^[11] Young men nowadays complain that such a bride would be too limiting because she would know so little about the world that it would be impossible to talk with her. The new ideal bride should know enough to converse intelligently with her husband, but not enough to have ambitions for herself that might interfere with marital happiness.

Before marriage, young couples make a determined effort to sound

[11] A girl is expected to be more receptive to her family's wishes than a boy, and evidence from projective tests given in rural Japan bears this out. Hiroshi Wagatsuma and George De Vos, "Attitudes toward Arranged Marriage in Rural Japan," Human Organization , 1962, 21:187–200.

out the views of the partner. Because opportunities for dating are limited, each date takes on great significance. Casual dating with no consideration of marriage is almost unthinkable for a respectable young lady. On dates, most young people try earnestly to set forth their entire philosophy of life, their views about family relations in the modern age, their ambitions and goals, their interests in reading and music. These talks are usually held apart from the families, at a restaurant, a movie, play, or concert.

In the first year of marriage, before children are born, the newly married couple typically continues to go out occasionally. Many girls, however, in dating or early marriage still feel it wise to be reserved in expressing their opinions because they expect to learn and acquire their husband's opinions. Traditionally, the new bride never expressed her own views, fearing that they might not agree with the opinions of her husband's family. She listened to the conversations at her new home and, if she expressed an opinion at all, it would be in agreement with the family. Even today, the Mamachi wife does not feel as well-informed as her husband, and she is reluctant to state her opinion. Between her ignorance of the outside world and the husband's disinterest in the details of her daily life, there are not as many topics of conversation as in many American families.

Paradoxically, although discussion of children is one of the topics about which man and wife talk most enthusiastically, the arrival of children in some ways creates a greater distance in husband-wife relations.^[12] After the baby arrives, the mother devotes herself so completely to the child, that she sometimes neglects the husband. The husband often begins devoting himself more completely to his firm and the company gang. If he comes home late, the Mamachi wife, tired from caring for the baby and more independent than the traditional wife, does not feel she must wait up to talk with the husband. Small children generally take naps in the afternoon and then stay up until almost the time when the parents go to bed so

[12] Although this same tendency is found in American families, it seems more pronounced in Mamachi where the mother devotes herself so completely to the children. Cf. Robert O. Blood and Donald Wolfe, Husbands and Wife , Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1960.

that even if the husband comes home early, the couple has only a few minutes to talk privately in the evening.

The interference of the small child in the privacy of the parents is perhaps best symbolized by the sleeping arrangements and the difficulty this creates for sexual relations between husband and wife. A small baby commonly sleeps between the father and the mother, on the same mat as the mother, while the father sleeps on the next mat. If children are born with no more than two or three years between them, the chances are that at least one child will be sleeping immediately next to the parents from the time the oldest was born until the youngest is several years of age. Compared to American couples, Mamachi couples have intercourse less frequently, and have less fore play and after play. The smaller role of sexual activity in the Mamachi marriage, and the fact that many couples have sexual relations after sleeping for a short period of time, would appear related to the couple's relative lack of privacy and intimacy.^[13]

[13] A comparison of Shinozaki's Japanese sample of 635 persons in and near Tokyo in 1950 with the data from Kinsey's studies, completed in 1949, point up some of these contrasts in sexual behavior. Nobuo Shinozaki, "Report on Sexual Life of Japanese," No. 11, The Institute of Population Problems, Welfare Ministry, Tokyo, Japan, July 1957. Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, Paul H. Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female , Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1953. In the Japanese sample, 29 percent have intercourse after a brief period of sleep. Although the age groupings on frequency of sexual intercourse of married couples are not precisely the same, the following chart indicates the trend of the difference (Shinozaki, p. 16; Kinsey, p. 77);

In the Japanese sample, 39.9 percent reported no fore play and after play connected with intercourse. In sharp contrast, all of the American sample reported fore play. In the American sample, 99.4 percent reported kissing, and more than 90 percent reported genital stimulation of male and female and breast stimulation of thefemale. Even the 60 percent of Japanese who did engage in fore play averaged less time than the American sample (Kinsey, p. 364; Shinozaki, pp. 20 f.):

The deep repressions of sexual desire before marriage make it difficult for most young wives to enjoy sexual activity soon after marriage.^[14] Most middle-aged ladies say they were completely ignorant about sex until the day of marriage when their mother or the marriage go-between gave them a brief explanation, and perhaps a picture or two illustrating sexual activity. Many recall vividly the rude shock they felt the first time they experienced sexual relations, and they remember having regarded sexual activity as an unpleasant part of their duties in satisfying the wishes of their husband. Before prostitution was abolished in 1958, a sizeable number of wives favored the continuance of legalized prostitution, on the grounds that their husbands needed some outlets and that they would be less demanding at home if they had an outside outlet. Some of the middle-aged women who feared sexual relations in their earlier days of marriage, now admit enjoying it. Younger wives have the benefit of sex education in schools, have much more opportunity to become affectionate with their husbands either before or shortly after marriage, and have begun to enjoy sexual activity earlier in their marriage. But newly wedded women still do have difficulty overcoming their repression of sexual interests, and it is still con-

[14] The following is the stage at which wives first had feelings of satisfaction in intercourse (Shinozaki, op. cit., p. 23; in percent):

sidered somewhat embarrassing for a young wife to admit to her friends that she enjoys sexual activity.

The Mamachi salary-man's wife, being tied to the home and the children, has neither the interest nor the opportunity to engage in extramarital affairs.^[15] Traditionally, it was expected that before marriage a young man would visit a house of prostitution so he would know how to take the lead in sexual relations with his wife. The man, being older, more worldly, and more experienced at the time of marriage, did not suffer from the same sexual inhibitions as his wife. Although increasingly the young salary man's first sexual experience is with his wife, he still tends to be less inhibited toward sexual pleasures than she.

Although the problems of overcoming the wife's reluctance and of having privacy once children are born inhibit sexual intimacy between husband and wife, fear of pregnancy does not. Couples are increasingly using contraceptives,^[16] and others have no compunctions about using abortion should the wife become impregnated. Because of the widespread acceptance of contraceptive and abortion, there is no need to resort to abstinence as a means of birth control.

Despite the wife's inhibitions and the distance created by the birth of a child, the husband-wife relationship has attained a degree of privacy and intimacy unequaled by any relationship between the husband and other women. Even if the husband has friends among bar girls or office girls, they supplement the husband-wife relationship instead of replacing it. The relationship with the wife is viewed as permanent, and relationships with other women as temporary. The man ordinarily expects that a girl at the office will work there only a few years and will then leave to get married herself; and the relationship with bar girls is generally not an exclusive one. The bar girl is expected to wait on many people and carry on conversations with many men. Although she tries to encourage

[15] This accords with Shinozaki's findings. "As regards wives, almost no one has the experience of intercourse with men other than their consorts except women who have remarried." Shinozaki, op. cit., p. 26.

[16] A Mainichi survey found that 48.8 percent of salary men now use contraceptives, compared to 31 percent of farmers or fishermen, 34.7 percent of laborers, 37.1 percent of workers in factories and business establishments, and 48.9 percent of independent entrepreneurs.

steady customers, she must avoid getting so preoccupied with any one person that this interferes with taking care of other customers. The man also often regularly visits several bar girls, and even if he does not have several at one time, he changes from one to another. In some ways the bar girl's relationship with a man is hardly even a personal relationship. She takes little interest in him personally, and the pressures of her job set sharp limits on the intimacy she can have with any one person.

Although at times the husband may prefer the bar girl's worldliness, charm, and flattery to his wife's pressures and demands, the bar girl, typically, has a lower-class background and neither understands nor shares his fundamental attitudes in the same way his wife does. Although the husband may turn to a bar girl for entertainment and sympathy after his daily work, in any real difficulty he turns to his wife because her loyalty to him is much deeper than any bar girl's.

What a husband looks for from a bar girl or office girl is the attention, the charm, and the pleasure, the fun without the responsibility. Though the wife can provide some charm and attention, she is so concerned about the home and so preoccupied with the children, that she cannot give her husband the relaxed joking that permits him to escape his worries. To the contrary, the typical wife is always using her techniques to get the husband to bring home more money for her and the children. Because the wife can do little to increase the income of the home except by coaxing the husband, she tends to concentrate her pressure on him. Finally she has difficulty completely relaxing with her husband because he has superior authority, and because he does not fully share the intricacies of her world. For this reason and because the wife often exerts subtle pressures to get him to accept more responsibilities at home and because he is aware of the inconveniences he causes her, the husband is not always completely comfortable at home. If a man wants fun without responsibilities, he can get it from bar girls, but he ordinarily does not expect it from his wife.

The search for fun without responsibility may at times lead to intensive even though temporary attachments. Because these affect the relationship with the wife, and because they may affect how completely the husband fulfills his responsibilities to her, the wife

is usually upset by strong outside attachments. The husband-wife relationship is sufficiently close so that the wife is sensitive to slight changes in the husband's moods, and, to some extent, she feels she has failed if the husband's relationship with an outside woman becomes too close. Yet the husband's and wife's spheres are sufficiently separate that the husband may derive some pleasures from relationships with outside women without fearing their interference. The husband's relationship with other women need not have any effect on the wife's limited social sphere. Because they rarely go out together and because their friends are separate, it is possible for the husband to have affairs with bar girls or office girls without this having a direct effect on the wife's social activities. As long as the husband is meeting his responsibilities at home, the wife usually tries to overlook his activities away from home.

Coalitions with Grandparents

Although most salaried households include only parents and children, many homes did at one time, or will later, include relatives, and many other families have relatives next door or within the immediate neighborhood.^[17]

Perhaps the most common coalition pattern in homes with grandparents is for grandparents to have close positive affectional ties with grandchildren. They commonly spend a lot of time playing with children and are sympathetic with them against the strictures of the parents. But this relationship tends to be limited to the affectional sphere. The grandchild often bathes with the grandparent,

[17] The rate of doubling is still much higher than, for example, in the United States. According to Japanese national statistics, in large cities 73.3 percent of the households are either single-person households or nuclear families, compared to 56.7 percent of the households in villages and towns, and 64.3 percent in small and middle-sized cities; 20.0 percent of large city households included lineal relatives (three generations or married children and their spouse); and 6.7 percent more included nonlineal relatives: Takashi Koyama in Robert J. Smith and Richard K. Beardsley, eds., Japanese Culture, New York: The Viking Fund, 1962. In a survey of a Tokyo apartment-house area largely inhabited by salary men, Koyama found that 79.3 percent of the households included no relative beyond the nuclear family. Takashi Koyama, Gendai Kazoku no Kenkyuu (An Investigation of the Contemporary Family), Tokyo: Koobundoo, 1960, p. 59. Unfortunately, there are no data that would make it possible to estimate precisely how many families will at some time live with relatives. Estimates based on the past would not be conclusive since during and immediately after the war the housing shortage caused a large amount of doubling which continued for many years, but which is unlikely to recur.

rubs his back, sits on his knees, receives little presents, and in return does little favors. But in areas of task performance, the grandparents generally take an inactive role. Generally it is the parents who see to it that children do their work around the house and their homework. If the children want comfort they may go to their grandparents, but if they want assistance in solving difficult problems, they are more likely to go to their parents. The affectionate relationship between grandparent and grandchild does not represent a simple pursuit of pleasure, but also includes obligations. Many a grandparent, exhausted from playing with a child, feels obligated to continue, and many a child, bustling with energy, remains quiet so as not to disturb his grandparents.

If there is only one child, grandmother and mother may compete for the attention of the child, and the child may waver from trying to please one to trying to please the other. In this conflict over the child, the mother usually has a head start during the first year or so because she is nursing the child, and hence sleeps with the child and cares for him when he cries. During this period the grandmother may comfort the child at times, but to the extent that she participates in child-rearing it is largely in guiding and directing the mother in dealing with the child. Later the grandmother often has the advantage because the mother may be busy doing the housework but the grandmother is almost always free to look after the child.

If there is more than one child, it is common for one of the children to be assigned to the grandmother and one to the mother. While the process of assignment is not necessarily conscious, the fact of the assignment is recognized by everyone. If there are three children and a grandfather also lives with the family, one of the children may be assigned to him. A child assigned to his grandmother is actually called and referred to as Baasan ko (grandmother's child). He (or she) sleeps and bathes with the grandmother and perhaps massages the grandmother's back and runs errands for her. If the grandmother is sick or bed-ridden, the child will look after her, tend to her needs. In any kind of family dispute, the grandmother can be counted on to look after the interests of "her" child.

The common method of dividing up children is for the oldest to be the grandmother's and the younger to be the mother's child. This assignment does not resolve the battle over the children's loyalty

completely, because sometimes the grandmother will be away from home visiting or shopping and both children will be cared for by the mother. At other times if the mother is busy working, both children may be cared for by the grandmother. Furthermore, since the mother had an extremely close attachment to the older child during the period of nursing, she often finds it hard to give up the eldest child to the grandmother even after a younger child is born. Even when the coalition of mother and youngest child and of grandmother and eldest child is clear, there are often disputes between the children which inevitably affect the mother and grandmother on their respective sides, and disputes between mother and grandmother may later affect the children.

Another problem with this coalition pattern is the probability that the grandparent will die before the child is fully grown. A child who has been assigned to a grandparent often feels lonely after the grandparent's death, because he misses him and also because he then lacks a protector in family discussions; it is hard for him to break back into the close relationships from which he had been excluded. We knew of several cases where a child was especially sad and withdrawn for several years after the grandparent's death. Many children who were assigned the role of grandmother's (or grandfather's) child have difficulty finding any relationship that will ever replace the intimate devotion which they received before their grandparent died.

Chapter XII—
Child-Rearing

Until the end of World War II, standard guides like Kaibara Ekken's classic on the proper conduct of women set forth precisely the moral duties of wives to husbands, and of children to parents. But the government leaders and Confucian moralists who sponsored the guidebooks, did not offer advice to the parents on how to handle children. As a result, there is no formal tradition, setting forth the ideal parent behavior comparable to the set of injunctions regarding filial piety. Advice on child-rearing^[1] was left for older women to pass down to younger women informally by word of mouth, and even the consensus about child-rearing which did exist in many communities was never standardized or rationalized. When one asks a Mamachi mother about "traditional" patterns of family relations, she cites a well-ordered stereotype of the ideal patterns she was taught, but when one asks about "traditional" patterns of child-rearing she has no such rationalized overview and is more likely to cite her own experiences.

Nor is the Mamachi mother clearer about what the new pattern is, for despite the plethora of printed advice now available on child-rearing and the attempt by many mothers to develop an integrated rationalized approach, there is no clear consensus on desirable practices that compares to the consensus in America represented by the wide acceptance of Spock. There is not even a single integrated set of practices which can be called the "new way."

[1] Child-rearing is here understood not as a body of specific techniques to train children but as the sum total of familial relationships of all kinds as they impinge upon the child and affect his development.

The Mamachi mother, lacking a single standard guide and confronting the difficult problem of providing her child with proper training for a constantly changing society far different from the society of her childhood, must seek advice from a variety of sources and then reconcile the conflicting advice with her own intuitive sense of what is proper. Most Mamachi mothers have worked out relatively consistent patterns of dealing with their children, but they are filled with doubts about whether their methods are the best.

Mamachi mothers approach the task of selecting proper methods every bit as seriously as husbands approach their work. Their attitude is expressed by a mother who explained that her task is more important than her husband's because he merely deals with things while she is responsible for moulding lives. Because this is the main work for salary men's wives and because of the limitless range of suggested methods, no topic evoked more lively discussion among Mamachi women or more close questioning of us about practices in America than child-rearing. On no topic do they read more avidly. They read advice columns in the daily papers and weekly magazines, information bulletins on nutrition or psychological problems issued by various branches of the government, accounts of mothers who have traveled abroad, "scientific investigations" of experts, and some even read the Japanese translation of Spock. But the amount of reading material is so overwhelming, the suggestions so numerous, and the possible solutions so different, that mothers look to intimate friends or meetings with other mothers and teachers at school for specific answers to concrete problems. These discussions with friends and other mothers are earnest, serious, and full of lively interchange of experiences and opinions.

Many conventional practices are questioned by the more modern mothers. Some question whether it is good for the small child to sleep on the same futon (mattress) with his mother. Some argue that the practice of carrying a child on the back is old-fashioned, and refuse to follow the custom. While almost no mother defends outright the desirability of bottle-feeding over breast-feeding, most no longer think it right to criticize the small but increasing number of mothers who find that they do not have enough milk and must use bottles. Others think it is not good to scare children with stories

of ghosts, and many modern mothers are adamantly against teaching the child anything that smacks of superstition. Some are even experimenting with leaving grade-school-age children at home alone while the mother goes out shopping. Others argue that it is sometimes best to allow a small child to cry and believe this principle so firmly that they are willing to endure the disapproval of neighbors who still think that a baby's crying is a sign of inadequate maternal attention. But many just as staunchly, though perhaps more quietly, defend more traditional patterns, and many who advocate new ideas find it difficult to put their views into practice. Some mothers who see nothing wrong with crying find themselves so upset by their own child's tears that they cannot permit the crying to continue. Others resolve not to carry their baby on their back but later find themselves doing so because of the convenience.

The Basic Relationship:
Mutual Dependency of Mother and Child

Despite the wide divergence of opinion and practice among women of different ages and social classes about child-rearing, Mamachi women consistently approach the task of child-rearing in a way which contrasts with the modal patterns in the American middle-class suburbs. This difference is illustrated by a Mamachi mother who prided herself in being modern and rearing independent children even to the point of incurring the disapproval of some of her relatives but was shocked when a three-year-old American child took such an active interest in playing in the home of a stranger that he did not even notice when his mother went into another room. After this mother heard in detail some of the freedom granted to American children, she concluded that by comparison the freedoms she granted her children were minor. Indeed, the typical mother-child relationship in Mamachi is very close, both physically^[2] and

[2] As part of my investigation of child-rearing practices, I arranged to have questionnaires distributed to about sixty families each in seven different communities—five in rural areas, one a salary-man neighborhood in a Tokyo suburb, and another a small-shopkeeper neighborhood in a Tokyo suburb. The results presented in thetable below are the mean age (in months) at which certain steps in child-rearing were reported to have taken place.

psychologically.^[3] It may seem paradoxical that even though the salaried family represents the most radical departure from tradition in many ways, the opportunity of the wife of the salary man to be home and devoted to the children has made the mutual dependency of the mother and child even stronger in the salary-man families than in other occupational groups. Because of the relative isolation of the mother and child from other maternal relatives, the mother-child relationship of the Mamachi salary mother is perhaps even more intense and less subject to outside interference than in traditional rural families. The father is occupied away from home long hours of the day, the mother's opportunity of seeing friends is usually limited, and once the children are born the mother turns her affection to them. She provides them with continuous attention, and, because her social sphere is so limited, she relies on them

[3] This observation and its implications for psychoanalytic theory are discussed by Dr. Takeo Doi, the only practicing Japanese psychiatrist with Western psychoanalytic training, and by Dr. William Caudill, who is currently carrying out large-scale research on mother-infant relationships in Japan. William Caudill and Takeo Doi, "Interrelations of Psychiatry, Culture, and Emotion in Japan," in Medicine and Anthropology , New York: Werner Gren Foundation, 1962. See also Takeo Doi's analysis of the passive dependency of the model Japanese personality. Takeo Doi, "Amae—A Key Concept for Understanding Japanese Personality Structure," Psychologia , 1962, 5:1–7. Dr. Doi has noted that mothers foster this passive dependency, and the techniques of child-rearing elaborated above can be thought of as a further specification of the techniques giving rise to this type of personality.

for companionship just as completely as they rely on her for care.

When a second child is born, and the mother must sleep with the baby, the eldest child ordinarily stops sleeping with the mother and begins sleeping with the father or a grandparent. While elementary-school-age children often sleep in a separate room, and certainly have their own mattresses and covers, it is not unusual for grown children to sleep next to their parents. Mamachi mothers may be embarrassed that this practice may not conform to how the modern mother is supposed to behave. They argue that sleeping with small children is convenient and comfortable. The baby and mother can go right to sleep after nursing; the mother can comfort the child without getting out of her quilt; in the winter, they can keep each other warm and the mother need not worry about the child getting out from under the quilt. One mother after seeing an American movie expressed her pity for the "poor foreign babies" who were forced to sleep alone. Even putting a baby to sleep is not done by rocking or sitting beside a crib and singing a song, but by close physical contact, by nursing him or later carrying him on her back until he dozes off. If the child is too heavy to carry, the mother may lie down beside the child, singing or telling a story until he falls asleep.

Breast-feeding generally continues slightly longer than one year. Many advice columns and even some government publications advise that it is wise to begin weaning at a fairly early age, and a few mothers are even using bottles. But there are also some at the other extreme, like the mother who weaned her two-year-old the day a younger child was born, or the mother of an emotionally disturbed child, who complained of the pain of waiting with full breasts for her six-year-old son to return home each day from school. Most mothers, however, begin weaning their children shortly after their first birthday while introducing supplementary food. The actual weaning may be abrupt but often, even up to the time the child enters elementary school, the mother's disapproval may not always be strong enough to stop him from teasingly fondling her breasts occasionally. Most mothers feel it unnecessary and even cruel to deprive the child of close physical contact.

Bathing is another opportunity for close physical contact between mother and child. While poorer families go to the public bath,

virtually all salaried families now have their own wooden tubs, which are shorter but deeper than the average American bath. One washes before entering the tub and sits in the tub for relaxing and getting warm. While older children and adults bathe alone, the mother usually bathes with small children until they are old enough to enter elementary school. Even after the child is in elementary school, on special occasions when the mother wants to have a particularly close talk, she may have the talk while she and the child bathe together in the tub. One Mamachi parent suggested that the expression hadaka de hanasu (figuratively, talking frankly; literally, talking nakedly) probably derived from the practice of informal talks in the bathtubs.

Until the child is one or two, the mother carries the child on her back in a special strap when she works around the house or goes out shopping. When she goes out in the winter, she straps the child on her back, then puts on a loose fitting coat which covers both her and the infant, and the infant's head can be seen peering out of the coat. To mothers and children alike, the idea of a child on his parent's back is a pleasing one, with connotations of pleasant intimacy. In advertisements, happy children peer over their mothers' shoulders; in children's books, monkeys or bunny rabbits gayly climb around the necks of giraffes; in their play, girls strap their dolls on their backs.

Sexual feelings between parent and child tend to be deeply repressed, and the close physical contact between mother and child during the day and night are not thought of in sexual terms. Rather physical contact is seen as a natural expression of affection, which is desirable and necessary for the proper rearing of children.^[4]

Even when the Mamachi mother and child are not in actual physical contact, the child is seldom out of his mother's sight or earshot. No one is considered a substitute for the mother, and rarely does a mother think of leaving her children with a baby sitter. Even if a grandmother is at home to care for the children, many mothers try to avoid leaving her with children younger than two or three.

[4] Cf. Drs. Doi and Caudill, op. cit. See also their articles in Robert J. Smith and Richard K. Beardsley, eds., Japanese Culture, New York: The Viking Fund, 1962. This more complete repression of sexual feelings also helps explain the great length of time it takes a Japanese couple to begin enjoying sexual relationships after marriage.

Usually the mother stays at home, or, if she goes out, she takes the child with her. If some difficulty should arise while the mother is out, the mother is blamed for leaving, and she probably would not go out again for a long time. The reaction of many Mamachi mothers upon hearing that American children are often left with baby sitters was to ask if the children would not be lonely, clearly implying that if their child was lonely or cried, they would not leave him.

Even within the home, the child is likely to be within his mother's view. Most mothers do not use cribs and while play pens or beebi saakuru (baby circles) are sometimes found in upper-class or independent professional homes, they are still virtually unknown among Mamachi salary men. Because of the dangers of bumping against the hibachi or of falling off the porch next to the sliding glass doors, the mother generally works close to a small child if she is not carrying him on her back.

It is assumed that the child will naturally want to be close to his mother and will be afraid to be alone. The mother deals with such fears not by assuring the child that there is nothing to be afraid of, but by remaining with him. The implicit attitude seems to be that the mother agrees that the outside is frightening, but that while she is there she will protect the child against all outside dangers. The mother's attitude that one must be careful in the presence of strangers is also communicated to the child well before nursery-school age. All three-year-old children known about o-bake (ghosts) and often playfully threaten each other acting as if they were the ghosts. Sometimes an adult, with fingers outstretched, jokingly menaces a child saying o-bake . If the child then becomes frightened and cries, the adult cuddles the child, promising to protect him from the ghosts. Many children who have heard stories of ghosts in the hole under the toilet ask their mothers to accompany them to the toilet even when they are old enough to manage the basic functions themselves.

Even though the mother is not consciously aware of using such techniques, her attitudes and approach tend to arouse in the child a fear of making independent decisions and to create anxiety about being isolated from family or friends. One mother, for example, had explained to her daughter that she could choose her own grade school if she were fully prepared to pay the consequences. The con-

sequence was that when the girl later wanted to change schools between junior and senior high school, the mother reminded the daughter that she herself had chosen the school and therefore would have to stay there. The moral was clear: it is risky to make decisions on one's own.^[5] The threat to isolate a child can be illustrated by an explanation of a school principal. He said that on a school trip which he supervised, the children were remarkably well-behaved because he had warned them before that any child who misbehaved would be left at the destination by himself until his parents would come and get him. The combination of provoking anxiety about the outside and rewarding intimacy serves to keep the child dependent on his mother.

The process of encouraging this dependency begins in earliest infancy. While the American baby who cries learns that at times he himself must deal with his internal tensions, the Japanese infant learns that whatever tensions he has will be relieved by the nearby mother who offers physical comfort and, at a later age, candy or some other sweet.^[6] It is not surprising that so many children are so anxious about the mother's leaving and that so many mothers are frightened of the child's reaction if they were to go out and leave the child with someone else.

While curious, the Mamachi child is frightened of the strange outside world. We never heard of a child talking about running away from home, and the Mamachi mother has little worry about a child not sticking close by in public. While in America one sees mothers chasing down the street after a child, in Mamachi one is more apt to see a child frantically chasing after a mother who is encouraging her child to hurry by running slightly ahead. We have never heard of a mother punishing a child by forbidding him to go

[5] Mary Ellen Goodman reports that Japanese children are more responsive to adults' wishes and less determined in making up their own minds about what they wish to be when they grow up. Mary Ellen Goodman, "Values, Attitudes and Social Concepts of Japanese and American Children," American Anthropologist, 1957, 59:979–999.

[6] In a questionnaire gathered from 92 Tokyo mothers, 85 percent reported giving food between meals as a reward for good behavior. Damaris Pease, "Some Child Rearing Practices in Japanese Families," Journal Paper No. J-3872, Iowa Agricultural and Home Economics Station, Ames, Iowa.

outside,^[7] but we have on several occasions heard children frantically yelling for their mother because they had been placed out of the house and not permitted to come in again until they repented their misbehavior.

Even joking can lead to effective results. One mother suggested to her daughter that she might be able to go to America with the interviewers when they returned home. Although the daughter protested, the mother began teasing more, pointing out how wonderful America was, what a good experience it would be, how proud she could be, all of which served to make the child cling even more closely to the mother.

The Mamachi child is usually polite in public or in new situations and is slow in adjusting to outsiders, including school friends and teachers. He is likely to be reserved to his teacher, and some children who are noisy at home are quiet and reserved in school. Indeed, this pattern is so common as to be known as uchi benkei (a child as ferocious as the warrior Benkei at home, but as gentle as a lamb elsewhere). But once children have been thoroughly accepted into the new group they can display the same noisy playful behavior as at home.

There is a continuity and compatibility between the child's dependence on his immediate family and the dependence which he later feels toward his school and work groups. Compared to the American firm, where the man is expected to make decisions within the scope of his position, the Mamachi salary man is expected to go along automatically with the group, and often he is not even aware of any decision-making process.^[8] Most Mamachi residents would prefer to have things already arranged for them o-zen date (literally, the tray already arranged with food on it) rather than to carve out their own situations. For instance, the Japanese concept of hospitality is to have everything arranged ahead of time, including lodging, food, transportation, and detailed itinerary, rather than waiting to consult with the guest.

In Mamachi, as in communities in other societies, children grad-

[7] Even the punishment of locking the child in the closet (oshiire ) which is used occasionally has the feeling of shutting the child off from the rest of the family.

[8] More joint discussion and approval is required than in American firms. Cf. Kazuo Noda's discussion of ringi seidoo in "Traditionalism in Japanese Management" (mimeographed).

ually become more independent. But whereas in the United States the push seems to come from the child himself, in Mamachi the push often comes from the mother. Many mothers of Mamachi, while implicitly encouraging their children to be dependent, complain about their difficulty in getting their children to be independent and feel it necessary to give them an occasional shove so they will do things on their own. In contrast, many American mothers who complain that their children are too independent implicitly encourage independence by making it sound so attractive and by accepting it as natural that the child would want to revolt and become more independent.

In the United States, many children and even adults who have strong ties to their parents, try to act brave, strong, and independent because it is considered so child-like to admit one's feelings of dependency. In Mamachi, in contrast, feelings of dependency are accepted as much more natural, and while some children resent being tied to their parents, they generally do not have to strain to prove that they are independent even when they are not.

Although this pattern of mutual dependency between mother and child remains strong in Mamachi, even through adolescence, there is a feeling that the new way, while not yet clearly defined, is toward having less dependence. Mamachi mothers, who had an opportunity to hear about American child-rearing practices and to see American children during our period of research, agreed that their children were more dependent, yet many were displeased when we first explained that American children were usually more independent. This displeasure in part seems to reflect their belief that keeping children close is gratifying for the mothers, but that allowing more independence is better for the child. Many recent advice columns have encouraged mothers not to be selfish in wanting to keep the children so dependent on them. Many mothers, who reported how long they nursed the baby or took baths or slept with him, added that they were bad to take so long or that they continued these practices so long only because their child was unusually lonely, delicate, or prone to catch colds.

At the time of adolescence, the mother's problem is especially complicated. Most Mamachi mothers feel that their children, especially their daughters, do not have the range of experience nor the soundness of judgment to make wise decisions about marriage and

employment. Yet it is not entirely clear how much responsibility the mother will have for making the decisions and how much the child will demand to make the decisions on his own. Commonly the child decides at an early age that he wishes to make his own decisions, yet continues to lean on his mother for assistance even though resisting many of her suggestions. The mother's task is further complicated by the fact that she does not sufficiently understand the child's outside world to be confident of her ability to offer the right kind of assistance. In traditional rural communities, where the range of social relationships was narrower, it was easier for the mother to assist her child. True, she might not have been able to find as good an opening, but the limited range of possibilities available to her for exploration made her task simpler. The suburban wife now has so many possibilities open to her which she cannot possibly explore that she can never feel that she has completed her task. The situation is so complex, the amount of potentially relevant information virtually unlimited, the mother's feeling of responsibility so strong, and the child's ambivalence about getting parental advice so taxing that many openly envy Western countries where children have sufficient experience at a younger age to make decisions themselves. It is only through narrowing down her range of possibilities through conversation with friends and the cultivation of her child's co-operation that she can hope to achieve her task.

Perhaps some of the difficulty a mother has in planning her children's marriage, especially that of the youngest, is the result of her ambivalence about concluding an arrangement whose success means that she will then be deprived of her role as mother. The problem of the empty nest is crucial for mothers in any society, but in Mamachi where the pattern of elderly parents living apart from all married children is relatively new and the mother-child relationship is so intense, the departure of children necessitates the most painful adjustment that most women will have to make in their lifetimes. Having devoted their lives so completely to their children, many have no interests which can really take their place. Golden-age clubs are virtually unknown, and going to a yoorooin (old people's home) seems as bad to old people as being sent to an orphanage would seem to children.

Many are never required to separate completely but are able to live within the same neighborhood, and often even next door, and

this appears to be the most ideal solution. For a mother who has devoted her entire life to her home and children, living apart seems sad. The Mamachis residents' deepest criticism of the American family is that young married couples are heartless in letting old people live by themselves. Japanese young couples are more apt to keep closer to their parents, but even being made aware that they are an economic burden or feeling relatively neglected by the children is often a crushing blow to parents. A large number of elderly ladies lived with and served their mothers-in-law when they were young and feel that it is a bitter fate that they now have to live alone without the attention from their children.

Such is the price that the salary-man's wife must pay for the pleasure of devoting herself to her children and for enjoying the freedom of living only in a nuclear family when at a younger age. The workings of the Japanese social structure make the tie between her and her child even more intense and more exclusive than the mother-child tie in most societies. When children are small this creates no serious problem. When children leave home, some speak nostalgically of their romanticized view of the earlier times when old people were happily welcomed into the family, when they were not treated as a burden, and when the younger couple followed the wishes of the elders without hesitation. Yet they know that times have changed and that their own attitudes have changed with the times.

Variations on a Theme: Birth Order, Sex, and Parentage

The mother's relationship with her children varies according to their birth order as well as according to their age. Everyone calls oldest children Niisan (older brother) or Neesan (older sister), but younger boys and girls are usually called by their first name or by some nickname. When a mother thinks her child is acting babyish, she does not tell him to "act his age," but to "act like a Niisan ." Older children often are given the responsibilities of looking after younger children, and when older children reach adolescence, the mother is likely to consult with them about plans for the younger children since the older children know more about the outside world. If the father spends little time at home, the mother may

share her problems with the older children and treat them like adults, even in their early teens. The mother is particularly dependent on the oldest son, and may have deeper emotional ties toward him, yet she commonly treats him with more respect and less light-hearted affection than she does a younger son. She looks to him for advice and help with younger children and for financial help in her later years.

Younger children often, in fact, fit the stereotype of being less responsible and more mischievous, but more spontaneous and charming. Many mothers delight in affectionately telling funny stories about the youngest child's exploits, tricks, and insatiable quest for attention. A mother is likely to make allowances for his "misbehavior" since he is the youngest and hence not so responsible. The youngest often is treated as a family pet and granted a certain amount of license by the older children and the father as well as by the mother. Small children call their mothers and fathers okaachan and otoochan (affectionate terms corresponding roughly to mommy and daddy). As they get older, they use more formal terms of respect, okaasan and otoosan (mother and father), but the youngest children usually continue calling their parents by the affectionate childish name much longer than their older siblings.

The youngest child is pampered and babied by his siblings as well as his mother. The mother weans him at a later age and sleeps and bathes with him for a longer period of time. Until he is three or four, he is given virtually anything he asks for. In quarrels between older siblings and children under three or four, the mother does not investigate who started the fight, but asks the older to yield. By the time the youngest is in grade school, more demands are placed on him, but often the pressure for him to act like an older sibling comes not from the mother but from the older siblings. Even then, however, the younger sibling is permitted more freedom than the elders received when they were his age.

The biggest change in the relationship of a child with his mother occurs when a younger sibling is born. The age at which a child is weaned, or required to sleep or bathe alone, or to assume responsibilities for his own behavior is determined more by the time his next younger sibling is born than by any other single factor. The youngest, having no such pressure, is permitted to remain childish to a much later age.

While most couples are anxious for their first child to be a boy, some wives argue, perhaps partly to protect themselves against possible disappointment, that it is better to have a girl first because a boy is more wagamama (determined to get what he wants). Mothers tend to feel that boys are more difficult to manage. They are afraid that unless they gratify a boy's demands quickly he may become uncontrollable, and some mothers become panicky if their sons do not do precisely as they wish them to. Girls, on the other hand, are thought to be patient and able to endure it (gamanzuyoi ) if their wishes are not satisfied immediately. While many girls complain that their brothers are required to do less work and are criticized less, girls win their mothers' respect because they have stronger characters than their more impulsive brothers. Since mothers consistently treat boys as if they are impulsive and girls as if they have greater abilities to endure, it is not surprising that boys often do turn out to be less capable of tolerating frustration.^[9]

This combination of birth order and sex roles tends to make the relationship between mother and youngest son especially affectionate. However, as much as she is devoted to her youngest son, the mother is sometimes concerned that he does not give her a chance to get her work done or to visit friends or attend PTA meetings because he is always following her around wanting to play. And the youngest son, accustomed to his mother's constant attention, is sometimes upset when his mother has other things to do.

While the youngest son enjoys the most pampering from the mother, the stepchild or the adopted child suffers most from neglect and discrimination. The number of these cases in Japan is large because of the number of war orphans and because parentless children are more likely to be cared for by relatives than placed in new homes where they might be fully accepted as family members. Furthermore, the housing shortages after World War II and the problem of caring for children who were finishing schooling has required relatives to care for children apart from their parents for

[9] This points up the inaccuracy of one wartime interpretation of the Japanese. It was thought that Japanese were aggressive in the war because they were controlled and kept all their feelings inside. If this were true, one would expect that since women were ordinarily much more controlled they would become much more aggressive under stress. Such is not the case.

extended periods, taking on a role much like that of step-parents. A number of Mamachi families have cared for rural nieces or nephews who came to the Tokyo area to attend high school or college. In case of divorce, the custody of the children in Japan frequently goes to the father's family so the child would be cared for by a stepmother or by the father's mother or sister who might have the same psychological relationship to the child as a stepmother.^[10] Because the mother-child relationship is so intense, the stepchild is likely to feel particularly deprived. No matter how much the stepmother tries to be fair, it is someone else's child whom she is caring for, and feelings of fondness are not ordinarily as deep as those between the mother and her true children. The actual number of stepmothers is relatively small, but the public wrath against them expressed occasionally in newspapers, TV "home dramas," and "movies" suggests the extent to which everyone has strong feelings about the evils of inadequate mothering.

The Father

In the daily work of child-rearing, the Mamachi father plays a minor role. Occasionally he plays with small children or takes older ones for a walk, but he does not share the responsibility of caring for and training the children. He does not serve as a mother substitute or as mother's helper in performing the routine aspects of child care when the mother is busy. It is true that a few modern fathers, albeit a bit awkwardly and gingerly, are attempting to help their wives, but this pattern is scarcely common enough to constitute a trend. Nor does the father often consult with the mother about questions on the daily handling of the child.

In his day-to-day contact with the children, the father is ordinarily incredibly mild. He almost never gives orders to the children, and he leaves the disciplining of the children entirely to the wife. He plays on the floor with small children, almost as if he himself

[10] In one study of 3754 divorce custody cases in 1953 in Japan, in 42.1 percent the custody of the children was awarded to the fathers, in 44.5 percent to the mothers. Eiichi Isomura, Takeyoshi Kawashima, and Takashi Koyama, eds., Gendai Kazoku Kooza (The Structure of the Contemporary Family), Tokyo: Kawade Shoboo, 1956, Vol. 5, Rikon (Divorce), p. 208. In contrast, in a Detroit sample of 425 cases, mothers were awarded custody in 94.8 percent of the cases, fathers in 2.4 percent. William J. Goode, After Divorce , Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1956, p. 311.

were a child or, perhaps, more accurately, as a number of mothers phrased it, a child with a toy, the toy being the small child. He may be very affectionate to the children, and when the second child is born he may sleep and bathe with the eldest. Fathers see themselves as very kindly in relation to their children and try to avoid telling them what to do. They often side with their children when the mothers are too strict, and sometimes give them little presents without the mothers knowing about it. Children respond to this attention and are usually delighted to have a chance to go out with their fathers for walking or shopping.

Yet children are aware that this pleasantry has limits and at times are afraid their father may explode if not treated with proper caution.^[11] Children can have raucous good times with their father, but they must catch him in the right mood, and even then they may not feel free to talk to him about their own concerns. The positive bonds of affection which Mamachi children feel toward their father are not always strong enough to overcome their feeling of restraint because of the potential authority which he can exercise. In part, the respect for the father's authority derives from his expression of opinions which he does not even think of as restraining. Sometimes, as for example when the father wants the children to bring him something or to be quiet, he is so simple and direct that he does not think of himself as invoking authority; yet the children feel constrained to obey. In part respect derives from the few but memorable occasions when the father lost his temper and suddenly demanded something in a tone of voice that caused everyone to scurry to obey. In large part, however, the child's respect for the father's authority is learned from the mother. At times, she warns the children that if they do not perform properly in school or if their behavior brings shame to the family, the father will punish them. At other times the mother conveys the image of the father as an authority by more subtle means. In the father's absence, for

[11] In sentence-completion tests, children making critical comments about their parents most often describe their mother as urusai (bothersome, noisy, or strict) and their father as kowai (frightening or scary). This supports the view that while the mother takes care of the day-to-day discipline problems and is continually after the children to behave properly, the father is more readily obeyed on the few occasions when he does say something. Children can take their mother's criticisms and comments more lightly than their father's.

example, she may talk with the children about how to get something from the father without getting him angry. The impact of such discussions is to make the children cautious in approaching their father. Some fathers are uncomfortable about the reserve which the children feel in their presence, but even with their mild manner, playful behavior, and frequent presents, fathers have difficulty breaking through this wall of silence. Although kind and gentle to his children, the father nonetheless represents and enforces community standards to the children. It is he who loves and respects the child who does well on entrance examinations, the child who is admitted to a good school or job and makes a good marriage. Because he is a representative of the outside world to his children he cannot entirely escape being seen by them as they see the outside: aloof and frightening. And they feel they must observe some of the caution they do on the outside. As much as the father may try to avoid being cast as an authority and to win the children's friendship by considerateness, mildness, and good humor, his position as authority and representative of the outside always remain in the background.

Being home even a few hours a week is sufficient for the father to serve as role model for the boy, when reinforced by the mother's encouraging her son to behave in accord with the male role. The mother's expectations are usually sufficiently unconflicted as to obviate any problem in the boy's learning male roles. Sex roles and the attitudes associated with Oedipal ties between father and daughter on the one hand and mother and son on the other hand are also learned primarily from the mother.

Oedipal relationships are especially pronounced in late adolescence. At that time the daughter, like a person fond of someone she rarely sees, often feels more positive affect for the father even though she is in many ways more intimate with the mother. Similarly, the constellation of family roles and in particular the mother's relationship to her sons is sufficient to produce the father's rivalry with his sons, particularly his eldest son, even if the father spends relatively little time at home.

Getting the Child to Understand

Most Mamachi parents, fathers and mothers, are lenient with their children, especially when they are small. By Western standards

grandparents are so uncritical that, as the Japanese saying goes, they "wouldn't even feel pain if the children got stuck in their eye," i.e., nothing the children do could possibly be bad or painful. Small children are permitted to run, climb, yell, stay up late, eat large amounts of sweets, keep their mothers occupied away from company, hit bigger children, and climb on their parents' laps or backs with almost no limit. Yet somehow, Mamachi mothers must train their children to become properly behaved adults.

So little do parents even think of punishing their children that mothers rarely if ever use techniques of discipline commonly used in the West. They rarely yell at, criticize, hit, spank a child, or mete out a specific punishment for a wrongdoing. Several Japanese mothers, visiting the United States, have expressed their shock at the cruelty and crudity of American mothers who spank or yell at their children in public places such as supermarkets. Yet Mamachi children do learn how to mind, are well-behaved in most public situations, polite to teachers,^[12] and considerate of others. Some Western observers who have attempted to explain the paradox of Japanese permissiveness toward children alongside the children's carefully controlled public behavior have argued that mothers suddenly become strict with children when they are about five or six years old.^[13] It is true that mothers become stricter as children grow older, particularly when a younger child is born and when the child enters school, but it is no sudden application of strictness that did not exist before. And even a typical three-year-old child has already learned to stay away from danger, to bow to guests, to take off his shoes as he enters the house, to treat adults with courtesy, and to be quiet in public.

The explanation of the Mamachi mother's success in training without discipline is that she teaches only when the child is in a co-operative mood. She ordinarily does not think in terms of using techniques to get the child to obey her or of punishments if the child does not obey her. Her aim is to establish a close relationship

[12] Miss Kazuko Yoshinaga who taught middle-class kindergarten children in the United States and Japan expressed surprise at the rudeness of the children in the United States who sometimes call teachers by their first name, sometimes accidentally bump into the teachers, and contradict them.

[13] See especially Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946.

with the child so he will automatically go along with her suggestions. To the extent that she thinks of techniques for dealing with the child, they are methods for keeping the child happy and building their relationship so that he will want to do what she says. Because her interest is in their relationship, she is less interested in getting the child to behave properly than in getting him to understand. With a good relationship, she need only indicate the desired behavior and add with a tone of encouragement, wakaru ne? (You understand, don't you?). If the child co-operates, he is said to understand.^[14]

One of the principles implicit in the attempt to get the child to understand is that one should never go against the child. There is no distinction in the Japanese language between "let a child do something" and "make a child do something" (both use saseru ), and the Mamachi mother avoids any situation where she is "making the child do something" against his will. In effect she limits the child's opportunity to develop a will of his own. By responding immediately to a child's needs, by going along with what he says, she makes it unnecessary for the child to develop a strong will of his own. By anticipating problems and offering ready-made solutions but few choices, she maximizes the chance that the child will go along automatically with her suggestions. She seldom gives an outright refusal to a small child's request. She is more likely to say "later" than "no." On some occasions she will give in because she feels it better to have a co-operative child in the long run than to risk a child becoming stubborn merely for the sake of getting temporary compliance.

That the average Mamachi mother is highly successful in training her children attests in part to her genuine liking for her children and her patient attempts to understand them and respond to their wishes. While she is not as sophisticated in the use of psychological terminology as her American counterpart, she is sensitive to her child's feelings and desires.^[15] She carefully watches each child so as to learn his wishes, and she spends considerable time thinking

[14] Betty Lanham also notes the interest of the mother in wakaraseru (getting the child to understand). Betty Baily Lanham, "Aspects of Child-rearing in Japan," doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, 1962.

[15] Cf. Betty Lanham, ibid .

about his particular nature. One of the first things a Mamachi mother attempts to do after a child is born is to find out under what circumstances he cries and to learn to satisfy him so quickly that he will never cry for more than a few seconds. She continues to be sensitive to his moods and tries to catch any difficulties before they develop. She uses a large amount of goodies of all kinds to keep him happy and sunao (gentle). Indeed, almost any mother setting out for a shopping trip with a child, especially on public transportation, is likely to carry along an ample supply of candy to dispense in case her child begins to show some sign of discomfort. She knows an almost infinite variety of little hand exercises, peek-a-boo games, animal imitations, songs with gestures, games to play with a child's arms or legs or face which can be used to distract or entertain a child. At home, she uses physical contact to comfort the child. She does not hesitate to crawl on the floor, hold, rock, or bounce a child or to let him climb on her back. With a larger child, she is likely to tell amusing stories or play little games. She may also use such games, many made up spontaneously to fit the situation at home, to motivate a child to perform necessary tasks such as putting away toys. So devoted is the mother to keeping her child happy that from the eyes of a Westerner the Mamachi child appears pampered. To the Mamachi mother, who has an intimate relationship with her child and depends on this relationship for getting the child to follow her wishes, this devotion appears natural and necessary.

In the context of positive feeling the mother's teaching and guidance take place so automatically, that she herself is scarcely aware of it. She consciously thinks about and plans how to get the child into a good mood, but she rarely plans how to teach a small child to be neat, to assume the proper posture, or to avoid dangerous places, even though her child learns these things as early or earlier than the middle-class American child. A mother does not explain these things to a small child or reason with him. She simply puts his body in the proper position until he is able to make the movements on his own. If the child gets near a fire or starts to climb up on a high place, she does not lecture him on the danger of fire or high places. She simply says abunai (dangerous), which is more of a warning signal than a command, and pulls him away before he gets

there. The child soon acquires a fear of going near such places and stays away. To offer extended explanations is contrary to the spirit of child-rearing practice. It is inconsistent with the feeling that the child should respond immediately and without question and that rational explanations are less important than preserving the basic relationship. The Mamachi mother is often vague in her reasons for postponing a child's request, and this vagueness serves to emphasize further the importance of the basic relationship. Some conscious planning enters with older children, however, as explanations become necessary to make a school-child "understand."

When a child reaches the age of three or four, he is taught to withhold his aggression. When a child below that age hits an older sibling the mother may regard this simply as a form of play, but she may say that it will not do (ikenai ) for the older child to hit the younger one. If she hears that her child has been in a fight with a neighbor, she will tell him that will not do, regardless of whether he started the fight or not. To hit in self-defense is considered about as bad as to start a fight. While the mother may sympathize with her child when he has been wronged by others, there is virtually no situation in which returning aggression is condoned. She wants the child to learn this thoroughly because in many ways any aggressive sign from the child is regarded as a result of the failure of the mother to make the child understand, just as a child crying for candy in public is regarded as a sign that the mother does not feed the child enough.

In its early stages, toilet-training is in large part mother-training. When the child is six or eight months old the mother begins to watch how often and at what time he urinates and defecates, and then tries to catch him shortly before his usual time. Many mothers watch the child at night as well as during the day. In the summer time this poses no great difficulty as the child can go without diapers, and the mother will allow him to urinate in the yard. In the winter time, however, the baby is always dressed warmly, even in the house, and because the bathroom is quite cold the child cannot be left unclothed for long. Hence the mothers concentrate their energies for training in the warmer weather. They place the child on a potty shaped like the adult toilet, or they hold the child over

the edge of the porch at the proper time. Often by the age of one and certainly by the age of two, by some combination of child-signaling and mother-training, the child is dry. Toilet-training is accomplished with a minimum of struggle. Children are not expected to resist training, nor do Mamachi mothers speak of a "no" stage around ages two or three, where negativism is taken for granted as it is by many American mothers. Toilet-training is not viewed as a struggle by which the mother imposes her will. Rather, the mother simply is helping the child to prevent the discomfort that comes from being wet or soiled.

While many aspects of child-training take place automatically, there are certain things which the mother consciously sets out to teach the child. This is not thought of as discipline or an attempt to force the child, but the mother shows the child how to do something, and then the child is expected to practice. With a successful relationship with the child, the mother can expect that the child will co-operate with long hours of training. Even small children have the patience to sit for long periods of time for tasks of memorization.^[16] They are taught, for example, how to recite poems or sing songs, how to draw, how to color, how to make the letters of the Japanese syllabary—all well before grade-school age. Once in grade school, the child is expected to practice his lessons at home in much the same way. But even for these periods of practice, most mothers feel they cannot teach the child if he is not in the proper mood to co-operate. Even in an earlier era when school children were disciplined with a whip (ai no muchi, literally, the love whip), it was thought that if the child did not feel the whip as an expression of the love and devotion of the teacher, it would do no good. If the Mamachi mother is unable to create the proper spirit of co-operation, she will try to pass on the responsibility for training to someone else—the father, an elder sibling, a relative, or even an outside tutor.

If the relationship goes smoothly, few sanctions except a vague feeling of approval or disapproval are required to get the child to

[16] Mary Ellen Goodman who has carried on extensive interviews with young Japanese children reported that the children showed an amazing ability to persist working on various projects and that when working on such projects they were not easily distracted by outside interference.

behave. If the mother uses any sanctions at all, she tries to use positive ones and to ally herself with the child rather than to create any breach between them.

Flattery is used freely in front of family members although parents try to refrain from undue praise of their children in front of strangers. The mother frequently uses such phrases as o-rikoo (nice child) and joozu (skillful) in talking to the child or in talking to a third party within the hearing of a child. These expressions are used not only to describe behavior but also to mean "Mommy's good little girl will do this, won't she" or "so and so is wonderfully skillful; won't it be nice when you become so skillful?"

The widespread use of fear or ridicule, noted by virtually all observers of the Japanese scene, also serves to ally the mother and child on the same side without creating any obstinacy or feeling of opposition. Mamachi children show an amazing sensitivity to what people might think of them, and the standard device for getting them to behave properly in front of company is the fear of what outsiders might say or think. The mother, in getting the child to behave so that neighbors will not laugh, is not seen by the child as an authority-enforcing discipline but as an ally in avoiding the negative sanctions of an outside authority. Instilling fear of fathers, ghosts, or supernatural forces (bachi ga ataru ) has a similar function. It is a way for the mother to get the child to behave without making it necessary for her to assume the position of an authority.

In simple matters where the child is not ego-involved, the mother may merely say that the child should not do something, or if he has done something wrong, she may scold him for his improper conduct. However, when the child becomes adamant in wishing something, the mother is not likely to start a hassle, but to say that something will be done later (ato de ne ) or that it is impossible (dekinai ) without giving much of an explanation. Even if she is refusing the child because he has done something wrong, she does not usually make this explicit. Indeed, the vagueness of her refusal and the lack of explanation make it difficult for the child to rebel directly yet make it clear that it would be wise to try to get on the mother's good side the next time.

If the child is uncooperative the mother may make vague threats of abandoning the child, of leaving him home, or throwing the

child outside until he learns to show the proper attitude.^[17] By showing disinterest or by not quite understanding or remaining impassive, she makes it clear that the child does not have the proper attitude, and the usual response of the child is to try to gain back his mother's good graces. Even her techniques of refusal have the effect not of setting up a battle line between the two but of getting the child motivated to try to restore the understanding between mother and child.

Mothers who do not have the relationship with their child that leads to automatic compliance are often frantic, being caught between their inability to control the child on the one hand and their feeling that they should not punish the child on the other hand. Once the magic of the close relationship is broken, there is no legitimate way of getting the child to behave without starting all over again by building up the positive relationship. Indeed a few Mamachi children, usually in homes with a conflict between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, are virtually uncontrollable despite constant pampering because the child does not feel close enough to the mother to go along automatically with what she suggests.^[18] Mothers do sometimes become angry at their children and do sometimes spank them, but they never consider their indignation righteous, and are more likely to feel that their anger represents failure on their part than that it teaches the child a lesson.

In some ways, the mother's position is precarious. She is held responsible for the child's behavior and yet she does not have clear authority for laying down rules. If the father or mother-in-law disagrees with the mother, she must yield to their authority. Her only hope is that her relationship with the child is sufficiently close that the child will follow her wishes. Her authority position is not suffi-

[17] In a study in smaller city in central Honshu, Betty Lanham found that of 255 mothers using a threat, the most common kind was that someone would laugh at them (162 cases) or at their family (47). Many threatened that the child might become sick (116), that the mother would leave home (53), send the child to another house (49), or lock the child outside the house (42). Betty Lanham, op. cit .

[18] Clinicians at the Japanese National Institute of Mental Health have noted a regular syndrome centered on a pampered yet uncontrollable child caught between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law who both undercut the child's close relationship with the other. Neither is able to develop the kind of relationship with the child that leads to automatic compliance.

cient to produce compliance otherwise, and it is always possible for the children to complain to the father that the mother has been too strict. Even in the modern salaried families where the mother is given considerable freedom at home during the day, the husband may overrule some of her decisions. The techniques by which the mother builds a close relationship with the children may be viewed as a brilliant adaptation to the problem of managing the children without a clear mandate of authority that would permit her to exercise more direct sanctions.

Getting the Child's Co-Operation in Study

Since the mother must get the child to do an enormous amount of work in preparation for entrance examinations, during the grade-school years she is in many ways like an assistant teacher and in the summer vacation like a regular teacher. Even when the child is in high school and the mother is unable to help with the content of the study, she must continue to bear the responsibility for seeing that the child puts in a sufficient number of hours of study. And even if she does not understand the content, she may hold the answer book and drill or quiz the child about his lesson. She does virtually everything the teacher does except give a grade for the course. The situation here is an intensification of the Mamachi mother's basic problem in dealing with her children: she must get the child to co-operate in doing his work without having the clear-cut authority to enforce it. It is a problem so serious that some mother-child relationships crack under the strain.

Yet many do succeed, and one of the basic means by which they obtain co-operation is to convince the child of the importance of the examination. So all-pervasive is the spirit of the infernal entrance examinations that she rarely needs to use special techniques to get the child motivated to achieve. The continual talk about report cards, school preparation, and examinations, along with specific concern about the child's performance is adequate to create an impression on the mind of the child, but the mother often consciously tries further to increase the motivation. She does not hesitate to play up the status distance between her family and a higher-status family in order to indicate the advantages of studying

hard.^[19] Because the Mamachi standard of living is low enough that minor differences in income determine which electric machines a family owns and how nice a toy a child can have, the Mamachi child is taught that the job he attains will make a crucial difference in the style of life he can lead and in the security which he can have later in life. The Mamachi mother does not hesitate to connect the importance of examination success, and hence examination study, with success in later life. Not only does she typically do little to ease the child's anxiety about examination success, but she even encourages the child's uneasiness. By creating this uneasiness about success, the mother encourages the child to respond to her direction. She need not force the child to study because the child himself is so anxious about his success that he "understands" and wants to co-operate with the mother. She passes on to the child the demands of the outside world not as an agent of the arbitrary outside authority but as an ally who will assist him in meeting these demands.

Creating anxiety about possible difficulties in making the wrong marital choice has similar functions. It increases the probability that the child will voluntarily want to co-operate with the mother.^[20] Most mothers do not consciously plan to make their children more anxious. But being anxious about their children's success and desirous of motivating the child to co-operate mothers create these anxieties almost instinctively.

[19] I am indebted to Tadashi Fukutake who first alerted me to this problem.

[20] Evidence from psychological testing reveals how deeply children have internalized the feeling that they should follow the mother's wishes in studying and in finding a spouse. Cf. George De Vos, "The Relation of Guilt Toward Parents to Achievement and Arranged Marriage among the Japanese," Psychiatry , 1960, 23:287–301.