PART ONE—
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SALARY

Chapter I—
The Problem and Its Setting

Among the non-Western nations, only Japan has reached a level of industrialization and urbanization comparable to the advanced countries of Europe and America. From a nation that only one hundred years ago was voluntarily isolated from the developments of the rest of the world, Japan has become an important member of the international community. In a single century, Japan has not only introduced modern technology but kept pace with continuing Western progress. At the same time, modern systems of education, government, business, transportation, and communication have become firmly implanted in Japanese society.

The Japanese people in this century have adjusted not only to these fundamental changes, but to a series of natural disasters and national crises. The contemporary Japanese adult has faced a staggering number of difficulties. The standard of living which was rising in the 1920's was disrupted first by a terrible earthquake and later by the devastating effects of a world depression. The increasing political freedom in the 1920's was gradually stifled by an oppressive military rule which required increasingly severe sacrifices until the end of World War II. During the war, many small children were separated from their parents and sent to rural areas to escape air raids, and many families had their only wage earner killed. After the fighting, many families, already undernourished and short of funds, provided for relatives, friends, and even strangers who returned from the military or the overseas colonies. Not only did they live with severe shortages of food, clothing, and shelter, but they had to renounce their former leaders and traditions and accept new patterns of life imposed by the victors.

In the face of these crises and the rapid social change, it is surprising how successfully the average Japanese has been able to maintain an orderly life free from despair and disorder. In spite of these problems, much publicized by the press, the Japanese have made a successful adjustment, economically, socially, and psychologically. The period of peace and prosperity since World War II has made it possible to consolidate many of the social changes, and for the newly emerging social order to achieve some degree of stability.

An important element in the new social order is the emergence of a large "new middle class." The "old middle class" (the small independent businessman and landowner) has been declining in power and influence and is gradually being replaced by this "new middle class," the white-collar employees of the large business corporations and government bureaucracies.^[1] The small independent entrepreneurs who comprise the old middle class have generally played a central role in small local communities because of their influence and power, but their perspective has remained focused within this narrow social microcosm. Although some have profited indirectly from Japan's economic prosperity since 1955, few members of the old middle class have had the motivation, ability, and resources to expand their enterprises to take advantage of Japan's rapid economic growth.^[2] They are, rather, being superseded by, or affiliated with and subordinated to large business corporations which have the resources and entrepreneurial skill to play the key role in the recent economic growth. The old middle class has not yet died out by any means, but the trend of the times has been obvious, and many have urged their children to become white-collar workers in the large bureaucratic organizations in the cities. The income of the white-collar worker is less affected by economic fluctuations or by

[1] For a brief account of the distinction between the Japanese "new middle class" and "old middle class" see Tadashi Fukutake, Man and Society in Japan . Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1962.

[2] Cf. John C. Pelzel, "The Small Industrialist in Japan," Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 1954, 7:79-93. Especially since 1955, however, the economic boom in large companies has assisted the development of certain small industries. Although the number of small enterprises has decreased compared to before World War II, the number has remained relatively constant since the war. Many of these small enterprises have been able to survive by affiliating with a large company, albeit in a subordinate position.

the whims of an arbitrary paternalistic employer than that of the employee in the smaller industries. Because the income of the new middle-class citizen is guaranteed in the form of a regular salary, he has come to be known as the "sarari man" (salary man). This word is not used in Japan to include all who receive a salary, but only white-collar workers in the large bureaucracy of a business firm or government office. Although the two words "salary" and "man" are not ordinarily used together in English, the term "salary man" will be used throughout the present work to convey the Japanese meaning of sarari man .

The roots of the salary man can be traced at least as far back as the Tokugawa period, for after 1600 when Japan achieved internal stability, the military functions of the samurai withered away and many samurai became, in effect, administrators working for the clan government. With the abolition of samurai class distinctions in early Meiji, many ex-samurai became white-collar workers in government offices and government-sponsored industry. The similarity between the samurai administrator and the salary man has led many Japanese to refer to the salary man as the modern samurai. His brief case is compared to the samurai's swords, his company with the feudal fief, his readiness to uphold his company's interests with the samurai's readiness to do battle for his feudal lord. But the salary man is the product of a different social setting. The concept of the samurai retained a warrior flavor, and the ideal was to be bold, courageous, and capable of independent action. The salary man, being a part of a large bureaucratic organization, is more concerned with complex administrative and technical problems, has less room for independent movement, and is likely to be more cautious and susceptible to influence.

The word "salary man" had already become popular by 1930 although the white-collar class remained relatively small until the rapid expansion of government bureaucracies and war-related industry before and during World War II. During this period, the number of white-collar workers grew rapidly, and this growth has continued with the economic prosperity after the war. Now that the social upheaval resulting from the war has passed and the patterns of the salary man have become stabilized and clearly identifiable, it

would seem to be an opportune time to examine the nature of his life.^[3]

The Double Structure

The salary man's pattern of life stands out in the Japanese context because of the sharp disparity between the large modern organization where he works and the more traditional small- or medium-sized enterprises.^[4] Japanese scholars, struck by the coexistence of the modern bureaucratic patterns of large organizations and the more traditional patterns of the small- and middle-sized enterprises have named this phenomenon the "double structure" of Japanese society.

Although some small enterprises have made technological advances and are offering high salaries because of increasing labor

[3] Although no precise statistics are available on the growth of the number of salary men, rough estimates can be obtained from the number of white-collar workers who are not self-employed since most white-collar workers (except those in very small enterprises) would be classified as salary men.

These data are cited in Solomon B. Levine, "Unionization of White-Collar Employees in Japan," unpublished manuscript.

According to the 1960 census, of the 31,549,800 males fifteen years of age and older, only 6,885,500 earned their living from farming, fishing, and lumbering. If one considers professional and technical workers, managers and officials, clerical workers, and protective-service workers as salary men, there were a total of 5,711,200 salary men. Population Census of Japan, 1960, II, part iv, Tables 1 and 2.

[4] Although large organizations are associated with the modern sector of the economy, it does not follow that all small- and medium-sized enterprises are associated with traditional occupations. For the distinction between modern and traditional aspects of the economy, see Henry Rosovsky, Capital Formation in Japan, 1868–1940, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1961. Some more modern small enterprises have already a fairly high salary scale and are competitive for labor with the larger organizations.

Considering the high prestige, power, and income of salary men in government offices before the war, their position has declined since the war compared to salary men in business firms. The starting salary of salary men in government offices is generally about two-thirds of that in private corporations, but the power of salary men in government remains strong. (For this information I am indebted to Kenichi Tominaga.)

shortages, in the typical small enterprise, the worker tends to have a more diffuse relationship with his employer, a relationship that permeates all his life. The employer has some responsibility for looking after the personal needs of his employees, such as providing housing, helping arrange marriage, or giving special assistance in time of trouble. In return, the employee must be available for work at any time, and his personal life is continually subject to the employer's surveillance and approval. What security he has rests on the good will of the employer, which is not always sufficient because the small enterprises are subject to the fluctuations of the market and offer tenuous prospects for long-term security. Although smaller organizations are more paternalistic, workers are not only less satisfied, but there is a greater turnover of labor.^[5] At best the paternalism of the small enterprise is restricting and at worst it is a guise under which an opportunistic owner can pay lower wages and exploit his employees by offering a few personal services.

In contrast, the salary man not only receives higher pay and regular wages, but he has regular hours with time off. His promotions occur to some extent automatically on the basis of seniority and skill, and although responsive to wishes of superiors by American standards, he need not be so responsive as workers in smaller enterprises. Because he belongs to a large, stable organization and the firm is committed to him for life,^[6] he knows that his job will be more secure against the fluctuations of the business cycle. When he compares himself to the workers in small organizations, he feels proud and satisfied that he is a salary man.

Until recently there has been almost no movement of workers between the small and large organizations.^[7] Fundamental differences

[5] Kenichi Tominaga, "Occupational Mobility in Japanese Society: Analysis of the Labor Market in Japan" (mimeographed). For this reason, as Tominaga argues, it is somewhat misleading to link paternalism (which is found in the small enterprise) with the pattern of life-long commitment, a pattern more common in the large organization.

[6] The pattern of life-long commitment of the firm to the worker became prominent in large organizations in the early part of this century because of the problem of shortage of skilled workers, but the commitment did not apply to the larger group of unskilled workers. The salary man has the good fortune to have long-term security as a result of this commitment to the skilled workers. (For this background information I am indebted to Professor Kazuo Noda of Rikkyo University.)

[7] Tominaga, op. cit.

in methods of work and the accompanying way of life have made it difficult for an employee of a traditional organization to move to a large one and unlikely for a salary man to want to move to a small one. Even within the large organization there has been a similar barrier between the permanent white-collar workers who form the core of the organization and the temporary and manual workers who may be discharged when the company has economic difficulties. Once a man becomes a manual worker in a large firm, he will not rise to become a white-collar worker. Japanese firms value loyalty and prefer to recruit and train their own white-collar workers who become skilled in the way their particular firm operates rather than to take on employees who have acquired different habits in other firms. With the exception of a few technical specialties, university training is not geared to preparation for a specific vocation. Training for work is generally acquired within a firm and is, therefore, less easily applicable to another firm. Because the supply of young workers has always been plentiful, firms have been able to recruit their employees directly from schools. Therefore, the traditional smaller businesses have been able to continue in operation without fear of losing their workers to higher-paying modern organizations, and the worker who is dissatisfied with being in a small organization concentrates his energies on making it possible for his son to become a salary man. The lack of free movement between small and large organizations has made it possible for a wide gap to exist between these two types of organization.

How long this double structure of the Japanese economy can continue to exist is an open question. In the last few years, since the labor shortage has caused some large businesses to look to the smaller enterprises for employees, there have been signs that the double structure might begin to break down. To keep their workers, the small enterprises may have to raise their salaries and improve their working conditions to match the larger enterprises. Some Japanese social scientists are beginning to talk of a second industrial revolution—one which would destroy this double structure. The first industrial revolution went relatively smoothly because it meant only that large organizations grew up alongside the small, but the second industrial revolution might prove more disruptive because it

would mean the collapse of the smaller enterprises. Indeed the economic uncertainty and pessimism that persist in Japan amidst the amazing prosperity and industrial development can be explained partly by the mood of the smaller enterprises which fear destruction because they will be unable to survive the economic squeeze if they are forced to offer higher wages and shorter hours.

In the context of the pessimism of the smaller traditional enterprises, the salary man represents for most Japanese the "bright new life." The salary man's career is not a rapid and glorious rise to such great heights that it appears beyond their reach, but a secure path to moderate success. Able and enterprising young men willing to take risks and look out for their own future have the possibility of rising more rapidly, earning more money, and living more luxuriously by working on their own or joining small firms. But most Japanese have no such confidence in their own talents and long-term economic prospects even if they were to have such an opportunity in the short run. For the vast majority of Japanese the life of the salary man seems to represent as high a standard as they can reasonably hope for.^[8] The young Japanese girl hopes to marry a salary man even if his salary were lower because his life is steady, he has leisure time, and she can be free of the anxieties and work connected with independent business. Independent shopkeepers, craftsmen, and farmers complain that they cannot compete with salary men in attracting

[8] In comparing essays of 1250 Japanese children with 3750 American children from grades one to eight on what they wished to be when they grew up, Mary Ellen Goodman notes that more Japanese children want to enter government service and business than American children. Furthermore, she reports that the content of what they mean by business is different. American children are more inclined to speak of becoming salesmen or merchandisers of specific products. Japanese children are more likely to speak of becoming a "company man" or an "office man," that is, a salary man. Mary Ellen Goodman, "Values, Attitudes, and Social Concepts of Japanese and American Children," American Anthropologist , 1957, 59:983.

Social-stratification studies in Japan have generally focused on occupational ranking rather than size of firm, but occupations which clearly imply connection with a large organization such as newspaper reporter, department-store clerk, professor, and basic-research worker show a higher ranking in Japan while independent professionals such as doctor and dentist show a higher ranking in the United States. Clearly a salaried position in a large organization carries with it high prestige in Japan. Cf. Wendell Dean Baker, "A Study of Selected Aspects of Japanese Social Stratification," doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1956. Charles E. Ramsey and Robert J. Smith, "Japanese and American Perceptions of Occupation," American Journal of Sociology , 1960, 65:475–482.

desirable brides. The importance of studying the salary man is not only for understanding this group per se but for understanding the aspirations of other Japanese.

The community where we studied salary men is a section of a Tokyo suburb, selected by Japanese social scientists as typically middle class. From visiting other cities in Japan, from conversing with and reading works of Japanese social scientists, and from having a draft of this manuscript read by Japanese who have lived on all four main islands of Japan, I feel confident that the patterns described here for Mamachi are essentially the same for salary men throughout Japan. Although Japanese are very conscious of variations in regional dialect and custom, Japan is a small country which has been relatively isolated because of its insular position and hence has a much more highly unified culture than most countries. Furthermore, the regional differences between salary men are likely to be less than those of farmers, fishermen, and small shopkeepers where conditions of climate, land, water, and relative isolation from urban centers have permitted variations to persist. The standardization of procedures in large bureaucracies and the fact that these organizations exist in large urban centers has tended to place limits on the amount of possible variation. Although Tokyo may be considered a bit more modern than some Japanese cities, about one-tenth of the Japanese population lives in Tokyo, and since about one-half of the Japanese population is still rural, at least one-fifth of all Japanese salary men live in the Tokyo area. Many more were educated there, and because of its crucial position in Japan (it is, in effect, New York, Washington, and Hollywood all in one), Tokyo dominates the mass media and sets the pace for the entire country. Just as the Tokyo dialect has become the standard dialect, so Tokyo culture is becoming national culture. Some young salary men who live in the center of Tokyo may consider Mamachi old-fashioned, and some older salary men in more traditional areas of Japan may consider it too modern, but compared to vast differences between patterns among employees in other countries, these variations are minor. While I have chosen to limit the descriptions to Mamachi because of my familiarity with a wealth of detail I do not have for other communities, I think it safe for the reader to assume that he is reading about a way of life found among salary men throughout Japan. In

many cases precise survey data are available showing the similarity between Mamachi and other communities, and in these cases I will present the data in the footnotes.

The Setting:
Mamachi

The people of Mamachi think of their neighborhood as shizuka (quiet and peaceful), separated from the bustle of Tokyo where most of the husbands work.^[9] Until about thirty or forty years ago Mamachi was sparsely settled. Although many new houses have gone up in the last generation, the neighborhood with its narrow paths, large trees, and small gardens still retains an aura of suburban calm.

Virtually all homes in Mamachi are privately-owned, single-storied, unpainted wooden dwellings surrounded by ingenious small gardens, separated from the outside world by high fences. One or two sides of the house, generally facing the sun, have sliding glass doors which can be opened to let in the sun and to air out the house during the day. At night, the sliding wooden doors outside the glass doors will be closed to keep out rain, cold, insects, and prowlers. Construction is generally simple and plain, with thin walls, peaked roofs, small windows, no basement. The homes average perhaps three or four rooms in size, the rooms being separated by sliding paper doors. Many homes have one "Western style" room used for a sitting room or for entertaining guests; it has chairs, a couch and a chest of drawers, and is often decorated in a fashion not too different from American style of a few decades ago. Two or three "Japanese style" rooms covered with soft tatami mats can be used for sitting in the day time and for sleeping at night. In the day time, cushions are brought out to sit on, and a table is set up for meals or for entertaining guests. At night the tables and cushions are put away and bedding is taken out of the large closets and placed over the tatami mats. Other furnishings generally are few and simple: a few chests and bureaus, a television set, a radio, a few pictures, decorations, and perhaps a children's desk and a piano. The kitchen is old fashioned by American standards. A few people now can afford a mechanized American style kitchen or at least a

[9] Our field-work procedure is described in the Appendix.

refrigerator, but most families in Mamachi still have only one or two gas burners and a small wooden ice box which they fill with a piece of ice every few days. The kitchen usually is not furnished very attractively and guests are not invited in. One small room contains a small but high Japanese wooden bath tub where the family spends many an evening taking turns relaxing in very hot water. They have cold running water which is safe to drink, and a few families have a little heater to heat water as it comes out of the tap.

The climate of Tokyo is slightly warmer than that of Washington, D.C. with about one snowfall a year and only a few days in winter when the temperature goes below freezing. Because of the style of housing and the high cost of fuel, there is no central heating. In the middle of one of the tatami rooms is a localized heating device known as the kotatsu . A portion of the floor is cut out in the shape of a square, and one sits on the floor next to the opening resting his feet on a ledge which goes around all four sides of the opening about eighteen inches below floor level. A few inches below the foot ledge is a place to burn charcoal or install an electric heater. A small table stretches over the opening, and a quilt may be placed over the table and stretched out over people's laps to prevent the heat from escaping. The family eats and spends most of its winter evenings near the kotatsu in order to keep warm. The rest of the house is unheated, although many families have a gas or electric stove which they can use when guests come to visit.

Mamachi homes in their simple functional design are pleasant and attractive. In the day time when the sliding doors are opened one can see the choice view of the garden, with its neatly trimmed shrubbery and flowers, carefully swept ground, and, perhaps, some rocks or a very small pond. Although the gardens are small, one has the feeling of being completely away from the rush and pressure of life outside the gates.

Within convenient walking distance from any place in Mamachi are rows of highly specialized small shops which open on to the more heavily traveled streets. There is the dry-goods store, the spice store, the bakery, the sweets store, the canned-goods store, and fruit and vegetable store, the dairy store, the butcher shop, the fish market, the poultry store, the rice store, the tea store, the stationery

store, the shoe store, the electrical-appliance store, the store for pots and pans, the Western-clothing store, the store for bedding supplies, the furniture store, the store for medicine and drugs, and perhaps a few more. Intermingled within a short distance are a number of craftsmen's shops such as that of the maker of tatami mats for the floor, the door maker, the bath maker, the repairman for bicycles and motor bikes, the gardener, the kimono maker, and the tailor.

These small shops usually are run by a single family of parents and children with perhaps a live-in hired helper or two who are likely to be treated almost like family members. The family lives behind the wooden floored shop in a small room or two of tatami mats. While most Mamachi families occasionally shop in Tokyo at the large department stores, they do most of their daily shopping at these small shops where they are steady customers. Some shops, like the canned-goods store or the fruit and vegetable store, send errand boys to take daily orders and deliver them a few hours later. More commonly, the housewife goes out daily, basket under arm and perhaps child on back, to select the things she needs. Relations between housewife and shopkeepers or craftsmen are usually pleasant and cordial. However, they are not intimate, for a wide social gap separates the new middle class from the small shopkeepers of the old middle class who have less desirable housing and physical facilities, less money, less security, and less education.

Since Mamachi is not the center of the suburb, it has relatively few public buildings. There is a large two-storied wooden grade school with more than two thousand children, and a somewhat smaller junior high school, both with large gravel-covered playgrounds. Several police sub-stations, with two or three policemen each, keep track of the residents, make sure that everything is peaceful in the neighborhood and give directions to visitors, an important task because of the irregular numbering of houses. Small branch offices of the post office and fire department service the area. A few small shrines and one temple are tucked away among some of the residences. Local buses run down several of the main streets (ending up at the Mamachi train stop), which provides the residents with a rapid and inexpensive route to downtown Tokyo. Most of the men leave early in the morning, brief case and magazine or newspaper in

hand, and catch a train to work in Tokyo. Wives occasionally go to Tokyo for shopping and many children of junior-high-school and high-school age attend school in Tokyo.

It was our purpose while living in Mamachi to try to live as other residents did, to try to understand their way of living and their way of looking at the world. While there we took copious notes of our observations and of our talks with the residents of Mamachi. In analyzing the notes after returning to the United States my primary purpose has been to see the world of the residents in the perspective of the social setting in which they live.

Chapter II—
The Bureaucratic Setting in Perspective

In comparison with most families around the world and with rural families in Japan, Mamachi families are unusually dependent on the husband's salary and personal savings. Most Mamachi families do not feel part of a tight-knit group of friends or relatives to whom they can turn in time of financial distress.^[1] Perhaps they are too proud to let their relatives know about money difficulties, or doubt their relatives' ability to help, or fear future family quarrels, or feel the family relationship too distant to be comfortable in making the request. Whatever their reasons, most of these families would undergo great sacrifices rather than call on relatives or friends for financial assistance.

In rural Japan, as in rural areas in most countries, a family derives its security from the land and in time of need a family can turn to relatives or other members of the local community for assistance. In most industrialized countries families in great need can expect to receive welfare benefits from the government, but for an industrialized nation, Japan's welfare services are not well developed. Benefits are small and few, and not given automatically to people who meet standardized criteria of "neediness." As a result, families seeking welfare aid are put in the position of having to prostrate themselves before welfare officials in order to receive even the minimum of aid. While, for example, even a middle-class family in America would not be very embarrassed by accepting aid for dependent children, social-security payments, compensation for in-

[1] Even in rural areas, however, mutual aid is not nearly so strong as previously. Cf. Tadashi Fukutake, Studies in the Rural Community in Japan, Tokyo University Press, 1959, and Edward Norbeck, "Postwar Cultural Change and Continuity in Northeastern Japan," American Anthropologist, 1961, 63:297–321.

dustrial accidents, and the like, the Japanese application procedures are often so humiliating, the chance for receiving aid so uncertain, and the amount of aid so inadequate, that the typical Mamachi family does not expect to seek public help, even in time of need.^[2] It is also difficult to obtain loans from banks. Not only are interest rates much higher than in the United States, but banks rarely lend money to individual borrowers, and a borrower may acquire bothersome personal as well as financial obligations.^[3] Some families turn to moneylenders, but borrow for only a very short time because interest rates are exorbitant. Although there are several moneylenders in Mamachi and families told us that other families go to moneylenders, no family ever told us that they themselves had used moneylenders. Indeed the stories of people sneaking in to pawn shops sound almost like a criminal escaping the detectives.

The wife of an ordinary middle-class Mamachi family has virtually no chance to earn a living by herself. While some poorer wives are able to take in work like sewing, such jobs are increasingly being done by large industries. Even if a middle-class wife could find such work it would be embarrassing, since few jobs would seem suitable to her status except, perhaps, teaching some housewifely arts at which she was particularly skillful or a special service occupation like hairdressing. Even if another job were available, she would receive a much lower salary than a man in the same position, and perhaps even less than a young girl doing the same job. Ordinarily she would seek work only if widowed, and the income she could earn would probably not be adequate to support herself and her children.

Because of these factors, the father's salary is ordinarily the only source of family income, and there is virtually no alternative in time of trouble. The importance of the father's income is most clearly revealed by the changes in family fortune in the event of the father's premature death or incapacity. An illustration of the common problem of family decline after such misfortune is the case of a second son whose father died when the son was still in grade school. Until

[2] Some of the Japanese rules regarding welfare sound as if services were more widespread than they are. For a survey of actual welfare conditions see Eiichi Isomura, Takeyoshi Kawashima, and Takashi Koyama, Kazoku no Fuyoo (The Maintenance of Needy Families), Tokyo: Kawade Shoboo, 1956.

[3] For an analysis of problems in borrowing money see John C. Pelzel, "The Small Industrialist in Japan," Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 1954, 7:79–93.

that time the family had been prosperous middle-class people, rich enough to afford a maid. After the father was killed in an accident, the young man's life changed completely. The family had to give up their maid and other luxuries, endure severe economic hardships, and bear the snubs of many former friends. The young man still recalls bitterly the way he felt when he was suddenly without friends. He and his family were not persecuted, but former friends avoided them, apparently fearing they might be called upon for help if they continued to be friendly. Fortunately, the boy's older brother was completing junior high school and soon started work. Although he could not earn enough to keep up their former standard of living, the family never had to worry about having enough to eat. As a result, however, the older brother could never pursue higher education, and only with great sacrifice was the family able to save enough to keep the second son in school.

Furthermore, it is difficult for divorced or widowed women to find new husbands or to obtain help from relatives.^[4] It is especially difficult for women with children to remarry because men want children of their own and few earn enough money to support large families. But perhaps more important is the tradition of family loyalty. Sons are expected to continue the family name and line of a dead father, and widows are still admired for remaining loyal to their dead husbands. Men feel that a wife who was properly devoted to her first husband would have difficulty transferring that devotion to another man, and a wife who was not properly devoted to her first husband would be less likely to make a good wife for anyone.^[5]

In addition to the financial difficulties a widow or divorcee must face, her children are discriminated against when they begin looking for jobs. Mamachi residents report that if two young men of

[4] In 1956, only 6.1 percent of marriages in Japan were of women who had been married before, but 10 percent were of men who had been wed before. Fujin no Genjoo (The Position of Women), Tokyo: Roodooshoo Fujinshoonen Kyoku, 1959, p. 55. In the United States, between January, 1947, and June, 1954, 19.9 percent of marriages were of women who had been married before. Paul C. Glick, American Families, New York: John Wiley, 1957, p. 141. This difference is too large to be explained only by the difference in the divorce rate.

[5] For a widower, however, it is not only considered advisable but necessary to remarry in order to have someone care for the children. Since the children would remain in the father's line, this is not seen as causing any serious problem.

roughly equal qualifications are seeking employment, one whose home includes a father and one whose home does not, the job would go to the boy with a father. This preference continues today even in corporations which select employees by examination. It is assumed, first of all, that a fatherless boy would not have been given proper disciplinary and moral training. Even if he did receive such training, companies feel that he is more apt to be dishonest, for his greater need for money might tempt him to embezzle or in some way cheat the company for personal and family needs. Furthermore, since he is partly responsible for the care and protection of his mother and siblings and since a firm ordinarily assumes some responsibility for the welfare of its workers and families, the firm is cautious in taking on this extra burden. Although the firm may not contribute enough to make a really easy life for the employee's family, nevertheless, the degree to which it is expected to help could be an added burden on the company.

The almost total reliance of the wife and children on the husband's income is further reflected by the late age of marriage (in 1955, in cities, 47.5 percent of men and 23.6 percent of women 25 to 29 years of age were still single) and the importance of the husband's health as a factor in the decision to marry. A girl is reluctant to marry a man until he is fully established in a place of employment and his health and life expectancy are openly and carefully discussed by his fiancée and her parents. A young man who has had tuberculosis or another serious disease has more difficulty finding a wife not only because people want healthy descendants but because the wife's family wants some assurance that the young man will live long and be able to support his wife. Today increased longevity makes health less problematic than formerly, but it is still one of the major criteria of a desirable husband.

The death of the husband undoubtedly is the most serious blow to a family's livelihood, but the loss of his job is almost as serious. Not only are good jobs hard to find, but because of the policies of Japanese firms, a man who loses his job probably will have to start again at the bottom, with a low salary and with little hope of rapid promotion. Hence, many people consider the stability of a job more important than the amount of income.

The significance of the Japanese salary man lies, therefore, not

only in the fact that he is a nonmanual worker and an organization man, but in the fact that he has a measure of economic security which most Japanese do not have. In a nonaffluent society where one has no place to turn in time of need, and welfare is provided by neither the government nor the family nor personal connections, the large firm assumes a critical importance because it provides security as well as income. The fact that a firm provides this security has many implications for the life of the salary man, but the meaning of working in a bureaucratic setting comes not only from the man's relation to the firm but also from the position in the community that derives from his work. To see the bureaucratic setting in perspective it is necessary to compare the salary man in Mamachi with families of the old middle class in the same community with whom he compares himself: the successful businessman, the independent professional, and the small shopkeeper.

The Successful Businessman

Above salary man families in Mamachi are a small number of families known as "burujoa" (bourgeoisie), a term used in Japan to describe only very successful businessmen. These families gain their status from the style of life made possible by family enterprises which may have as many as five hundred employees.^[6] Generally their offices are in Tokyo, but they are very influential in Mamachi affairs and are treated with respect by other Mamachi residents. These families do not need to rely on a large firm, because they have ample security from the financial standing and success of the business and the fact that the husbands' entrepreneurial abilities and friendships with other influential people would be in demand even if the present business failed. Some of these men are from business families and have acquired these skills over many years, but even those who inherited old family firms have guided their companies successfully through enormous change and development in the past few years. The combination of long training, recent success, influential friends, and high standard of living provides them with ample basis for self-confidence and pride. Yet they are intensely concerned with the business competition, the rapidly changing

[6] Large industrialists generally live in Tokyo. To my knowledge, none live in Mamachi.

markets, and the general pressures on small business, and they devote their boundless energy toward making the business even more successful.

Their position in Mamachi society is not based only on financial standing and is secure enough to withstand temporary business reverses. They are continuously called upon for leadership in Mamachi organizations, campaigns, and celebrations. It is thought that without their co-operation and support, if not their active guidance, no organization in Mamachi could be successful and no important matter could be satisfactorily resolved. The successful businessman is effective in local organizations, not only because he can be counted on for a sizeable financial contribution but because he can pinpoint the basic problems, deal with them frankly and directly and, by his broad range of contacts through business and the community, effectively mobilize the support necessary to implement his opinions. While he can express his convictions freely, many others reserve judgment until he has spoken and then accept his suggestions. Although he is capable of showing consideration for others, his manner commonly reflects a sense of superiority and others generally accept this as natural and proper. In striking contrast to the typical salary man, he need not indulge in self-effacing modesty and may even boast about his income, the size of his firm, and the scope of his responsibility.

By virtue of his position, he and his family have a feeling of noblesse oblige toward other members of the community. Indeed, the problem which worries him most is the time and energy required for dealing with the many requests from friends and acquaintances for introductions and assistance in finding their children schools, work, and the like. His response to requests may be determined by the legitimacy of the need, the degree to which he is obligated to help the other person, and the difficulties involved, but even if he refuses, he feels it necessary to give some evidence that he has tried to help. He pays a heavy price for his prominence in the community.

Although responsive to praise and honor, the successful businessman often evaluates his participation in community affairs on the basis of its compatibility with his primary interest: business success. At times he feels it incumbent upon him, because of his community

prestige, to participate in activities unlikely to help his business. More often, however, he will sidestep responsibilities in these activities by offering financial help or services which require little time but will participate vigorously in activities which might have indirect business advantage.

Just as business is combined with community activities, so it is combined with recreation and personal activities. It is often difficult to distinguish working time from leisure time, and the businessman often entertains his clients by a trip to the golf course or a party with entertainment by geisha girls. He may do so without any specific business problem in mind, but at other times he clearly uses the informal atmosphere for business ends. One of the businessmen explained that when he has important business, he first lays the groundwork by providing a good atmosphere with a private party, and at the peak of good will he subtly mentions his business plan and completes the arrangements while everyone is still in good humor. Many evenings are spent in just such parties, and many Sundays and even week days are spent at the exclusive golf clubs, combining business and pleasure. Even if there is no specific business purpose, these activities are paid for by the business expense account.

Business expense accounts also are used to cover a variety of family expenses. Although the businessman may not draw much more salary than a highly paid manager, the extras, paid for by the business, make his style of life very different from that of the salary man. For example, he typically has at his disposal at least one or two chauffeured cars. He is chauffeured to and from work and to any place else he wishes to go; when he is not using the car, it is at the disposal of his wife. If the wife should require household help, in addition to her regular maid, she can call on her husband's employees, and their wages will be paid by the company payroll. A young girl in the company may even be used as a part-time maid. As in the United States, company expense accounts have the virtue of avoiding income-tax payments, but in Japan the scope of company expenses is broad enough to include more personal expenses. Since business is so closely intertwined with family affairs and recreation, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish business and personal expenses.

Just as company expenses extend into areas which Americans re-

gard as personal, so employer-employee relationships go far beyond contractual work relationships. While genuinely interested in his employee's welfare, the successful businessman is very aware of the business utility of offering benefits in lieu of higher salaries. He provides employees with personal services, not because he loves them as his children, but because he realizes that this keeps up the workers' morale and productivity. He knows, for example, that discharging an employee without good reason would have a serious effect on the morale of other workers. The problem is that granting favors on an individual basis can be very bothersome and time-consuming. Because some employees may learn of special considerations given to others and because there are no standard rules about how these benefits are to be given, the special arrangements between employer and recipient can lead to a complicated and entangling network of special secrets and plots. Rivalries between employees who received different favors are sometimes almost unavoidable.

Occasionally the wife of the successful businessman helps employees with their personal problems. The worker would go to the employer to discuss financial problems, but if he had a close relationship with his employer he would probably make at least a formal call on the wife to discuss marriage plans or family problems. For this reason, the husband discusses personnel relations with her, and typically she has a fairly clear idea of the inner workings of her husband's business. Even if the assistance she gives the employees in solving problems is merely perfunctory, it serves to reinforce the closeness of the employer-employee relationship and to guarantee the continued loyalty of the worker.

The wife may also give special free courses in sewing, cooking, flower arranging, and the tea ceremony to help female employees with wedding preparations. With her husband, she also officiates at employees' weddings, company festivities, anniversaries, sports contests, and parties honoring new or retiring employees. Such activities are, in effect, a wife's job and constitute a contribution both to social welfare and to her husband's business.

Not only the wife but several relatives may be working in the same family business. Relatives do not necessarily occupy high positions, and some distant relatives may even be hired as low-

level manual workers. Business families are known for the close ties among relatives in the business, but tensions and conflicts often arise between relatives as to the position and pay each should have. Work relationships often require authority and obedience which seem incompatible with the close relationship of relatives, and it is often a matter of dispute as to whether the worker should be treated primarily as a relative or as an employee. The solution to these problems is not always clear, but there is no question that competence is important in determining the tasks to which relatives are assigned.

The distribution of top positions depends, however, to some extent on kinship position. It is hard to imagine, for example, a younger brother as president with a father or elder brother as vice-president. If he is in the same firm as an elder brother, a younger brother may not be given much room for independent maneuvers, and his wife may take a less active role in the business than the older brother's wife. In larger organizations, an employee works up gradually, but in a family firm the businessman may have the same position for many years, depending on the constellation of relatives in the business. However, if a senior executive dies or if the company expands rapidly, a relative suddenly may be given weighty responsibilities.

Although family and business are closely connected and a wife may often go with her husband to business or ceremonial functions and help promote his work through skillful use of friendships, the businessman is almost completely removed from home affairs. He often arrives home as late as eleven or twelve at night, and sometimes even spends the night in Tokyo. As a result of this full schedule he sees little of his family, and although he may be fond and proud of his wife and children, he is likely to know little about their daily lives. Typically he enjoys playing with his children when they are small, but this interest generally does not carry over into the daily activities of the children in grade school and high school. While the older children may still be awake when the father comes home at night, younger children may go several days without seeing their father. The wife may go to sleep before the husband returns, waking up to greet him briefly on his arrival. A husband may arise after the children have left for school, talk with the wife briefly at breakfast, and then have the chauffeur drive him to the office. Although he may have a joking relationship with the children and may, for

example, talk freely with a favorite daughter, his wife and children generally assume that there is a considerable distance between his life and theirs. They may joke with the father or tease him about his work, his associates, or his activities, but they generally assume that he will not understand or have much interest in their own activities except as they relate to the crucial decisions of education, career, and marital partner.

At times the businessman's wife feels lonely and complains that her husband is not home enough. Some wives are particularly distressed about the husband's visits to his favorite bars and geisha house where he receives special attention because of his prominence and the size of his expense account. Sometimes, although she does not readily admit it, the wife may be jealous of his affection for special girls in these bars. Usually she knows little about the details of her husband's leisure activities and though she may try to learn more about them and may in some cases know the husband's girl friends, she is not likely to interfere unless the husband fails to give her the money and facilities she desires for the home. She feels that she has much to be thankful for. Her husband provides well for her and the children, and she is treated with honor and respect in the community. She particularly appreciates their luxurious style of life for she enjoys electrical appliances, an automobile, and other material benefits still not available, even in cheaper versions, to the average salary man.

Because her husband knows so little of the children's interests and activities, and the maid performs only the simpler tasks, the wife must take over almost completely the care and management of the children, and she turns to them for companionship. She is concerned that her children uphold the family position in the community. Because of the societal stress on success, she helps the young children with their homework and hires tutors for the older children. If the children have difficulty passing entrance examinations on their own merits, she may send them to private schools where they can escape open competition with the salary man's children. She knows that even if a son fails difficult examinations, he still can assume a position of importance in his father's firm.

Capable children, who pass difficult examinations to universities, will have a choice between becoming high-level salaried employees

or members of their father's business. While the bulk of the family fortunes will remain in the business, there is no difficulty providing generous financial help to all children, including those who become salary men. Indeed there is no problem in providing equal inheritance to all children.^[7] As long as there is a successor in the business the parents usually will not raise serious objections if a child chooses to work for a good company or for a government bureau. If, on the other hand, there is only one son or if an elder son is already working elsewhere, there will be pressure from the parents for the boy to take over the family business. Not only will this solve the practical problems of providing a place of activity for the elderly father and permit the parents to continue the same style of life in their old age, but it gives them the satisfaction that their efforts will continue to bear fruit in the coming generation.

If two or three sons are interested in the business, they can divide the responsibilities within the firm. While the elder son may have more power than younger sons, it is not the exclusive power that accrues to the family head in the traditional rural family. If a family has no son, the daughter is likely to be married to an enterprising and talented young man who would be competent enough to take over the business and continue the family line. But while the concept of the family line remains strong, it is probably not so strong as in the rural areas and is closely tied to the interest in continuing the family firm. Business families do not make sharp distinctions between the elder brother who continues the family line and all other children who are outsiders, but they do distinguish all children who enter the business from those who do not.

Indeed, even the responsibility of looking after the elderly, keeping up the family plot, the family graveyard, and the family treasures is likely to go to the child or children who remain in the family business. Those who remain in the business consider family tradition important, much more so than do most salary-men families. Indeed, business families usually have more in their family history which they can point to with pride. Sometimes these families have

[7] In rural areas, where division of a family farm into smaller parts would often make it impossible for anyone to make a living, the postwar law requiring equal inheritance has created serious problems, and various informal techniques have been developed to try to avoid dividing the property. Because these businesses are large enough to absorb all sons, there is no such problem.

a particularly distinguished ancestor or a family line which has been kept intact for many generations. Sometimes they have swords, festival dolls, ornaments, prints, scrolls, or books of calligraphy which have been passed down as family treasures for several generations. These heirlooms and family rites for the departed are important because they are symbols of the prominence of the family, distinguishing it from the "ordinary" families in the community.

The Independent Professional

Since most college graduates, including law-school alumni, are employed in large organizations, the only independent professionals in Mamachi are doctors and dentists. There are no specialists within dentistry, but most doctors specialize in either internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, or obstetrics-gynecology. In Tokyo, many doctors work for large hospitals, but the doctors in Mamachi are in private practice, with their offices and a few hospital beds attached to their homes. Because a doctor in private practice ordinarily does not have an affiliation with an outside hospital, these beds are necessary to perform operations or look after patients who require constant care; the Japanese word usually translated as "doctor's office" (iin ) actually denotes both the office and these facilities for the patient to stay overnight.

Ancillary professions are not well-developed, but the doctor generally has one or two assistants who perform the combined duties of nurse, medical technician, and cleaning lady, or, in the case of the dentist, the duties of dental technician and maid. In some establishments, the wife may perform the more professional aspects of the work, and an assistant may also serve as the maid in the family household as well as the nursing assistant. In others, assistants may perform all of this work. The doctor's relationship with these assistants is likely to be very close and paternalistic, and the assistants may even live with the family.

The independent professional has neither the heavy financial reserves of the successful businessman nor the large organizational backing of the salary man. His security rests entirely on his skill in building up a large practice. He generally establishes a practice in his neighborhood and maintains a close personal relationship with his regular patients. Patients are likely to select their doctor on the

basis of convenience of location, his general attitude and reputation, and the introduction of friends. The Mamachi doctor's business interests are more overt than those of his American counterpart. He dispenses drugs to his patients for a profit, and he may also operate his ward at a profit. He is permitted to advertise, and at the least he has a billboard calling attention to his location. Since the financial security of his family depends on his practice, he tries to accumulate some savings. Some professionals have formed mutual-benefit groups to help a member's family in case of need, but usually they cannot equal the security offered by the large organization in times of economic recession, accident, sickness, or retirement.

Setting up a private practice poses considerable financial risks because it requires a sizeable outlay of initial capital for machinery, much more so than a few years ago. with the standardization of medical education through medical schools, the cost of education has risen, and the age at which one can begin earning has also risen. It may take many years of practice before a young doctor can build up a practice, repay his debts to benefactors, and earn a comfortable living. Only a few decades ago it was common to serve a long period of apprenticeship with another doctor or dentist and then open a practice with the help of the older doctor and the savings accumulated during the apprenticeship. Most middle-aged practitioners of Mamachi got their start this way and now have no difficulty making an adequate living. Indeed, their income tends to be much higher than that of the salary man.

The basic problem confronting the older practitioners is that of assimilating the technical advances introduced from the West since the war. Some have not kept fully abreast of these changes, but other conscientious doctors have enrolled in special courses in addition to reading professional journals and attending special lectures or demonstrations sponsored by their former university or by the medical societies. The amount of skill required for such technical work and the individual responsibility for pursuing training while engaging in practice have made this problem particularly acute among the professionals.

Unlike the successful businessman who has broad responsibilities in community affairs, a doctor's activities, with few exceptions, are limited to his relationships with his patients, relatives, and profes-

sional colleagues. So much of his time is spent in his office or calling on his patients, that he has little time for outside activities. His professional relationships are more likely to be determined by the school he attended than by the community in which he now lives. Not only do fellow alumni have professional relationships but together they may engage in the full range of leisure-time activities, including drinking, group games, parties, and trips. Some doctors feel competitive with other doctors in Mamachi, but they generally do not feel competitive with fellow alumni. However, because of professional ethics and a steady clientele and income, doctors and dentists do not compete as bitterly as, for example, small shopkeepers.

Like successful businessmen, doctors rarely make a sharp separation between work and leisure hours, and to some extent working hours are determined by the arrival of patients. Most offices are open until eight or nine in the evening, and even in non-emergency situations, patients sometimes call the doctor at later hours. It has not been customary to schedule appointments, but now some doctors are attempting to set up regular appointments. The doctor-patient relationship is now coming to resemble the more contractual business-like arrangements between doctor and patient in the West, but even now, some patients bring presents and pay on a more informal basis than in the West. As one dentist jokingly remarked, he was starting to charge his customers standard prices just as if he were running a department store. For doctors, the standardization of prices has been greatly accelerated by the national health insurance which has set up a regular scale of fees. Nevertheless, doctors often do engage in informal visiting with a patient, provided there is no pressing work.

Because of the physical proximity of office to family, the doctor-husband spends considerable time at home, eating and visiting with the family between patients. Hence, he knows more about family activities, and exercises more authority in the home than the salary man or the businessman. For example, he may decide when his nurse or office assistant will help his wife with housework. If his wife is also his nurse, bill collector, and drug mixer, she is likely to be under her husband's constant supervision. Even the wife who does not help in his office and has a maid for the home does not have

the freedom from her husband's wishes that wives of salaried employees or of successful businessmen have. Concurrently, the wife is likely to know more about the activities of her husband, and he can have few monetary secrets from her. She has less reason to worry about her husband's recreational activities and expenses than the wife of the businessman, but she may get tired of her husband's tight supervision of her daily activities and may even wish that he spent less time at home.

Because professionals typically have more money than salaried employees, they are more likely to own the household articles they desire. Nevertheless, the decision to purchase may create more anxiety and worry than in the family of the salary man. Since professionals feel they must rely on their own savings in case of emergency, they are likely to put a large portion of their income into savings for emergencies and every purchase detracts from security. Despite the concern over savings, however, the successful private practitioner is likely to have a better house and furnishings than the average salary man.

To assure themselves of continuing income in old age, most professional families strongly encourage one of their children to take over the practice. The nature of family succession makes the independent professional family pattern most similar to the traditional farm family system. Just as the farm family often had too small a plot of land to divide among several sons, so the independent professional has a practice too small to divide among his children. One son is likely to inherit not only the practice but the home as well, and often this son and his wife and children continue to live with the parents even after the father's retirement. The son who inherits the father's practice is likely to be closer to his parents even before he goes into practice and to be allowed more participation in family decisions and arrangements. The other sons are then forced to go elsewhere and receive less financial help from their parents. Since passing on a practice to a son is a psychological and financial advantage to the father and an even greater financial advantage to the son, it is not surprising that a large percentage of dental and medical students are children of professionals who intend to take over their fathers' practice, or children of nonprofessionals who hope to marry a girl whose father has a practice to pass on. For these reasons, the

stem family remains a viable form among independent professionals.

For the son who succeeds to the father's profession, entrance examinations for a particular school are not overly important; as long as the son can get into any medical or dental school he will be able to continue his father's practice. For other sons who are likely to become salary men, examinations are more important, but professional fathers can finance private education more easily than salary men and therefore examination pressure on their sons is not so great.

Since the independent professional has little hope of being as powerful a community leader as the successful businessman, he is more likely to compare himself with the salary man. He has neither the security nor the short regular hours of the salary man. His style of life tends to be more comfortable than that of the salary man, and he can avoid the long daily commuting. If commuting time is added to working hours, the salary man probably puts in almost as many hours as the professional. The independent professional generally feels that his real advantage lies in his freedom to work when and how he pleases without having continually to strive to satisfy his superiors.

The Shopkeeper

Mamachi has few factories and craft shops compared to some suburbs, and the lower groups on the social ladder consist mostly of shopkeepers. Because the shops carry a limited range of goods, they require little capital or training and offer little security. Because of the difficulties in accumulating capital, obtaining loans, or getting customers beyond easy walking distance, their opportunities for expansion are relatively limited.

The shopkeeper family depends upon a small daily income and must continuously struggle to make ends meet. At the present time, as department stores take over an increasing proportion of retail trade, many small shops are failing, and others are afraid of failing. Because of this fear, even the more successful shopkeepers live on a very tight budget which allows them only the barest necessities.

Although sales are small, shopkeepers work long hours for very little profit. There are some agreements among certain kinds of shopkeepers to close one or two days a month, but competition is still relatively uncontrolled by any association of shopkeepers so

that no one dares to close earlier or remain closed one day a week for fear that some of his business might go elsewhere. Most shopkeepers work a seven-day week, closing for only two or three holidays a year, opening as early as eight every morning and remaining open until ten or eleven in the evening. The work itself is not difficult, and between customers the shopkeeper can relax in his home; but the economic pressure is unrelenting.

Because of these long hours, there is little opportunity for any activity unrelated to the work. Some husbands may go out for recreation at times, if the wife and children can remain to care for the shop. The wife and children may try to prevent his outside activities since it may burden them with extra work and since the husband may spend part of their small income on a whim of his own.

While the relationships with customers are usually cordial, the relationships with other merchants, even between shops in different lines of business, tend to be unfriendly.^[8] In general, shopkeepers seem to feel that the other neighbors, like themselves, live a miserable existence and do not wish to associate themselves with such a life.

Because they can operate the business in his absence, the wife and children are not so completely dependent on the husband for income. In contrast to the small craft shops which require physical labor and ordinarily can be operated only by men, a number of shops are operated by widows and children.

Since the husband and wife normally work together most of the time, they have a much closer relationship than any of the other occupational groups, but not necessarily a happier one. Family pleasures are sacrificed for business considerations, and the wife particularly feels harrassed by the pressures of work and the lack of time for herself or her children. She is envious of salaried men's wives whose days are devoted to the home while she must care for her children only in odd moments. She often carries a small child on her back while working in the store or even nurses between customers. Older children may be left alone in the living quarters while the mother is called out in the front to take care of a customer. Because they are almost always together, the husband has even

[8] In sentence-completion tests given to shopkeepers in another community, the responses to items about neighbors were almost universally critical and bitter.

more opportunity to give orders to his wife than the independent professional does, but shopkeepers' wives, feeling that they make a major contribution to family income, are often free in expressing their opinions to the husbands.

Although the general economic level of shopkeepers is much lower than that of professionals or salary men, some successful shopkeepers with several assistants or boarders from the country can have a style of life not too different from that of independent professionals, except that they have less security and the wife has less time for her children and for community activities.

The poor long-term economic prospects offer little motivation for passing the shops from one generation to the next. Many shops have been opened by migrants from the country who had no contacts for a better job, and a few of them have been opened by elderly people who had no other opportunity for making a living. Even if the business continues long enough to have a successor, it is not large enough for more than a single successor, and there is little enthusiasm for having a child follow this unsatisfactory way of life. If a son is capable enough to get a good job in a factory or to pass school examinations despite the lack of assistance from the family, the parents are pleased and honored. However, because the parents lack the educational background, time, and interest to help a child with his homework and because the children themselves are often busy working in the store, the likelihood of such children doing well on examinations is much less than that of children of salary men of equal intelligence. Many shopkeepers regard their present work as temporary and dream of getting a better job in a small firm or office. Yet they have little basis for expecting that their dreams will be realized, and in the meantime they cling to what little they have.

The Salary Man

The salary men,^[9] who dominate Mamachi both in spirit and num-

[9] No attempt has been made in this chapter to trace in detail all variations of occupational groups living in Mamachi but only to highlight certain major patterns. However, one pattern not discussed separately because of its over-all similarity to the salary man requires special mention because of its numerical frequency: the white-collar worker in the small company.

In contrast to the salary man, the white-collar worker in the small company lacksthe security that comes with a large organization. His wages are generally lower than the salary man's, and the company is not able to provide so many fringe benefits. While he may have a personal relationship with his employer, he is more likely to have changed companies, either because the previous business failed or because he was dissatisfied with the benefits he received. While some small promising concerns attract talented men and are able to advance them more rapidly than the more routinized large organizations, generally the workers have less education and have attended less-well-known schools than the salary men. There is great variation in these small organizations—more than between the standardized and routinized large organizations. It is therefore more difficult to generalize about the white-collar worker in the small concern than about the salary man. Frequently, however, the white-collar worker in the smaller concern is essentially a lower-ranking and less secure salary man, and many comments in the present volume apply to large groups of these men as well as to salary men.

The worker in the large factory, while of lower class standing, has many of the characteristics of the salary man: he has security and regularity, and his family affairs are relatively isolated from company affairs except when he lives in a factory-sponsored apartment house.

To heighten the contrast, I have included small shopkeepers and successful businessmen. There are also middle-size businessmen in Mamachi who fall somewhere in between and are perhaps closer in style of life to the independent professionals than any other group described here.

bers, range from high-level managers to humble office clerks, from the powerful elite to servile office boys. But whatever the variation, they all tend to live an orderly life, made possible by long-term membership in a large and stable bureaucratic organization. A salary man receives his pay regularly and can predict within a close range his position and salary of five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty years hence. He may not be able to name the department of the company in which he will work, but he can predict with such accuracy when he will become section head that he will be bitterly disappointed if he receives even a small promotion only a year later than he had originally expected. Business fluctuations affect the size of his bonus, but they are likely to have little effect on his salary because the company continues to meet its commitments to him even in time of economic difficulty. A typical salary man never receives an offer from another firm, but even if he were to receive an attractive offer from elsewhere, his long-term interests are best served by remaining in the same firm because his salary and benefits rise sharply with the number of years of service and he knows that he will be dismissed from his own company only for the grossest incompetence or misbehavior.

In addition, he knows that in the event of sickness, accident, or retirement, he unquestionably will receive welfare benefits. The

successful independent businessman can provide his own security against sickness and injury by his large income and savings; the independent professional must save carefully for such contingencies; the small shopkeeper has almost no hope of being able to cope with such emergencies. The salary man has security, not through his own savings or power, but through the company which, in effect, gives him a guaranteed income and insurance against various kinds of difficulties that he and his family might encounter.^[10]

The salary man, then, has security, but his stipend is, after all, rather small in comparison with the successful businessman or even in comparison with the independent professional. Hence, he must carefully control his spending. Perhaps the greatest financial difficulty he will face is the period after retirement. His company will provide some retirement benefits, either in the form of a lump sum or pension, but generally these are small, barely enough for minimum subsistence. The salary man usually is required to retire as early as fifty-five or sixty years of age; afterward, to supplement his company's retirement benefits, he must turn to his savings, supplementary income, or his children, although sometimes his company will help him find a part-time job after retirement. A retired teacher, for example, may get a job as a part-time consultant to a book company. A man with rich relatives or friends may get a part-time job working for them. Some of the less successful may open a small shop. Many have no choice but to live with their children.

The daily life of the salary man is the essence of regularity. Although commuting trains generally run to Tokyo every five or seven minutes, the salary man knows precisely on what train he leaves in the morning. Theoretically, he is expected to work overtime with little or no extra compensation whenever his firm requests it, and

[10] In our sentence-completion tests given to other suburban areas of Tokyo, one of the questions concerned sickness. The answers show that the salary man was much less anxious about sickness than the small shopkeeper who has no such security. In case of sickness, 33 of the salaried respondents simply said they would go to the doctor, 4 said that they would be more careful, 7 said that this would give them an opportunity to rest up, and 5 said it would give worry to their family. Of 69 small businessmen, no respondent said he would simply go to a doctor; 23 said that they would be worried, extremely anxious; 9 said that their families would be depressed, and 12 others said that they would be worried about money. The remaining replies covered a wide range, but they generally reflected a much greater concern among the small businessmen about sickness and accidents than among the more secure salaried groups.

he is reluctant to take all the free time to which he is officially entitled. For example, he may be given ten days or two weeks annual vacation, but he ordinarily would not take this much time off. If he were to request his full vacation time, he would be regarded as selfish and disloyal by his co-workers and by his superiors.^[11] However, at the same time companies find it increasingly difficult to ask their salary men to work overtime. The salary men have become used to regular hours and regard overtime work without extra compensation as an encroachment on their freedom. They have no objection to working their eight or nine hours a day Monday through Friday and until mid-afternoon on Saturday. But they resent being made to work longer hours.

It is the salary man who makes the sharpest distinction between working time and free time. In contrast to the businessman who mixes business and leisure, to the small shopkeeper who has almost no leisure, and to the independent professional, whose leisure is determined by the absence of patients, the salary man, like his child in school, generally has set hours so that he knows he can plan certain hours of the day and certain days of the week for himself and his family.

In addition to regularity, security, and free time, the companies provide various side benefits which constitute the joy of living. The salary man attends parties, athletic meets, and even trips sponsored by the company. At least once or twice a year, the company treats its employees to an overnight trip to the country, and on other occasions employees take up voluntary collections for company trips.

The salary man usually cannot afford such luxuries as a car or expensive entertainment, but occasionally he can use the company expense account for such privileges. To an American, an expense account may give added comfort, but to the Japanese salary man it means enjoying pleasures he otherwise could not hope to afford. Even on a personal trip, he can often stay at an inn at a discount obtained through his company. Some government bureaus and large businesses or their unions own inns which can at times be used by

[11] Such practices make it difficult for Japan to enforce "maximum working hour" laws. Even if a firm officially sets a maximum number of hours, the worker would be afraid to complain if the firm in fact required him to work more hours.

employees. If a salary man wishes to entertain his family on a festive occasion, he may use company contacts to rent inexpensively a room in a Kaikan, a special building for just such purposes. (Kaikan are used for meetings and entertainment, much as American hotels are, but since Japanese homes are not considered adequate to entertain a group of any size, Kaikan are used more widely than hotels in America.) Depending on the nature of the company, the salary man can get goods or special services at a discount. A worker in a large electrical industry, for example, can get a big discount for his family and friends on electrical equipment. A man working for Japan Airlines may be entitled to as many as five free rides for himself or a family member per year. Although such benefits are not always available to the average salary man, the fact that the large organizations offer more benefits than smaller enterprises helps explain the enthusiasm which the salary man feels toward his organization and which he manifests by wearing a company badge, carrying a company brief case, and using a company emblem as a tie clasp.

Foreign observers have described Japanese firms as paternalistic since they look after so many aspects of the employee's life. Yet large firms, in at least one fundamental respect, are much less paternalistic than the traditional small enterprises. In the large firm, privileges are established by routine procedures or rules; they are less determined by a particular relationship to an employer, the whims of superiors, or the fluctuation in the company's financial condition. Rather, they tend to be awarded universally to all members of the organization on the basis of seniority and ability.

The salary man's contacts are largely restricted to his work associates and to his own immediate family. He lacks the prestige to have important community positions and the money for anything but the simplest entertainment. He spends many evenings at home with the family, and may go on Sunday with the family to the city, perhaps to visit a large park or a department store. For week-day recreation, he and his work associates stop off after work at their favorite bars, tea or coffee houses, or snack bars. Because he expects to be in the same organization all his life, his closest relationships are with work associates and he considers it of utmost importance to keep their friendship.

The salary man is essentially free when he returns home; home is a place to relax. In some cases the salary man, in contrast to other husbands, may even help his wife, albeit not as much as his American counterpart. He may know how to make his own tea and, in extreme cases, he may even know how to cook. He occasionally may help the children with their baths, fold up his own bedding, do a few shopping errands, and go for walks with the children.

However, the wife generally knows little and cares less about her husband's daily activities at the office. She has virtually no opportunity to go out with her husband to meet other men in the company and their wives. The husband's assignments in the company generally are limited, and the problems in which the husband is interested at work have little meaning to the wife. Even if a curious young wife expresses an interest in her husband's work, he has difficulty explaining his work in a way that she can understand and hence he gets little satisfaction in telling her about the details of his work. Because she is so completely separated from the husband's daily world and he knows so little about her community activities, the area of mutual interest tends to be the children and the relatives.

Although the salary man's wife does not understand precisely what her husband does, unless she has unusually high ambitions she is usually satisfied with her husband's position in a large company. From her point of view, the major advantages of her husband's job are the regular hours and wages. She can count on his being home certain hours and she can count on his income. It is possible for the wife to manage household expenses without worrying about how much the income will be next month, or where it will come from. In comparison to the shopkeeper's wife and even to the independent professional, she is happy that she does not have to subject herself to the indignities of long hours of hard work. She can take care of the children and devote herself to them as she wishes. In comparison with the wives on the farm or the shopkeepers' wives, she lives a life of freedom and luxury. She does not have the same desire as her American counterpart to go out and get a job on her own and she does not have the same kind of feelings about being "just a housewife." She is delighted that she can devote herself to her family with so few outside demands.

In planning the children's future it is the salary man and his family who are most dependent on entrance examinations. Unlike the independent professional or the businessman, who can take the children into his own work regardless of the educational institutions the children attended, and unlike the shopkeeper who has lower aspirations for his children, the salary man's children are dependent upon entrance examinations to universities and companies. Hence, they generally place more pressure on their children and spend more time and energy to prepare them for these examinations.

The salary man's family is likely to be limited to parents and children.^[12] Association with relatives has nothing to do with business and tends to be based more on mutual liking than on reciprocal obligations. In the businessman's family, there is often a business tie with relatives which keeps the children and the parents together. The son who takes over his father's professional practice is also likely to have close business ties with his parents. Children of shopkeepers help their parents when young, and occasionally one child may succeed to the shop. In the salary man's family, however, there is no such economic bond between parents and children. Because a son's life is more determined by his education and the organization to which he belongs than the size of his inheri-

[12] While not analyzed precisely in terms of the occupations mentioned here, the following data, given by the Ministry of Health and Welfare for 1960 is at least suggestive since there is a heavy overlap between "employee" and "salary man." Takashi Koyama in Robert J. Smith and Richard K. Beardsley, eds., Japanese Culture, New York: The Viking Fund, 1962.

The number of children also tends to be smaller in the salary-man family. In 1952, the Institute of Population Problems in the Welfare Ministry noted a national average of 3.5 children per family. Physical laborers averaged 4.7, farmers 4.1, people in commerce and industry 3.2, and white-collar workers 2.9. Cited in Yoshiharu Scott Matsumoto, Contemporary Japan: The Individual and the Group, Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1960.

tance, and the daughter's marriage more dependent on her training and character than the size of the dowry, parents devote themselves to preparing their children properly for work and marriage rather than to accumulating a large inheritance.

Distinctions between the first son and the second son tend to lose significance in the salary man's family. No son succeeds to family headship in any meaningful economic way so that the postwar regulations requiring that inheritance be divided equally among the children poses no problem for the salaried man. Inheritance of family ritual objects generally goes to one son, but a more important problem which leads to a partial preservation of the stem family is the location of elderly parents after retirement. Retirement payments are minimal, and parents usually find it necessary to live with the children if they are to retain the same standard of living after retirement. In addition, elderly couples ordinarily have few opportunities to be integrated into a community except through their children. All children may share the financial responsibility, but the retired parents, and especially a widowed mother, ordinarily continue to live with only one of the children.

The salary man cannot hope to match the style of life of the successful independent businessman. But psychologically he derives a feeling of power by belonging to the large organization. The fact that in Japan a person is so closely identified with the group to which he belongs gives the salary man a backing which enables him in important respects to look down on the businessmen and independent professionals, who have more real power in the local community.

With this brief perspective on the significance of working in a large bureaucratic organization, it is now possible to take up in greater detail the various facets of the life of the salary man. We may begin by considering the process of becoming a salary man, the preparing for and taking of examinations, and the impact of this process on the family. We may then describe the relations between the family and the major subsystems of Japanese society, the internal family processes, and finally consider some implications of the present study for the problem of maintaining order in Japanese society.

Chapter III—
The Gateway to Salary:
Infernal Entrance Examinations

No single event, with the possible exception of marriage, determines the course of a young man's life as much as entrance examinations, and nothing, including marriage, requires as many years of planning and hard work. Because all colleges and high schools, and many private junior high schools, grade schools, and even kindergartens use entrance examinations to select only a small proportion of the applicants, and because examinations are open to all,^[1] the competition is fierce. Passing examinations to a good school seems as difficult to the Mamachi resident as for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. There is virtually no limit to how much one can prepare for examinations. The average child studies so hard that Japanese educators speak of the tragedy of their school system which requires students to sacrifice their pleasures, spontaneity, and sparkle for examination success. These arduous preparations constitute a kind of rite de passage whereby a young man proves that he has the qualities of ability and endurance necessary for becoming a salary man. The Japanese commonly refer to entrance examinations as shiken jigoku which literally means "examination hell."

The Mamachi youth is willing to endure these tortures because if successful he will be able to join a large successful firm where he can remain for life.^[2] To be admitted to such a firm, one must

[1] This is in contrast to many developing countries where for reason of race, language, ethnic discrimination, or financial requirements, the opportunities are limited to certain groups in the population.

[2] Abegglan argues that the key differences between Japanese and American factories is the Japanese factory's life-long commitment to the employee. James G. Abegglan, The Japanese Factory: Aspects of Its Social Organization, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1958.

Recent evidence indicates that there is in fact considerable mobility, even ofpeople working in large firms, but it has greatly declined since the war. Kenichi Tominaga, "Occupational Mobility in Japanese Society: Analysis of the Labor Market in Japan" (mimeographed, 1962). Also, Koji Taira, "Characteristics of Japanese Labor Markets," Economic Development and Cultural Change, 1962, X:150–168.

Even if there is mobility, however, it may be to a company affiliated with the original company or through arrangements made by people within this company.

Even new or expanding firms prefer young people. One Mamachi industrialist opening a new plant kept expanding for three years before the plant reached full size. The new employees were admitted annually, immediately following graduation from high school or junior high school. He felt, like most Japanese employers, that he would have a greater likelihood of getting competent employees this way than by recruiting older people from elsewhere.

The age of Japanese farmers at time of entering a master's service was historically important in determining whether they would be granted highly desired semi-independent status. Those who entered service at a younger age were more likely to be rewarded with such status. Cf. Thomas C. Smith, The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1959.

attend a good university, and to attend a good university one must pass the entrance examination. To pass the entrance examination for a good university one must have good training, and to acquire the good training one must pass the entrance examination to a good high school. In the final analysis, success is determined not by intelligence tests, nor by the school record, nor by the teacher's recommendations but by entrance examinations.

Although it seems a tragedy to the participants, there is a certain logic in how the examination system works. Because the firm commits itself to a young man for life and because business in contemporary Japan is highly competitive, the firm must be careful to select men of unusual promise and ability. The number of men a large firm takes in each year is so large and the number of personal connections of company officials so great that it would be impossible to use personal evaluations as the primary basis to select applicants. One need only imagine the problems of large numbers of company employees each urging the company to support his favorite candidate, to understand the convenience and value of a more universalistic basis of judgment. Because there is such wide agreement in Japanese society as to which universities are most desirable, firms consider the university attended as important or even more important than their own examinations for selecting salary men. Not only the university's relative standing, but even its style of life, has considerable stability over time, because of the practice of inbreeding. Nearly all professors at a major university have received their

training at the same institution, and it is almost unthinkable for a professor to move from one major university to another.^[3] Organizations add to this stability by selecting applicants according to the university's reputation. Young applicants know which universities the firms prefer and choose their university accordingly, thus perpetuating the emphasis on the university attended as a basis for selecting competent young men.

A large company ordinarily hires older workers only when absolutely necessary and even then gives more security and more rapid pay increases to younger employees. Here again, there is a self-fulfilling accuracy to the company's predictions. People who do change companies tend to be opportunistic and less devoted to the company's interests, and the company feels justified in hiring workers directly from college making work experience irrelevant as a criterion.

From the view of the outside observer entrance examinations involve an intensity of affect which cannot be explained only by the desire to obtain a good job. Although the search for security has rational components, as mentioned before, it has been heightened by the many upheavals in the lifetime of the average adult and by the difficulty which the contemporary urban parent had in finding a long-term livelihood when he was young. For the urban resident, a job in a large corporation is as close as one can come to the security that country relatives have by belonging to a household firmly attached to land and the local community. Just as obtaining land is thought to secure the future of a family even in the next generation, so does a job in a large corporation provide long-range security and insure that one's children can be given a proper position in life.

There are now opportunities in Japanese society for adventurous and talented young men, especially in new fields like electronics, advertising, entertainment, and foreign trade. New small companies in these fields can offer higher salaries than larger organizations, but

[3] They may, however, move from this major institution to smaller institutions, and then from there to better universities or back to this major university. It is unlikely, however, that they would ever move to a major university other than the one they attended.

most young men are unwilling to take this risk of less security; however, those who do not pass the entrance examinations to a good university may have no other choice.

But even if one wants to work in a smaller company, attending a good university makes it easier to get a good job and even to change jobs at a later time.^[4] Once a student has passed an entrance examination to a first-rate university, he has no worry about graduating because the university is committed to his success and would dismiss him only for extreme misbehavior or incompetence. Compared to American state universities, which dismiss a large proportion of first-year students, the number of students failed from Japanese universities is negligible. Moreover, students do not transfer from one university to another. Being admitted to a given university becomes, in effect, a basis of ascription which provides fairly clear limits to one's later mobility.

Although students in a good university may still be concerned about being accepted by the best possible organization, the range of differences in status between the corporations or government bureaus they will join is relatively narrow. The room for achievement within the company is also relatively minor compared to whether one attended an outstanding university and whether one was admitted to a large reputable organization. To a large extent advancement within the firm depends simply on the date of entry into the organization. All new members of a company are admitted on the same day each year, go through the same general training program, and are treated as equals in most matters, such as salary and position. Even when employees begin to get different functional assignments, seniority remains relatively more important than skill and ability in determining rank and salary. An employee's standing vis-à-vis outsiders is determined when he enters the firm, and is little affected by the minor differentiations of status within the firm.

Even if some students from a lesser university are admitted to a

[4] The importance of the university attended is clearly greater for a salary man than for independent professionals or independent businessmen. The success of the young man who takes over his father's practice or business is determined not by the school attended but the size of his father's enterprise and his own ability. However, if family prestige or tradition is tied with a given university, it may be important for prestige purposes to attend that university regardless of economic significance.

good company or government office, they still may be at a disadvantage compared to those who attended the better universities. While some say that cliques of graduates of a given high school or university are weaker than before the war, fellow alumni of the same university are known to show preferences for their fellow graduates. It is assumed that those who attended a certain university (and sometimes even a certain department within a university) will feel mutual loyalty and share similar attitudes, making it possible for them to work together harmoniously despite differences of opinion and temperament. Especially in large government bureaus, acceptance in informal circles and even rate of advancement may be affected by the university one attended.

This analysis has focused on the boy and his problem of entering a large organization, but similar considerations apply to girls even though their career is marriage. Girls generally worry less about examinations than boys. Some people even question whether a girl who has attended the most competitive coeducational universities will make a good wife, and many girls prefer not to go to a coeducational school where they would have to study harder to keep up with the boys. But the better girls' schools are regarded as highly desirable, and these schools also require entrance examinations. Marital choice even in urban Japan is still decided in large part on the basis of objective criteria rather than simply on the diffuse relationship between a young man and a young lady, and the university or school attended has become an even more important criterion than ascriptive considerations like family background. Indeed, a boy's family proudly speaks of marrying a girl who attended a well-known girls' school just as her family will speak proudly of a young man who attended a good university. Thus, examinations are crucial to the girl's as well as to the boy's career.

In the view of the Mamachi resident, one's station in life is not predetermined by birth, but it is determined by the time one has his first job. For those who aspire to the new middle class, the opportunities for mobility are highly compressed into one period of life, late adolescence. The intense concentration of pressure for finding one's position in life during this brief time is undoubtedly related to the fact that Japan is the one country in the world where the suicide rate is high in the late teens and early twenties and declines

during middle age.^[5] Success or failure in finding the right opening at the time of college admission is considered permanent, and failure or fear of failure is disturbing even to the most talented.

Preparing for and Taking Examinations

Mamachi residents are careful in their selection of schools, and the range and variety of possible choices are enormous. At the apex of educational life are the great national universities, such as Tokyo University, and the well-known public high schools, such as Hibiya and Shinjuku, which students of all social classes can afford to enter if they pass the examinations. Next are the good private universities and the attached private elementary, junior, and senior high schools. Entrance examinations for these schools are almost as difficult as those for the best public institutions but tuition is higher, so that only well-to-do students can attend. Thirdly, there are public and private schools of lesser quality ranging from expensive schools which few salary men can afford, to public and less expensive private schools widely attended by children of salary men. At the bottom of the scale are the local public elementary and junior high schools, the only schools which do not require entrance examinations.

All students are required by law to complete junior high school, but any student who wishes to go beyond must take examinations. (The length of compulsory education is not determined by age but by number of years [nine] of schooling. No student is failed. One might speculate that failing students would arouse the same kind of threat to group solidarity as discharging a man from a firm.) It is assumed that once a student has been admitted to a junior or senior high school or college, he will remain in the same school until he graduates, but it is possible to change school systems at the time of each graduation. Although normally a student takes examinations in order to continue after each successive graduation, certain school systems, known as escareetaa (escalator) schools since students can

[5] It is not claimed that pressure to find the proper job or marriage opening is the only cause of the high suicide rate, but in the minds of Mamachi residents and in the popular press, there is a large connection between the two. On the basis of projective tests, Professor George De Vos has suggested that suicide in Japan is also closely related to the feeling of loneliness as a result of breaking the intense parent-child bond at the same age.

move up within the same system from kindergarten to college, have only nominal examinations for students within the same system. When a child is admitted to an outstanding kindergarten such as those associated with Keio University (private) and Ochanomizu Women's University (public), he is thought to be on the escareetaa and established for life. Thus, a heavy premium is placed on getting into the kindergarten of the escareetaa schools, and the schools charge higher tuition for kindergarten than for the upper levels. The applicants to the best kindergartens are so numerous that difficult examinations cannot sort out the applicants adequately, and a lottery also is required to select the favored few. Recently, special schools have been opened in Tokyo to prepare three- and four-year-olds for the kindergarten entrance examinations.

Occasionally a Mamachi child takes these difficult kindergarten examinations, but the chance of passing is so slight, private-school costs are so high, and the daily commuting to Tokyo on public transportation is so taxing for mother and child that nearly all Mamachi children go to the local kindergartens and elementary schools. Mamachi families then concentrate on preparing their children for entrance examinations for the better junior and senior high schools and colleges, which are, by and large, in Tokyo.

Junior and senior high-school entrance examinations are not thought to be important for their own sake, but because they permit a child to get the better training that makes it easier to pass an examination to a difficult college. Because college entrance is considered so crucial, many students who fail the examination the first time may choose to wait a year and try the examination again. These students, not attached to any school or university, are called ronin , the name formerly used for the lordless samurai. Some persistent young people who have their hopes set on a certain school and whose families can afford to continue supporting them, may attempt the examinations several years before being admitted, in the meantime attending special preparatory schools.

Examinations, by and large, measure educational achievement. Because they must be given to large numbers, they consist mostly of objective factual questions of the multiple-choice variety. At the kindergarten level they may test the child's knowledge of the Japanese syllabary, perhaps a few characters, and elementary arithmetic.

Junior-high and high-school examinations generally test science, Japanese language and literature, mathematics, history, and English. College examinations are similar but require more technical and specialized knowledge, especially in foreign languages.

A student ordinarily begins to prepare seriously about a year or two before the examinations that take place in January or February before the new school year begins in April. He studies several hours after school every day, and in the summer vacation preceding the February exams, he spends most of the day and sometimes part of the night in study. He often gives up movies, hobbies, and other recreation during this year of preparation. Athletes usually are advised to drop their sports activities, and music and dance lessons ordinarily are suspended.

In the year preceding the examination the mother spends much time investigating expenses, entrance requirements, and the schools' records in successfully placing their graduates. She visits schools, reads advice columns and books, and gathers information from friends. In addition, she spends much time consulting with her child's teacher and other parents in order to assess her own child's abilities. Naturally she wants her child to get into the best possible school, but this requires strategy and risk-taking. A child can take as many as three or four examinations if they are not offered on the same date, but it is seldom possible to take more. If a child fails all these, he may be out of luck. In addition, the process of taking examinations is tiring for the student and his mother, and they frequently require money payments. If a student tries to take three or four examinations during the same season, he may be so exhausted and discouraged from the first ones that he will not perform well on the later ones. Hence it is important for the mother to assess her child's abilities accurately and have the child take the most appropriate examinations.

The mother does most of the ground work but she must make sure that the father and the child approve her choices. The child's veto of a school is usually final, for while the mother often persuades a child to accept her choice, without his co-operation and hard work, the mother can have little hope of success. The mother does not want to risk being solely responsible for the choice of schools in case the child fails, and she is likely to consult with the father.

Indeed, the family is likely to have frequent and sometimes heated discussions during the period of decision-making.

By late January these initial decisions are made, and the process of application begins. A candidate can apply only during an allotted two or three days. The mother applies in person, taking health certificates, school records, and the entrance fees. At almost every school on the first day of applications, there will be a few mothers who have waited in line overnight with their small snack and cushions, so that they will be among the first to apply. These mothers know that schools state that arrival time makes no difference. But apparently they hope that they may impress the school administration with their seriousness of purpose, that the low number on the application blank may be lucky, or that their child may be called for the examination early in the day and hence be somewhat fresher in taking the examinations. Their early arrival simply may reflect anxiety and excitement and a desire to get the application process over with. While most Mamachi mothers think it somewhat foolish to wait overnight, nevertheless many start out on the first train leaving Mamachi, at about four o'clock in the morning, on the day when applications are due. Even then, there may be a long line when they arrive, and those who have enough courage to come later in the day may have a wait of several hours before filling out the application. A mother who is going through the application procedure for the first time or who is applying for her only son is more likely to be among the first in line. If a woman is a "beteran" (veteran) she may be confident enough to come much later.^[6] Sometimes it is necessary for the children to go along with the mother for applications, but for a college application the child probably will go by himself. This same standing in line may be done three or four times, depending on the number of applications a person is making.

If a personal interview is required at the elementary and junior high school age, the mother and child will be concerned about the impressions they make. It may be desirable to bring along letters of introduction from people who have important positions or some

[6] One is struck by the similarities between the mother's attitudes about giving birth and about having her child take an examination. In both, there exists a great amount of folklore and advice constituting a special subculture passed down from veteran to newcomer. In the examination, however, one's odds for success are much lower, and the amount of effort required is much greater.

personal connection with the faculty, administration, or Parent-Teachers Association. Although a mother and child carefully plan what to say during this interview, it is not uncommon for the child to be frightened and to have difficulty expressing himself in the interview. Even if the mother and child consider the examination more crucial than the interview, they approach the interview as if it were of the greatest importance.

The month or so before and during examinations is commonly known as "examination season." The child studies very long hours, and if the family can afford it, a tutor comes to the house regularly. The child's household responsibilities are taken over by his brothers and sisters who are warned not to interrupt his study. In extreme cases the mother may being him meals on a tray, sharpen his pencils, and stand ready to serve his every need. His father may come home from work early to help with the studying if the tutor is not available. The family is collectively on tiptoe for fear of disturbing the young scholar. They become almost hypochondriacal, and the slightest sign of a cold is taken seriously as a possible hindrance to examination success. Community activities and social visiting come to a complete halt, so absorbed are the families in their children's preparation. On street corners, at the neighborhood shops, in business offices, and at the dinner table, conversation revolves about the one topic of most immediate concern to all—examinations.

During the weeks around examinations, mothers of applicants try to avoid meeting other mothers and friends. Usually they leave their homes only for necessary shopping or to make arrangements for school applications. If they should meet an acquaintance accidentally, they attempt to steer conversation away from the delicate question of their child's examinations. Since a family will be embarrassed if it becomes known that their child has been refused by a school, the mothers usually do not identify the schools to which they are applying. If it is obvious to the other party, they explain that they do not expect to succeed for they have not prepared properly and they really are trying to get into another school (to which they are almost certain to be admitted). Sometimes a family denies that their child is taking a certain examination only to be discovered on the scene of the exam by the very friend who questioned them.

Children also watch closely to see who is missing from school on an examination day to ascertain which schoolmates are taking which exams. On the whole, children are more open and direct in talking about examination plans than their parents, and they often report their findings to their mothers.

Mothers accompany children to all but the college examinations to give them moral support. If the father can take off from work or if the examination is early enough in the day, he may accompany the child in place of the mother. There is a waiting room close to the examination room where parents can sit while the children are taking the examination. A number of mothers reported that they were unable to sleep on the night before the examination. By the end of a series of two or three examinations over a period of eight to ten days, mothers as well as children are so exhausted that they often have to go to bed for a few days.

There is a hiatus of several days before the results of the examinations are announced. If a child takes examinations for two or three different schools, he may hear the results of the first examination before he takes the last. Since the report of the first examination is the first real indication for the family of the child's standing, the results have an exaggerated importance. The mother whose child has passed the first examination generally is jubilant. Conversely families with a failure are extremely gloomy and pessimistic. Tensions increase as families await the results. Most people will not telephone or communicate with examination families until after the results have been announced. A few mothers and children cannot resist talking about the examinations, and worries are at least shared and discussed within the family and among some friends and relatives. Some mothers have said that there is such an ominous weighty feeling during this time that they would almost prefer to hear negative results rather than continue the uncertainty.

The dramatic climax comes with the announcement of the results. Usually grades are not mailed, but the names or code names of successful candidates are posted at the school. Sometimes the names of successful candidates for well-known schools and universities are announced on the radio. Even if a family has heard the results on the radio they also check the posted list to assure themselves that there has not been an error.

The date the list is posted usually is known long in advance, but the time of day often is indefinite. Crowds gather as much as twenty-four hours before the auspicious hour. Frequently parents will go because children might have difficulty controlling their emotions in public. Even the father may take off a day or two from work at this time to check the examination results or to be of moral support to the mother and children. People concerned about controlling their emotions go to see the bulletin board during the night. Some, attempting to be casual, wait several hours after posting to check the results.

If a child has succeeded, he and his parents are only too glad to tell the results, although they will attempt to show the proper reserve. They may whisper the result saying "please don't tell anybody else," but their smiles are irrepressible and there can be no doubt about their satisfaction. If a mother looks troubled, friends do not ask the results. Indeed, the mother of an unsuccessful candidate may cry and sleep for several days before going out to face friends. Although to my knowledge there has been no suicide in Mamachi in recent years as a result of examinations, stories of juvenile suicide as a result of examination failure are widely publicized in the mass media and well known by all those taking examinations.

Because there are so many schools in the Tokyo area and because suburban children attend so many different schools, it is rare for more than two or three students from the same grade school to continue to pass examinations for the same junior high school, high school, and college. Even if two friends should intend to take examinations for the same school in order to continue together in junior high school or high school, if one passes and the other fails, the one who succeeds will not let friendship stand in the way of attending the better school. While at first they may attempt to keep up the friendships while attending different schools, the difference in status leads to embarrassment, and the ties generally become less meaningful.

Since a large portion of Japanese universities is in Tokyo, many ambitious children from all over the country come to stay with relatives in Tokyo and Mamachi or other suburbs while taking the examinations. Although it may take forty-five minutes or an hour to commute from Mamachi to Tokyo for the examinations, inn

houses are expensive and relatives in Mamachi can take the responsibility for comforting the child and seeing that he gets sufficient food and rest. The niece, nephew, or cousin probably will come to Mamachi a few days before the examination to get accustomed to the new environment and to have a good rest for a night or two before taking the examination. He may also stay on a few days after until he learns the result, but he usually is encouraged to return to his parents immediately after the examination to comfort him in case of failure. Some of the universities, at the request and expense of the student, are willing to send a telegram, indicating whether he has passed or failed. This telegram usually does not state the examination result directly, but in code. For example, a telegram indicating failure might read something like "The cherry blossoms are falling." Despite the attempt to state the result in as nice a way as possible, failure is none the less hard to bear. In other cases, the suburban family will find out the result and then telephone the rural relatives. Several families have indicated the sorrow they felt when they telephoned to pass on the news of failure, and found the phone answered by the applicant who had been waiting beside the phone.

Even families whose children are not taking the examinations cannot avoid the excitement of examination season. Notices of examinations appear everywhere in the newspapers and the weekly magazines. News reels show pictures of applicants waiting in line or taking examinations. Experts appear on television to give advice to parents or to evaluate the implications of the examination system for Japanese society. Desks, study supplies, and guides to examination success are widely advertised. Statistical reports in newspapers and in magazines indicate precisely how many students from which high schools enter which colleges. Any middle-class parent can rank the first few high schools by the number of their graduates admitted to Tokyo University, and also the leading junior high schools by the number of graduates who enter the best senior high schools. Advice columns for mothers of younger children give hints ranging from ideas for room arrangements to suggestions for motivating the child to study and for dealing with the accompanying tensions. Some people cut out these articles and save them.

Even when no child in a family is taking examinations, the par-

ents may be called upon by relatives, friends, and even acquaintances for assistance in getting a child admitted to a good school. Because of their influence, friends of school-board members, principals, prominent school teachers, PTA officers, and alumni of a particular school, employers or superiors at work are particularly likely to receive such requests. Usually they try to be helpful to close friends and to others for whom they feel some fondness or obligation, and even if they refuse a request, they usually make at least a token effort to help. Knowing the difficult problem of gaining admission, they generally want to be as helpful as possible although they resent requests from some people who never feel the obligation to return favors.

Families with means may employ students from the most famous universities to tutor their children for examinations. Tutoring younger children provides college students with their best and most common opportunities for arubaito (part-time work, from the German word "Arbeit"). Students at lesser universities are less in demand and may have to be content with smaller fees. Wealthy families may use several students as tutors, each in his special field, while the ordinary salary-man family at best is able to afford a tutor only one or two nights a week. Nevertheless, even the middle-class family tries to find a tutor specializing in the subject in which their child plans to major. The tutor is generally of the same sex as the student and often provides a kind of role model, but the focus of their discussion is on preparation for examinations. Families which cannot afford a private tutor for a year or two before examinations will try to hire a tutor just before examinations or at least to join with other families in hiring a tutor for a small group of children preparing for the same examination. College students in need of money are pleased to find work as tutors since it is related to their field of study, and they generally have more free time once they themselves have been admitted to college.

When confronted with the question of why examination pressure is so intense, many Japanese respondents answered that it is because Japan is a small crowded country with few opportunities for success. This answer unquestionably highlights a factor of crucial importance, but it does not explain everything. There are many universities in Japan which are not difficult to enter, and there are op-

portunities for success aside from examinations. There are other crowded countries where opportunity is limited but examination pressure much less severe. Implicit in this response is the feeling that one's opportunity to achieve security and social mobility is highly compressed into one brief period of life, and many explicitly recognize that the best way for a commoner to rise on the social ladder is to enter a famous university. At least two other social systems, the family and the school, seem important for understanding the full force of this pressure. The importance of these two systems, like the life-time commitment to a firm, are further manifestations of a striking characteristic pervading Japanese social structure: the high degree of integration and solidarity within a given group.

The Family's Contribution:
Maternal Involvement

Success or failure on examinations is not only the success or failure of an individual but of his family. The self-sacrifice, anxiety, excitement, and happiness or sorrow that attend examinations are fully shared by the parents and siblings. It is assumed that a child is successful in large part because of his parents' help, and community recognition for success or failure is accorded to the parents as much as to the child himself. But beside the applicant himself, the most involved person is the mother. In listening to a mother describe examinations, one almost has the feeling that it is she rather than the child who is being tested.

Beginning in first grade a child brings a book bag home every day so that he can get his mother's help with the daily homework assignments. Even if a tutor is hired for brief periods, the ultimate responsibility for helping with (or, from the child's view, hounding about) the homework is the mother's. The work usually is sufficiently difficult so that the child cannot do it without his mother's assistance, and the typical mother cannot do the work without some preparation on her own. Because most Mamachi mothers have completed only elementary school, or at most the prewar "girls' school" (equivalent to eleven grades under the new system), and because postwar educational reforms brought great changes in course content and methods, it is not easy for mothers to help children with homework,

even in elementary school. Many mothers read their children's books and study other books while the children are in school, and others consult with tutors or school teachers to keep up with their children's work. It is a challenge for the mother to keep one step ahead of the child—a challenge these mothers take seriously.

The mother wants the child to succeed not only for his sake, but for her own sake. At school meetings, in front of an entire group of mothers, a teacher often will praise or criticize a mother for her child's performance. On certain occasions a mother is expected to stand behind the child while her child performs and other children and mothers look on, and the comments about performance are as likely to be directed to the mother as to the child since it is expected that the mother will see that the child follows the teacher's instruction when practicing at home.

In formal and informal gatherings of mothers, children's performance often becomes the focus of attention. Most children wear uniforms of their school, which signify status as clearly as military uniforms. Some schools post on a bulletin board the class position of all students or seat students according to rank. But even if schools make no such announcement, most parents have a good idea of the relative standing of their children. When mothers of classmates get together, they generally know roughly the academic standing of each other's children, and mothers whose children are doing poorly are likely to listen carefully to mothers whose children are doing well. Mothers of successful children, even when discreet, indirect, and modest, have difficulty refraining from bragging about their children's successes. They may, for example, mention casually that their child is planning to specialize in a certain field since his teacher has praised him; or they may describe some technique in dealing with the child which seems to have worked since the child is doing so well; or they may encourage another mother, describing how their child once reacted negatively to mother's pressure but then suddenly began performing well.

The importance of the child's performance for determining the mother's status is reflected, for example, in the problems that schools have faced in trying to introduce special classes for retarded children. The parents have been resistant to sending their children to special classes because of the stigma attached. They have made

special appeals for permission to allow their children to attend regular classes, because it would be so embarrassing to them to have their children attend special classes.

Even the families of high social standing are not immune from competition between mothers over children's success. In some ways it is even more difficult for upper-class mothers since they expect their children to do better than other children. Some have withdrawn their children from music lessons rather than face the wound to their pride when their children were not doing as well as some lower-status children.

While some status adjustments are required of mothers as a result of their children's examinations, these adjustments are usually minor since the family and community, through rank in class and practice examinations, already have a fairly good estimate of how a child will do in his examinations. Nevertheless there are always surprises, and mothers always entertain the hope that their child will be admitted to a difficult school, and that their community prestige will rise accordingly.^[7]

So closely are mother and child identified that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the child's success from the mother's success or even the child's work from the mother's work. During summer vacation grade-school children are required to do daily assignments and given optional projects to hand in when school reopens. It is common knowledge that good projects praised by teachers are done in part or almost entirely by the mothers. Although most mothers are critical of "mother's projects," still they feel they must keep up with the Gombeis (Joneses) by helping their children. The danger, clearly recognized by many mothers, is that the mother may exert herself so much that education may be more for the mother than for the child. Many thoughtful mothers are concerned lest their children become too dependent on them for assistance with homework and lose their own initiative. However, most mothers do not

[7] It may be argued that because the mother's status depends so much on the success of the child, the status gap between the mother and the child is never permitted to become large. The problem sometimes found in the United States, where the status gap between a lower-status mother and a higher-status child has created serious strains in the mother-child relationship, would seem to be less likely to lead to a break in Japan where the mother usually continues to adjust to the child's new position and keeps in close contact with his associates.

think that helping the child with homework interferes with the child's learning. They feel, rather, that the child needs guidance and that their assistance makes it possible for the child to learn more adequately and rapidly.

While the conscientious mother is very ambitious for the child, she is aware that if she pushes too hard, the child will resist. Yet some mothers become so anxious to be praised before a group that they will drive their children in order to achieve rapid success. Even if the mother uses more subtle techniques and tries to strike a balance between her own ambitions and the child's ability, there is no question that her enormous involvement in examination success will get communicated to the child.

The School's Contribution:
Teacher Involvement

The Japanese Ministry of Education contributes indirectly to examination anxieties by pressing schools to raise their standards, and the schools in turn pass the pressure on to the families. At least since the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese government has stressed the importance of education in the development of a modern nation. The Ministry of Education continually compares Japan's level of educational achievement with that of other countries and has set high standards in an effort to make her students' achievements as high as those of any in the world. Thus, all students are expected to study a foreign language (generally English) in junior high school; a mathematics student is expected to complete calculus in high school.

One of the most lively public issues in recent years has been the question of whether there should be teacher-rating systems. Although the origins of and interest in the issue are partly in the realm of politics, its supporters have been arguing that in order to raise the standards of education, it is necessary to rate each teacher's competence. Many teachers have complained that this would permit school authorities to evaluate teachers by their political attitudes under the guise of efficiency ratings. Regardless of the political aspects of the question, this also reflects the seriousness with which the government considers the problems of raising the level of education.

In order to raise standards, many educators have encouraged the

publication of materials evaluating each school's performance record, and newspapers and magazines diligently publish this information. Even educators who lament the enormous pressure placed on the children have recognized that posting of such results is useful in getting the schools to do the job more adequately.

Especially in private schools both teachers and students feel closely identified with their school. Since the students in the urban areas can choose between a number of junior and senior high schools and colleges, there is intense competition, especially among private schools, for better students. Schools enjoy a feeling of importance derived from people clamoring to gain admission, and a school without large numbers of applicants standing in lines would be regarded as a school of little consequence. This competition between schools tends to be more open than in the United States, and competition on the athletic field pales in comparison with the competition in placing graduates. Indeed, just as the American football coach is judged on the basis of the number of games his team wins, so the Japanese high-school principal is judged by the proportion of graduates who go on to the better universities; he in turn judges the teachers by the same standards.

The Japanese teacher does not make a sharp distinction between specific classroom duties and a general responsibility for his pupils. In a sense, he is required to take his troubles home with him. School teachers are expected to be available during vacations, and the school principal has the right to require them to report for work at any time. Even during summer vacation, a teacher will be expected to come to school at least two or three times to evaluate the progress of children's homework, and to take his turn supervising children's play activities.

The teacher to some extent is held responsible even for the safety and behavior of a child outside school. For example, one school principal said that a major share of his time is spent in handling children who get in trouble in the community. In the mind of Mamachi residents, the parents are partly to blame for a delinquent child, but the school is also responsible for not having provided better moral training. Although most parents are opposed to the reintroduction of formal moral training, the school does have a

responsibility for inculcating basic moral virtues. For example, the teacher must see that girls do not wear make-up, that they have simple hair-dos and no permanents, that they wear proper uniforms, and, at some private schools, that they do not walk with boys. The teacher sends memos to parents, particularly at vacation times, outlining the procedures the parents should follow to insure that their child has a healthful vacation and listing places considered inadvisable for the child to visit. It is only natural that the teacher's responsibility extends to cover examination success.

On the numerous occasions when the mother goes to visit the school, she shows respect for the teacher and takes his advice seriously. Many a mother, relatively calm before going to a PTA meeting, returned concerned about whether she was doing enough to help the child and resolved to follow the teacher's advice more closely. She will, of course, show deference to the men teachers, who comprise as much as one-half of the elementary-school staff and an even larger proportion of the co-educational junior and senior high school staffs. But in addition, because the mother's own education is often inadequate, she must look to the teacher for guidance in helping her child. While mothers collectively may complain that certain teachers are not giving their children adequate training, by and large they feel grateful for the teachers' help, especially for the many teachers who provide extra tutoring in preparation for examinations. Mothers express their appreciation often, sometimes by means of presents. Knowing how much they depend on him and how important examination success is to a child's career, a teacher cannot help but feel a keen sense of responsibility to the mothers and children he advises.

When we asked families about the importance of teachers' recommendations for university admissions, we were told that they carry almost no weight since it is assumed that the teacher will be trying to push his own pupil ahead. His recommendation is more likely to be an exercise in flattery than an objective appraisal. It would be almost like asking a parent to write a recommendation for his own child.

The school teacher who wants to please his superiors and who takes seriously his responsibility for his pupils' futures will want to

do everything he can to insure the child's success. This inevitably means that he will advise the mother to have the child study harder and to sacrifice other activities that might interfere with studying.

Mitigating the Harshness

The cause of examination worry is not only the finality of the results but the fact that examinations are impersonal and therefore unpredictable. The generation which came to the city from rural areas relied on personal contacts as a basis of finding positions, and Mamachi parents still consider personal contacts a much safer way to find a good job. By having properly placed friends and keeping up a good relationship with them, one previously could be virtually assured of success. But there is no such assurance when one is evaluated on the basis of competency by some impersonal authority. Examination questions might be different from what one had anticipated, or one might not feel well, or one's nervousness might inhibit performance.

Some families, unwilling to take this risk, try to find other paths to success. Genuine alternatives to examinations are, however, extremely few. One alternative is enrolling a child in a private "escalator" school permitting him to advance from kindergarten or elementary school through a reputable university with only nominal examinations. But these private "escalator" schools are so expensive and require close family connections with such prominent people that virtually no Mamachi salaried family has given this possibility serious consideration.

Another alternative is for a family to arrange for their son to be taken directly into a large organization regardless of educational background. Most schools leave a few openings for students who do not pass the examinations, and the selection of these students is generally made by a committee of prominent people in the school; and this permits a few students to be admitted on the basis of particularistic claims on the school, either because the parent is an alumnus, has contributed financially to the school, or has a friend influential in school affairs. However, there is considerable competition for these openings. The family's strategy is to get the person most powerful in the selection committee to make the most forceful appeal for the admission of their child. To do this the family tries to

do anything it can to increase the influential person's personal motivation, because of personal liking or feeling of obligation, so he will make this vigorous appeal to the committee. A standard way to establish such a kone (connection) is to get one's friends who know such influential people to try and persuade them to help out. Often parents bring presents to influential school officials. Some junior and senior high-school principals receive two or three presents for every opening, and even if they announce that they accept no presents, they often find it difficult to refuse. Parents are thoughtful in selecting unique, appropriate, carefully wrapped gifts and presenting them in a polite way. School officials try to avoid any feeling of obligation to these families, but they do honor some obligations, especially if the applicant also is relatively competent. While principals and important teachers or school officials sometimes derive substantial economic gain from such presents, there were no indications of their misusing their position for purposes of personal gain. The responsibility they incur as a result of receiving presents causes considerable discomfort, and there is undoubtedly a large measure of truth when they say they prefer not to receive them.

The foresighted mother sometimes begins courting potentially influential people years in advance, offering generous presents and a variety of personal services. If such a friend later gives assistance in getting a child admitted, the mother feels an obligation and expresses appreciation for many years afterward.

To be really influential these claims on particularistic relations must be more than simple introductions because any salary man can get some kind of introduction. But even with the most influential friends who will exert themselves most forcefully, one cannot entirely escape the importance of examinations. The lower the examination score, the more difficult for an influential person to get his favorite candidate accepted by the rest of the committee, and if the examination score is too low, no introduction will help. Furthermore, the child who enters with a low examination score is often at a disadvantage vis-à-vis his classmates, and some children who would use connections prefer to study hard and take the examinations so they will not be accused of succeeding because of their family's wealth or influence.

Money, like introductions, can be used to supplement examination results, and within a limited range may be used instead of examination scores. A student who did fairly well on examinations can attend a private school which has a high entrance fee and tuition and is comparable in quality to a public institution which has slightly more difficult examinations.

Some wealthy parents who wish to avoid possible embarrassment by open competition with ordinary families often plan to use private schools and connections from the beginning. But salaried families cultivate these ties only as an alternative in case the child does not pass the more difficult examinations at a public school.

If a family cannot afford the better private schools, there is still the possibility of sending the child to a local public school which happens to have an unusually good reputation. Since a local public school is open only to children living in that particular school district, sending a child to a school in another district is, strictly speaking, illegal. Yet this practice is so common that principals from different school districts occasionally meet to discuss the problem of some school districts bearing the burden of financing the education of children in other districts. Various informal estimates suggest that in certain school districts, one-tenth or more of the students actually reside in another school district.

It happens that Mamachi's elementary school is known as a fairly good school so that some parents in nearby school districts enroll their children in the Mamachi elementary school, but some Mamachi mothers similarly enroll their children in such a public junior high school in Tokyo. Even though the differences between these local schools may be minor, they are treated as if they were major since just such small differences may determine whether a student passes or fails a later examination. It is rare for a family to move to one of these school districts, but it is common for the mother and child to register as living at the home of some friend, relative, or acquaintance in that school district.

Many school officials and teachers feel sympathy for the earnest young children desiring to get ahead and are reluctant to raise objection to illegal crossing of school districts. In contrast to the city officials, school officials may be pleased about the desirability of their school and willing to take these ambitious children, so long as city

officials raise no objections. At times, city officials concerned about the heavy school expenditures will carry out an investigation and ungraciously send the child back to his own school district.

Although most people are aware of the problem of crossing of school districts, and although high registration rates of mothers and children of certain ages in well-known school districts are sufficient evidence of the problem, investigations are relatively rare. If there were to be a search, the mother would probably explain that due to domestic quarrels or illness, she and her child have in fact taken up residence apart from the husband in that particular school district. The family will have left clothing, a school uniform, and some school supplies with friends and relatives whose address they are using in case a law officer came to investigate. While this practice makes it more difficult to prove violations, many potential violators are caught at the time of registration, and many run the risk of being thrown out and then having difficult entering another school.

At the college level the only alternative for a student who fails his examinations is to become a ronin for a year or so. It is not especially embarrassing to be a ronin for one year, and many famous universities have stories of students who entered on their fifth, sixth, or even tenth attempt. But because the typical salary-man family has difficulty supporting the student for the extra year while studying for examinations, some ronin must compromise by working part-time while preparing for examinations. The status of a ronin is filled with anxiety. The student who has already failed one entrance examination generally feels somewhat more desperate, and doubt about success overshadows the entire period of ronin ship. Many families will take a second failure as clear indication that a child will not make a first-rate university, so that a first-year ronin may feel that he has only one more try. As a consequence, few families are able to tolerate and afford more than one year of ronin ship, and a student reluctantly may enroll in the university which was his second or third choice rather than become a second-year ronin .

It should be clear, then, that it is difficult for a salaried family to escape entirely from judgment by examination. A higher-status family, by wealth and community prestige, can often manage to pave the way to success for a child who does not perform well on examinations. But the typical salaried family lacks the resources to

command these alternatives. At best it can use its savings and personal contacts to enable the child to attend an institution slightly better than he would by relying solely on examinations. The salaried family is more likely to concentrate its most valuable resources, the mother's time and the family's savings on helping to prepare the child more adequately for examinations.

The Hypertrophy of Examinations

From an analysis of the various institutions and practices associated with entrance examinations, it is possible to understand why entrance examinations should receive such emphasis. Yet Mamachi residents feel that it has gone entirely too far and that they have become enslaved to the system. They feel sorry for the child who is forced to lead a restricted life deprived of jovial fellowship, music appreciation, sports, hobbies, movies, television, and pleasure reading. One girl, for example, a year before taking a college entrance examination, said that her leisure time activities consisted of occasionally stopping off at a department store for a few minutes on the way home from school. This asceticism, so closely associated with the traditional peasant's outlook, is endured because of the hope of living an easier life later. Preparation for examinations is painful not only because one must make such sacrifices but also because until one has finally passed entrance examinations there is always the anxiety and fear that one may not make the grade.

There is no question that during this period of asceticism these students absorb an amazing amount of facts. Not only do they master their own language, literature, and history, but they also learn to read English and become familiar with the history and culture of Europe and America. Course requirements in mathematics and science are at a higher level than those of comparable American schools.

But at the same time, students must sacrifice types of scholarship not measured by entrance examinations. For example, since the examination is written and not oral, a pupil studying English does not practice ordinary conversation, but concentrates on reading, on fine points of grammar, and, in some cases, on pedantic expressions which are likely to appear on the examination. High-school teachers

complain that they cannot get students interested in laboratory work connected with science because the examinations measure only what can be read and answered. Since examinations cover a full range of subjects, a child who begins to show a strong interest in one field usually will be encouraged by his teacher and his parents to broaden his interests so that he can get fully prepared also in other subjects. Since multiple-choice examinations cannot measure original and creative thought, the emphasis is placed on memorization.

Even if the students who do not take entrance examinations imitate the study patterns of examinees, they feel relatively deprived—falling behind their peers in preparation for success in life and neglected by the teachers at school. Since no students are failed, poorer students are supposed to be given special supplementary classes. The poor students often complain that, instead, supplementary classes are given to good students preparing for difficult examinations. While the schools are supposed to help students who wish to get part-time jobs and to help them find employment after the ninth grade, those students likewise feel that they are slighted because the school is more interested in placing the continuing students. Even those who do not complain are distressed that their children will not have such good chances of becoming salary men.

In most modern societies, the task of educating the youth is performed not in the home but in the school system. For these salaried families, however, education is performed by the school and the home. In a sense, parents become assistant teachers, checking frequently with the regular teachers about the work the parents should be doing to help educate and train their children. Therefore to a large extent the parent-child relationship is the relationship of teacher and student. The mother must supervise her child, give him assignments, check the work, and impose necessary sanctions to see that he performs the work adequately. Whereas, in some industrialized societies, the mother-child relationship is more strictly limited to primary socialization and to providing affection, among these salaried families it must also take on in addition a task orientation in which the mother and the child prepare for examinations.

Achievement without Rivalry

The prominence of examinations in the life of Mamachi salaried families reflects an acceptance of the principle that success should be determined by competence as judged by a universal standard. The path of success is not determined primarily by birth or connections but by superior capacity as demonstrated by performance. While Japan is sometimes described as a particularistic society, at the time of examinations particularistic relations clearly give way to these universalistic standards. One of the dangers of open competition, however, is that rivalry may prove disruptive to groups.

Yet the extent of disruption is very limited in groups to which Mamachi residents belong because within the group competition is carefully controlled. Once a child is admitted to a school, grades are not given great importance, and there is a strong feeling of group solidarity which serves to inhibit competitiveness between the students.^[8] Once in the firm, one's success has been assured, and rivalry is kept in bounds by the primacy of seniority which is non-competitive and the common interest in the success of the firm. Since schools and firms do not drop members for poor achievement records, there is no feeling that one's remaining in the group depends on another's leaving.

Even in taking entrance examinations, a person plays down competition with friends. A person ordinarily hopes that all in his group of friends will be among those who pass. Even if friends are separated and pursue different paths as a result of examinations, there usually is no feeling of acrimony. In a sense, the one who did not get in feels that the position he hoped for was filled not by his friend but by a stranger.

Achievement patterns also do not disrupt family solidarity. In the United States, for example, where achievement is defined as an individual matter, the child who goes beyond his parents in achievement level often feels that his parents have difficulty understanding the kind of world in which he lives. Among the Mamachi families,

[8] This pattern appears to begin at an early age. Miss Kazuko Yoshinaga who taught in middle-class kindergartens in both Japan and the United States reported that in kindergartens American children are much more openly competitive than Japanese children. Even about matters of age and size, Japanese kindergarten children rarely engage in comparisons and are less interested in who is bigger and older.

however, the child's success is more directly a family success. The mother continually keeps close to the child and his work. Even if the child does not need his family's introductions, he will require the family's help in preparing for the examinations. While disparities between achievement of siblings may create some problems, brothers and sisters are also so involved in each other's success and share in the community respect awarded to a family that examinations serve usually to unite siblings as well as other members of the nuclear family.

Under conditions of competing with strangers the achievement pressures are least controlled. Just as considerations of politeness do not prevent the shoving of strangers getting on a subway, so competitiveness is accepted as natural at the time of entrance examinations. In this way, the entrance-examination system operates to preserve the distinction between friends and strangers because blatant competition is concentrated at the time of admission when one competes with strangers. Once admitted, competition is subordinated to loyalty and friendship within the group. Thus the phenomenon of entrance examinations operates to maintain universalistic standards in such a way that it minimizes the threat to group solidarity. The cost to the individual is the anxiety and pressure which he must endure at the crucial point of admission.