10
Group and Individual Activities

The age and class homogeneity of Fuji-no-Sato makes it a more or less egalitarian community and as such very unusual in Japan, where interpersonal relations are usually vertically organized. Like most other Japanese, the residents of this community have not been socialized to cultivate the unstructured, voluntary social relationships one usually finds in this kind of peer group-oriented setting. These facts give informal sociability at Fuji-no-Sato its own peculiar flavor, which may well add spice to Western ideas about social integration.

Here we are really interested in four kinds of informal activities: (1) hobby groups, (2) Christian groups, (3) volunteer groups, and (4) gardening. All these emerged spontaneously and are important in the residents' daily lives.

The Formation of Hobby Groups

Hobby groups were the most common kind of informal activities, and a pattern quickly emerged for their formation. Kinoshita did not witness the formation or breaking up of hobby groups during the research because all had been formed earlier, but residents described it as a simple procedure. A group of residents (never a single individual) who planned to form a new hobby group would post an announcement on the bulletin board at the community center and consult with the staff about space and scheduling. When an instructor was necessary, the organizing residents usually found him or her before posting the announcement. In order to join the group, interested residents would simply show up at the meetings or talk with members. No group actively recruited new members.

The management passively encouraged all informal group activities; that is, they made every effort to provide accommodations for

the activities but did nothing else to facilitate them. There was no activity coordinator on the staff.

There were twenty-three hobby groups in 1983, and their characteristics are presented in Table 10-1. The usual frequency of

meeting was once a week, although there was some variation. The number of participants ranged from four (in the knitting group and one of the yokyoku groups for traditional music) to twenty-three in the chorus, with the majority of the groups having around ten people. The number of participants in each group appeared to be determined not only by the group's popularity, but also by the size of the available room and the size that is ideal for a given type of hobby—for yokyoku , for instance, seven people would be the maximum for an ensemble. There were thus two yokyoku groups and two calligraphy groups.

Women were clearly more active in hobby groups than men. Only two groups were solely men—Japanese chess (go and shogi ) and golf. Eleven were women only, and ten were of mixed gender. Eleven groups were ranked high in need for an instructor, which meant that their activities would be difficult without recognized experts as instructors. A male member of the croquet group was officially qualified as a referee, and he not only interpreted the rules during the games, but also coached members and was recognized as the semiofficial instructor. Likewise, the instructor of the English group had been a high school English teacher; the other members were all beginners.

The availability of these semiformal instructors was usually important for group formation. With the exception of the chorus instructor and the haiku poetry instructor, who came from the surrounding neighborhood, all instructors were residents of the community.

Some groups lacked recognized instructors but had skillful or knowledgeable members who acted as ad hoc instructors as needed. This happened when the activity did not require very skilled instructors or when the skill level of the members was already high. In the record concert group, a few members who were particularly knowledgeable about classical music gave short explanations, but the group sometimes functioned without them. The wood carving group had several very skillful members whose technical abilities were almost indistinguishable from one another. Any skillful member could give advice to the beginners, and they also exchanged advice among themselves.

Five groups had little need of instruction at all. The morning walkers simply met at 6 A.M. and took about an hour's walk together around the community.

There were many traditional hobbies—Japanese chess, nagauta, koto, yokyoku , tea ceremony, Japanese calligraphy, and haiku —supporting the Japanese stereotypical view that old people enjoy traditional hobbies. Most hobby group members had pursued their hobbies for a long time, and some of them were semiprofessional. This was particularly true among female participants in traditional arts, and all the instructors in these groups had high-level official certificates. Instructors or otherwise, all these women started taking lessons when young, a practice typical in upper-middle-class families.

On two occasions each year, the hobby groups demonstrated their activities or exhibited their works: the May 15 anniversary festival commemorating the opening of the community and the community festival on Respect the Elders Day, September 15, a national holiday. Activity groups such as chorus, nagauta, yokyoku , and tea ceremony held demonstrations in various rooms in the community center; craft groups exhibited their works, such as knitting, wood carving, wood-block printing, or Japanese calligraphy, in the craft room.

Patterns of Participation

Of 121 residents for whom interviews were completed, overall 71 (58.7 percent) belonged to at least one hobby group. Among 40 men, 27 (67.5 percent) had at least one membership; 13 (32.5 percent) had none at all. Among 81 women, 44 (54.3 percent) belonged to at least one group, and 37 (45.7 percent), none. Thus, in simple proportion, men, although a minority in the community, appeared to be slightly more active than women. However, men's and women's participation patterns were distinctly different.

Table 10-2 illustrates patterns of participation by sex. No residents had more than 7 memberships. Among active men, the number of memberships clustered in the range of 1 to 4 groups, with a mean of 2.8. Nearly half the active women had only 1 membership, and the mean was 2 groups. In terms of individual participation, men were more active than women. Thirteen of the 40 men (32.5 percent) and 37 of the 81 women (45.7 percent) belonged to none at all.

The unaffiliated men's reasons for their nonmembership are categorized into six groups. Four mentioned declining health, and another four said they preferred to use their time with complete free-

dom. Three said they were not good in groups. One man mentioned that he had no particular reason, one said no group matched his interests, and one said he had to take care of his dependent wife. In other words, nonparticipation was a situational necessity for five of the thirteen men (38.4 percent)—either declining health or need to care for a wife.

The reasons given by thirty-seven unaffiliated women fall into seven categories. Nine said they found the social interaction in hobby groups annoying, and another nine mentioned that they preferred freedom of time use. Eight women said that because they were not yet completely settled down in the community and could not regularly attend, they felt their participation could disturb the group activities (meiwaku ni naru kara ). Seven women mentioned their declining health, two mentioned they had to take care of their dependent husbands, and one said she had been indirectly refused membership. One said she was still studying which group to join. Thus, nine out of thirty-seven nonparticipating women (24.3 percent) mentioned either declining health or care of dependent husbands, and eight others had situational reasons for their nonparticipation.

These findings provide some insight into the residents' social attitudes. First, the unavailability of interesting hobby groups was not the main reason for nonparticipation—only one man gave that reason. Second, refusal to grant membership was exceptional, applying to only one woman, who, when she asked about participat-

ing, was told indirectly that the instructor of the group was not eager to have more members. Third, external reasons such as declining health and dependent spouses were important for both men and women, an understandable finding considering the advanced age of some residents. Fourth, many men and women stressed that they enjoyed personal freedom more than participation in the groups, and this characteristic appeared to be related to their lifestyles. Fifth, a significant number seemed to feel uncomfortable or shy in informal group situations. Men used the expression that they were not good at such things; women said they found the social atmosphere of groups annoying. They emphasized the costs of participation rather than the benefits of nonparticipation.

Although one may think that points four and five are opposite sides of the same coin, Kinoshita's impression from the interviews suggests otherwise. Those men and women who stressed personal freedom spontaneously used the same word, jiyu , to explain their nonparticipation. They appeared to mean what they said. Put another way, they appeared to emphasize the perceived benefits of their nonparticipation.

Interactional Characteristics

Three closely related attitudinal tendencies emerged from the study of hobby group behavior. First, none of the twenty-three hobby "groups" were actually groups in the sense of being closely coordinated or team activities. Rather, they were loosely organized and individual centered—really parallel, not interactive, activities. Attention seemed distributed serially or simultaneously to the individual members, rather than focused on the group, and this tended to be true even in groups that had a high need for instructors. For example, the koto group had to be completely reorganized after its initial members quit in a body, protesting the instructor's insensitivity to individual needs. The instructor was a semiprofessional artist and tried to have members play her original compositions. She assigned each a specific part and gave intensive lessons. This was apparently much more than the members wished to do; they simply wanted to play koto as a "light" hobby. Because the instructor did not change her view, the members decided to dissolve the group.

Second, many participants seemed to regard their relationships as primarily instrumental, not social, as evidenced in the wood-block printing group incident. At first, the group would give a small gift to the instructor twice a year, summer and winter, following, as other groups did, the Japanese custom of seasonal gifts to teachers. During the course of this research, however, many members became as skillful as the instructor, and in the late fall, some of the members met to discuss whether they should give him the usual gift now that there was little he could teach them. In the end, they decided to discontinue the custom and did so without giving any explanation to the instructor. Of course, it was obvious to him why he did not get a gift.

The third attitude has to do with gender differences in participation, and here we must introduce two key concepts for the analysis of social interaction among the residents: "situational specificity" and "additional significance." Situationally specific interaction, a concept derived from role theory (Parsons, 1951), means that behaviors, artifacts, people, places, or utterances have different meanings in the various social situations in which they occur or participate. A room used for a specified hobby group activity, for example, becomes the boundary of a "situation," and the meaning of all activity that takes place there is specific to that situation. A social interaction based on specific formal roles is interpreted specifically to the performance of those roles, that is, in terms of what is expected of each person in those roles. In the context of this discussion, this notion refers to interpersonal behavior in the context of various hobby activities. Additional significance is a concept similar to Levy's (1952:281) "functional diffuseness." It means the development of other meanings as a result of interactions that stem from functionally specific situations. For instance, a woman in the tea ceremony group participates in the group's activity, and interactions in this group have situationally specific meaning. However, as she engages in the activity, she is able to cultivate a sort of intimacy with other members, whom she comes to perceive as her "friends." This is referred to as the development of additional significance.

These two notions are useful in understanding residents in interaction in general and in gender differences in hobby group participation in particular. Although the objective data showed that more

men participated in groups, and the participating men belonged to more groups on the average than women, the meanings men attached to participation were quite situation specific, whereas the women's style tended to generate more additional significance.

Hobby groups could be all male, all female, or mixed (Table 10-1). The Japanese chess group and the golf group were made up of men only. The golf group was a special case, and we discuss it in Chapter 11. Behavior in the chess group was typical of pure situation-specific interaction and had virtually no additional significance. This group met every day, with ten players or so at any given meeting. The members simply came into the room, found partners, played a game or two, perhaps watched others play for a while, and left the room. In both kinds of Japanese chess, go and shogi , a game is played by only two persons, and both players remain silent most of the time, concentrating on thinking. Spectators also remain silent in order not to disturb the players. Conversations were rare and usually about the strategies of games. The meanings the men attached to their interactions were completely circumscribed by the situation. Although tournaments are enjoyed by such clubs outside the community, no Fuji-no-Sato member was willing to plan and organize a tournament, and there had never been one here.

Ten groups were composed of both men and women. In these, the meanings of both heterosexual and male-to-male interactions were situation specific also, although the women in these groups formed among themselves small circles that continued to associate outside the group.

The possibility of generating additional significance was most frequent in the eleven women-only groups, particularly in small groups whose membership was stable. In these groups, incompatible members were gradually filtered out, and regular interaction over several years generated intimate sentiments among the members. The yokyoku A group was a good example of this. It had only five members, taught by a former professional. All the members valued each other and the instructor. They occasionally ate out together and held gatherings—a year-end party, for example—at an outside restaurant.

We are not aware of any detailed studies of hobby group participation among the elderly in Japan. An international survey by the

Prime Minister's Office (1982:136) showed that Japanese aged are much less likely than Americans to take part in volunteer activities outside the home and that only 16 percent of those over sixty take part in a hobby group. It is therefore our impression that both men and women at Fuji-no-Sato were highly hobby oriented for Japanese elderly. Although men's participation was situation specific, many were very active. Perhaps the men enjoyed hobby activities but are unwilling or unable to generate additional significance in their relationships; cultural attitudes are also involved here. Moreover, both men and women were active in hobbies they had enjoyed throughout their adult years. This was more true among the women, but many men also had been active in their hobbies while they were working. Finally, solitary hobby orientedness was discernable among those not active in groups, although this seemed far more characteristic of women than men. Many nonactive women took correspondence courses in such topics as Japanese classics, history, or tanka poetry.

The hobby orientedness becomes clearer if we look at Japanese cultural attitudes toward leisure activities. In America, leisure activity is culturally valued for its own sake, the so-called "fun morality" (Henry, 1963). Furthermore, a high activity level per se , leisure or otherwise, has cultural support in America—the healthy elderly are eager to show their vigor—and hobbies are probably more available than paid work to most. Some American social gerontologists support this idea by equating activity with adjustment. The notion is called "activity theory" (Maddox, 1964), and many American retirement communities advertise "an active way of life" as an attraction.

In contrast, all Japanese retirement communities emphasize medical and nursing care rather than an active way of life in their advertisements. The fun morality simply does not hold for the Japanese, especially those who are currently elderly. Throughout their lives, the stronger value has been the "work morality." Given their generation's attitude toward leisure, the residents' hobby orientedness must be related to their decision to live in a retirement community, probably partly as cause and partly as effect.

Christian Groups

Among the interviewees at Fuji-no-Sato, there were at least forty-nine baptized Christians (eleven men and thirty-eight women); and

there were others who, although not baptized, were philosophically Christian. The existence of these formal and informal Christians was in part due to the fact that although the managing organization of the community has no religious basis, it is an outgrowth of a Christian organization, a very large nonprofit social welfare corporation. In fact, the parent organization's president was a very famous charismatic Christian in Japan, and he was also the board president of Fuji-no-Sato's managing organization. Christian residents who knew of him appeared to trust him and thereby to judge Fuji-no-Sato as a reliable enterprise.

Many of the Christians had been believers all their lives, something that marked them as special in their generation and strengthened our perception that they were originally from intellectual, upper-middle-class family backgrounds. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Japan was undergoing modernization, Christianity first spread among the socially privileged, intellectual class. Only in subsequent generations did it become popular with other segments of society.

There were five Fuji-no-Sato groups organized by Christians: a morning prayer group, a discussion group, a hymn group, a sermon group, and a Bible study group. The morning prayer group met every Monday morning and was attended by about fifteen residents. The meeting was chaired by an eighty-three-year-old retired minister. This person also chaired a small discussion group every Saturday in which about six people participated regularly. Although this group was meant to be a free discussion group, the retired minister usually talked much of the time, as if he were giving a sermon. The hymn group was the only one headed by a nonbaptized Christian, and it was the most "secular" group of all; it had many informal Christians and even some non-Christians who simply liked the hymns. About eighteen residents gathered every Sunday. The sermon group was the largest, about twenty-three people who met three times a month to listen to tapes of famous sermons. The Bible study group of about twenty residents held meetings twice a month. The minister of a nearby urban church would come to chair the meetings.

The five groups were open to all residents, but except for the hymn group, their regular members were Christians. Nor were all the community's Christians, baptized or otherwise, regular members of these group activities. In fact, there was a great deal of mem-

bership overlap in the five groups, and many Christians belonged to none of them.

Three group organizers had acquired recognition as leaders among the Christians. Among these was the retired minister, the only resident from that profession. He was greatly respected by the other Christians, but his advanced age (eighty-three years) and declining health limited his activity; he was seen as a symbolic leader. Second, the leader of the sermon group happened to be Mr. Sonoda, the popular president of the residents association in 1982-1983. His modest, mellow character was admired not only by the Christians but by the residents in general. The third leader was a woman who organized both the Bible study group and the only volunteer service group at Fuji-no-Sato.

Individualism and functional specificity characterized social interaction in the Christian groups. Participants came to the scheduled meetings, engaged in scheduled activities, and departed when meetings were over. There was no active soliciting of non-Christians, no group socializing, and no outside scheduled meetings. The mere fact of Christian belief seems to create strong interpersonal bonds.

The Volunteer Service Group

In Chapter 6, we mentioned that within the estate there is a fifty-bed nursing home operated by a separate Christian welfare organization, and a group of women volunteers helps at this facility. This group, the only volunteer service group at Fuji-no-Sato, was started by the Christian woman just mentioned. The group was loosely organized, with the leader simply assigning a group of three or four women to visit the home each day, Sundays excepted. Each group thus constituted took one turn a week, so there were six small groups, which never met jointly. Participants were not necessarily Christians. Whoever wanted to participate could contact the leader, who in turn would assign the new member to an appropriate day. No participant served more than one day a week, and no men participated. Their volunteer work, which never varied, consisted of folding and sorting the nursing home's large volume of laundry.

Participants usually met in the community and walked together to the home, where they would work for two to three hours in the

afternoon. Their interaction was relatively functionally diffuse: They talked informally and exchanged information about the community while working. Doing the same thing regularly with the same people appeared to help them structure their lives and cultivate friendly relations. Although this was also true for some members of hobby groups, it seemed more applicable to this group for two reasons. First, because of the low functional specificity, small group size, and routine nature of the work, each volunteer could observe the others' personalities easily through informal conversation.

Second and more important, this was the only group that regarded its activity as a kind of "work." They called it oshime tatami , which literally means folding and putting away diapers, although the laundry at the toku-yo home included linens, clothes, towels, and other things in addition to diapers. It seems that the word "diaper" had symbolic meaning for them because a diaper symbolizes the work of intimate personal care, the culturally prescribed work of women. Although the work of personal care generally refers to motherhood, it does include the care for dependent aged parents, as in the traditional dokyo arrangement. By calling the activity diaper folding, these women located it perceptually within their familiar framework of significant "work," a perception reinforced by two additional factors: (1) Unlike leisure activities, this service was seen as a helping and thus productive activity. (2) They drew a perceptual line between themselves and the aged in the home. As one woman said, "We are helping the pitiable (kawaisona ) old people." Engaging voluntarily in helpful group work stimulates sympathetic social feeling. Activity and talk are likely to be of a helpful sort, the commonality of goals supersedes mutual differences, and people see each other at their best.

When the right opportunities were there, the residents of Fuji-no-Sato eagerly took part in informal groups and felt good about their engagement. The problem in Japan is that such opportunities are extremely few. The volunteer group was successful because it took little effort to organize, and the activity was a familiar one. To the extent that the staff at similar facilities is able to help find other activities like this and encourage the organization of groups around them, community life might be richer. Indeed, the residents at Fuji-no-Sato were an enormous human resource; they had varied abilities and experience with which to help others.

Gardening

Gardening was the most important solitary activity at Fuji-no-Sato. The physical effort, time, expense, and interest that many residents poured into gardening was remarkable. Within a couple of years of opening, almost every available space in the community had become a garden, neatly demarcated by volcanic rocks.

Gardening was the first spontaneous common activity among the residents, having begun within a month or so after the community's initial occupation. As these early settlers testified in story after story, this was enjoyable but physically hard work for them. The volcanic soil is thin and rocky, and the residents had to begin by removing most of the rocks. They recalled nostalgically those early days, when they enjoyed the natural friendship of adventurers, and neighbors would come together for mutual aid. Many of them first got to know their neighbors through this collaborative work.

Hard work was not the only investment they made in this venture. Once the rocks had been removed, the residents bought soil and fertilizers at the store in the community center. Because there was little natural soil in the beginning, the amount of topsoil they bought was enormous. Some residents hired professional gardeners to design the planting.

Initially, gardening space was claimed on a first-come, first-served basis, and the early residents naturally occupied the best spots in their neighborhoods. By the end of the second year, nearly the whole grounds had been claimed and developed; but in spite of their emotional and financial investment, early residents listened to the needs of later settlers to participate. Gradually, a pattern of setting aside some garden space for new residents emerged.

Gardens represented the residents' taste in plants. Some had only trees in their gardens, others preferred less colorful wild plants, but the vast majority liked to plant flowers in such a way that their gardens were rarely without blooms. Growing vegetables was practically unheard of. Instead of buying bedding plants, most residents would order seeds through the mail, germinate them by hand (usually in their rooms), then transplant them in the gardens. For this, they had to acquire some knowledge and technique. The most important part was planning: What kind of flowers should be planted in which seasonal order? What kind of care would they need?

Women were more active than men in gardening. Among married couples, wives were generally in charge of gardening, although their husbands sometimes helped with heavy work. There was also a tendency toward scaling down one's engagement in gardening as one's health declined, either by planting relatively carefree plants or trees or by giving up gardening and passing the space to someone else. Meticulous care and constant attention were showered on growing particular kinds of flowers.

Gardening had six important meanings in the context of Fuji-no-Sato. First, it was a hobby. Even those residents who were not involved in gardening often mentioned that they liked plants and gardening. The lush natural surroundings of Fuji-no-Sato were one of its attractions to many. Because gardening is a hobby that one can do alone, it also seemed to suit the individualistic life-style of many residents.

Second, gardening may have effectively compensated for one of the most serious problems in this community: the limited social stimulation and consequent boredom. Gardening provided constant change for the residents. Plants never stay the same, and their life cycle is often less than a year, allowing residents to observe the cycles of growth, peak, and decline.

Third, the constant demands of the plants meant never-ending "work" for the residents, who conceived a sense of social responsibility for the look of things, especially if many colorful flowers were involved. The best known resident in this regard was Mr. Tsuruno, a sixty-five-year-old widower who was known as "Mr. Gardener." Dressed in work clothes, his habit was to toil in the gardens every day. Not only had he the most extensive "private" gardens, he received from the staff custody of the "public" gardens near their administrative offices as well and even persuaded the director to build a small greenhouse. Because of his special status, Mr. Tsuruno could ask the staff to water the plants or monitor the temperature in the greenhouse when he was not available. Although he often complained of the burden of his responsibilities, there was no denying that he enjoyed both the work and the status.

Fourth, gardening was also a form of competition for some of the women, who competed to produce the first flowers each season. Mrs. Fujita, a seventy-four-year-old widow, was one of the keenest in this competition. She ordered her seeds by mail, germinated them in her room according to a careful schedule, and planted the

seedlings in her garden even before the seasonally safe moment. If she was successful, she would have flowers sooner than other residents; if she failed, she always had some reserve seedlings in her room. Like other residents involved in the competition, she never talked about her motives, but it was obvious to those interested in gardening that her success would be widely recognized. All the true gardeners knew the seasonal timing of the various plants; and of course, gardens are a highly visible arena for competition.

Fifth, due to certain interactional problems at Fuji-no-Sato, gardening may have been a socially "safe" activity for the residents. As a point of mutual interest, it could generate socially neutral conversation and interaction. People could exchange their knowledge and techniques or trade young plants without getting too personally close. It gave functional specificity to interaction.

Finally and most important, gardening appeared to be a sanctuary for many residents, particularly women. The formality of relationships, and the gossip, created stress. Residents could feel at ease and be themselves when gardening. When asked what they liked most about gardening, many said, "Plants respond to us in a shojiki way." Shojiki means "honest," "upright," or "straightforward," generally referring to the human character. In this context, it meant that, unlike in interpersonal relationships, where one's genuine intentions were often misunderstood, gardening produced results that were faithful, for better or worse, to one's true ability. The plants were "straight" to one's intentions and skill, thereby giving one a sense of control that was lacking in interpersonal relations. Although this problem is a chronic one throughout Japanese society as a whole, it was particularly troublesome at Fuji-no-Sato.