JAPANESE FAMILIES:

Modern vs. Traditional

Elizabeth Manning
Dr. Sammy Speigner

1 April 2003
Birmingham-Southern College

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 Introduction

The Japanese institute of family is something that has changed a great deal in the

past few decades, from one that was strictly centered around Confucian law to one that is

now based much more strongly on Western democratic ideologies (Iwao, 1993).

However, as we will see, it is still very different from the Western definition of family.

Prior to the beginning of the Muromachi age in 1336, Japan was mainly a

matriarchal agrarian society, where commoner women enjoyed many freedoms, including

love and marriage, equality, and power. However, the women in elite classes were

subjected to the strict rules of Confusion ethics. These womens lives were bound by

the three obediences: obedience to fathers when young, to husbands when married, and

to their children in old age (Iwao, 1993). When Japan opened up to the Western world

in 1868, marking the start of the Meiji era, a metamorphosis of Japanese society took

place. Industrialization and modernization slowly began to change many aspects of

society, including social conduct and interactions, most especially the structure of

families. The Confusion code of ethics, which once was limited to the samurai class,

penetrated to all people of Japan, as the distinctions between classes were officially

abolished. This meant that the women who previously had many freedoms were

suddenly bound by much stricter rules, and Japanese society as a whole became much

more male-dominated. Families now consisted of a superior father, an inferior mother,

and their children, whereas in times past the parents shared many equalities (Iwao, 1993;

Sano 1973).

For many years, this era persisted, and little changed in the makeup of most

families. They tended to be large, extended families, housing many generations and

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many branches of the family under one household. It wasnt until the defeat of Japan in

World War II that change was instituted, brought upon by the introduction of a new

constitution written for Japan by the United States. This document clearly stipulated that

all of the people are equal under the law, (Iwao, 1993), something that changed the way

Japanese people acted, learned, perceived, felt, and lived. In many ways, the structure of

the Japanese family has changed dramatically since that pivotal point in history, but in

other more subtle ways, it has held on firmly to its traditions (Iwao, 1993; Sano, 1973).

In the following sections, several aspects of the Japanese family will be analyzed and

discussed, including the organization of families before and after the new constitution

was put into place, how love and marriage have been affected throughout the generations

before and after the war, and the changes seen in parents roles in the family. In addition

to literature cited, observational data and examples collected from January to May 2001

will be included.

Pre-War Families and the Post-War Civil Reform

Before the end of World War II, Japan was predominantly a society based on the

comings and goings of its male population. Women were given little to no economic,

political, or sexual freedoms, and were expected to behave in conformity to the norms

and accepted roles of society (Iwao, 1993). They were held to the standard illustrated in

the old expression ryousai-kenbo, meaning the good wife and wise mother (Iwao,

1993). Women were handed down from her father to a husband, and then on to her sons

in her old age, as dictated by Confusion law. However, much of this changed when Japan

lost World War II, and what was referred to by many Japanese people as the MacArthur

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Constitution was established by the American Occupation following the war. This

document mandated, among other things, that both sexes be treated as equals and that

there would be no discrimination on the basis of sex (Iwao, 1993; Sano, 1973; White,

1993).

Prior to the end of the war, Japanese families lived in doozoku (compound

households): they were large, consisting of the honke (main family) and several bunke

(branch family), all of which spanned several generations. New brides, oyome-san, were

brought into the family, and daughters were married away to be oyome-san in other

households. The title of successor, atotori, was passed from father generally to the first-

born son, and the family continued to grow in this manner. Occasionally, when a son was

not present to be named atatori, the eldest daughter would marry a man from another

family, and he would enter as a muko-yooshi, taking his new familys last name and

becoming the male who would stand in line to become the head of the household upon

his father-in-laws passing (Matthews, 1990). The women in these families, with the

exception of the head wife, held a very low status within the family, and were expected to

cater to the needs of the men in the household. This meant preparing and serving meals,

cleaning the home, and caring for the children (Iwao, 1993). All of the customs these

families followed were seen as the beautiful tradition of the family system (kazoku

seido no bifuu), and were very highly respected and upheld throughout the society as a

whole (Iwao, 1993; Matthews, 1990).

However, these standards of family structure were altered upon the creation of the

new constitution. Females were now not only encouraged to attend school along with

their male classmates, but required to through the end of chuugakkou, grades seven

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through nine (Okano and Tsuchiya, 1999). Instead of staying home and caring for the

family exclusively, diligently maintaining the good wives and wise mothers doctrine,

women were given much more freedom to explore their own desires, and consequently,

the formation of Japanese families was drastically altered. Though the transition of

families from traditional to modern was slow, modern families appear almost nothing like

their ancestral families on the surface, though some similarities remain, including a

number of traditions and roles that are deeply engrained into Japanese society even today

(Iwao, 1993; White, 1993).

One significant difference in the appearance of Japanese families is their size.

Most modern families are straying from the tradition of living with an extended family,

opting for much smaller nuclear families. In addition, the birthrate has dropped

considerably over the generations since the war. Many Japanese couples today are

described as DINKs double income, no kids. For various reasons, including job

opportunities, travel conveniences, the urge to remain free from too many

responsibilities, and the increasing cost of education and housing, families are choosing

to have fewer or no children than they have in the past (Iwao, 1993). In fact, the

average size of a family has decreased to 2.95 persons as of 1991 according to Iwao

(1993). In addition, the average age of marriage for women in Japan has increased

considerably over the years, due to many of the same reasons described above. These

women are better educated and find themselves able to live freely with well-paying jobs

and relatively few obligations and responsibilities. Many are not interested in settling

down with a husband and raising a family, giving up their new-found freedoms. Instead,

they choose to live as parasite singles, remaining at home with their parents, sometimes

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even into their thirties, living a relatively care-free life full of shopping sprees, expensive

trips, and above all, freedom to come and go as they please while their mothers cook,

clean, and care for them (Yamada, 2001).

During my stay in Hirakata, Japan, a small town located between Osaka and

Kyoto, during the spring of 2001, I lived with a host-family, the Teranishis. They were a

typically modern family, consisting of a mother who stayed at home and raised the

children, cooked, cleaned, and maintained the household; the father, who worked many

long hours and was almost never home; and two children a daughter, Ayaka, who was

14, and a son, Kenshou, who was 8. Though Mrs. Teranishi, who we called Okaa-san,

the Japanese term for mother, was not employed outside the home and was responsible

for all the cooking and cleaning, it was obvious that she and Otou-san, the father, shared

equal amounts of power in the family, and were both responsible for finances and

decision-making in the home. The four of them, along with a different foreign student

each semester, lived together in a small house in the residential district of the city.

Though they did not reside in the same house as Okaa-sans parents and sisters family,

they were only a short train-ride away, and she visited them several times a week when

her schedule permitted. On the other hand, my friend Aki Hamazoes family was much

more typical of a traditional family. They lived two hours outside of Kyoto in a small

residential area, much more rural than the Teranishis residence, in an extended family

household. The Hamazoe house was home to Aki, her two younger sisters, her parents,

and her fathers parents. Both of these households represent modern families in Japan,

though it is quite apparent how even today, family structure and levels of tradition can

vary greatly.

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 Love and Marriage

In the past, marriages in Japan were almost exclusively all arranged, in a process

referred to as omiai. In this process, a match-maker, either a professional or a friend of

the family with many acquaintances, was contacted and meetings between the families

were arranged. If the families deemed the match appropriate, the marriage took place,

and the two families were joined. Oftentimes, these marriages were based less, if at all,

on the feelings of the two people involved, and more on the and beneficial ties between

the two families created by such a union (Iwao, 1993; Matthews, 1990; Sano, 1973;

White, 1993).

With the introduction of a new set of laws in 1948, however, people were given

much more freedom to choose their own futures, and in the generations since, the number

of people opting for love marriages instead of arranged marriages has increased

drastically. While this number is in the majority, omiai is still a fairly common practice

in Japan today. The concept of omiai in modern times has changed, nevertheless, and is

much more flexible than in the past. Whereas in the days of Confusion ethic marriages

were arranged by the family, and the couple had little to no say in what happened,

modern omiai work more as a blind-date between two people, who are then free to

choose whether to meet again or not (Iwao, 1993; White, 1993). Many people prefer

to have an objective mature adult behind an introduction, to take responsibility for an

appropriate match (White, 1993).

The Japanese concept of marriage, too, is and always has been different from a

more Western ideology of the term. Many believe that a good relationship between a

married couple is like air, in the sense that like the air we breathe, [it] is vital for the

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survival of both sides even though its presence is hardly felt (Iwao, 1993). The

traditional view on marriage in Japan is that passionate love (rennai) and marriage are

not necessarily related, but that love can blossom between two people out of years spent

together in marriage. More people are marrying for love in todays society, but the

numbers are still quite small in comparison to those of Western nations (Iwao, 1993;

White, 1993).

Because many Japanese marriages are not centered around a romantic love for

one another, there is little enticing the couple to stay together when the marriage becomes

rocky. In the past it was unacceptable to end a marriage, but because there was little

emotion binding them together, it was quite easy for them to divorce themselves from

each other within the home. Today, however, there are many more love marriages, and

yet, divorce is something that is still somewhat frowned upon by Japanese society. Japan

has the one of the lowest rates of divorce in the world, standing at 1.26 percent as of

1990. Unhappy couples many times will do the same thing their ancestors did, by

divorcing emotionally and staying together legally. With husbands who work long hours

and are forced to make frequent business trips, its quite simple for the two to lead very

separate lives, perhaps only sharing a bed on the evenings when the husband does come

home from work.

In addition to the separation of love and marriage, a popular Japanese norm is the

separation of sex and romance. Japan, unlike most Western nations, is not a puritanical

society, and sex is not considered taboo by most of its general public. In fact, data

collected from various sources reports that nearly two-thirds of Japanese teenagers have

had a sexual experience by the age of fifteen, and over 80 percent of teenagers reported

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frequent masturbation (White, 1993). However, the appearance of sexual knowledge and

public displays of affection are taboo in Japan, though it is more common to see people

showing these displays among the younger generations in todays society. In addition,

Japanese do not consider sexual fidelity or the maintaining of a good sexual relationship

with their spouse to be of critical importance, (Iwao, 1993), and as women become more

economically, socially, and psychologically independent, the rate of extramarital affairs

continues to increase. Many times, the wives who feel distant from their husbands, but

cannot divorce for various reasons, will turn to other men for a secret passion in their

lives, adding to the rise in this number of unfaithful spouses (Iwao, 1993).

While it is certainly true that many people still choose to arrange their marriages

through omiai, none of the people I met in Japan claimed to have done so. Okaa-san and

Otou-san told me a charming story of how they met at a ski resort one winter, and how

their love grew from there. And it was still obvious that there was much affection left in

the Teranishis marriage even though they did not show many displays of their love, even

within the home in private. All of my friends had boyfriends and had no interest in

arranged marriages they wanted to marry for love. Also, while most of my Japanese

friends were not virgins, saving themselves for their future husbands, they were not

sexually promiscuous. These encounters would seem to suggest that while many people

in Japan are still rooted in tradition, certainly not everyone is, and there is much room for

variation in trends.

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 Roles of Parents

Even after many changes in the Japanese social and political system, one thing

has remained essentially the same on the part of the Japanese family: the man is still the

primary bread-winner (or rice-winner, as the case may be), and the woman is the

caretaker. While it is true that many more women, even those with children, are entering

the workplace, their income is usually substantially less than their husbands, due to a

variety of reasons: they are usually not as well educated as their spouses; they often take

time off during pregnancy and in the years following, until their children enter

elementary school, which disrupts their career; and they often do not want to take full-

time jobs that require a lot of energy and self-sacrifice when they have children at home

to care for (Iwao, 1993).

Women in the Japanese family are typically responsible for taking care of

domestic matters. They do all the grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, clothes-washing,

and disciplining in the household. In addition, the mother is often the parent who ensures

their childrens success in school by acting as an education Mama, checking their

homework, meeting with their teachers, and pushing them to do their best. Three major

appliances entered the Japanese market in 1957 that changed the way women worked in

the home: the television, the washing machine, and the refrigerator. With these new

domestic devices in place, women were able to spend much less time on household

chores and much more time developing their own interests. More and more women

joined neighborhood clubs or sought part-time jobs near their homes, further increasing

the emotional gap felt by many modern couples.

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 As a result of these socially-engrained gender roles, fathers often work very hard

at their jobs to provide the best lives they can for their family. This requires many long

hours spent at the office and little time spent with their wives and children. In the days

before computers, the father would go home on payday with an envelope filled with cash

that he would present to his wife upon his return. His wife would have prepared an

elaborate meal to thank him for his efforts in supporting the family, and his children

would see what he had contributed and how thankful their mother was for all he had

done. Today, however, salaries are often directly deposited into bank accounts, and the

wife, who is usually the person who controls the purse strings, can merely withdraw the

money as she needs it. Their children, as a result, see very little of their father, with his

busy work-schedule, much less the fact that he is making money (Iwao, 1993). This

new occurrence in modern Japanese society has led to the diminished status of fathers

and their authority within the family without any compensating change in the awareness

and behavior of the fathers themselves (Iwao, 1993).

Adding to the ambiguity of the fathers parental status in the family is the

increasing number of marriages that are temporarily split up by the corporation the father

works for. At any given time in the early 1990s, nearly 175,000 Japanese men were

living apart from their family because he had been transferred elsewhere by his company

for a long period of time. Families often prefer to live in this commuting marriage

instead of relocating the entire family, since moving costs are very expensive, children

are in school, and there are often elderly parents nearby requiring assistance (Iwao, 1993;

White, 1993).

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 As a result of these situations, the mothers are the ones who are responsible for

raising their children, ensuring that their education is the best and that they are working to

the peak of their potential. Ultimately, the mothers are typically the only real authority

figure in the family. In some extreme cases, children today do not see their fathers as

authority figures at all, and consequently treat them with much less respect than they do

their mothers (Iwao, 1993; White, 1993).

My host family fit this description of a modern Japanese family quite well. Otou-

san almost never returned home from work before the rest of us had gone to bed, and

often left early in the morning, only shortly after everyone had risen. Additionally, he

was frequently gone on the weekends. Okaa-san, however, was always present in the

home. Laundry was done every other day, each futon was aired on the balcony once a

week, and breakfast and lunch was prepared and served every day. Ayaka was a studious

girl, and Okaa-san did not need to nag her about her studies. Kenshou, however, often

slacked off on his work, and several times, Okaa-san would scold him harshly. On the

occasions when Otou-san was home during the day, he was treated by his children as

more of a much-older sibling than a parent with authority. He would give them spending

money, take them shopping, buy them candy and cakes, and take them on family outings.

I rarely observed Otou-san raising his voice at them, and when he did, they often yelled

back something they would never do when Okaa-san scolded them.

On the other hand, Okaa-sans parents were much more traditional in the sense of

family roles. Her father was the ultimate authority in the household, and her mother

catered to his every need, as was the custom in past generations. On the opposite end of

the spectrum, my speaking partners father worked from home as a juku (cram school)

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teacher, and her mother worked as a nurse. All these examples illustrate the various types

of families in modern Japan, and the roles that each member plays in their family.

Conclusions

In the years leading up to the end of World War II, Japanese society was held

strongly to a code of Confusion ethic, a factor of great importance in the structure and

function of families of the era. These families were often male-dominated and large, with

several branches of the family and several generations living in one house together.

Women were subordinate and were expected to submit to the strict rules of society (Iwao,

1993; Matthews, 1990; Sano, 1973). However, the defeat of Japan in World War II

brought about a change, as the American Occupation took over and instituted a new

constitution that dictated that both sexes be treated as equals (Iwao, 1993).

Shortly thereafter, women began getting more education and were no longer

subjected to the harsh principles of Confusion law. While still expected to be the

caretakers in the family, they were given more freedom to choose how their lives would

be. Couples began to marry at older ages and have fewer children than in the past,

drastically changing the structure of Japanese families. In addition, there was a decrease

in the number of arranged marriages, as both women and men were allowed to seek out

love marriages (Iwao, 1993; Matthews, 1990; Sano, 1973; White, 1993).

As the structure of Japanese families changed, so did the technology available to

these families, and both played a large part in determining the altered roles of men and

women in modern Japanese families. With the introduction of modern appliances,

women have much more free time to spend developing their own interests. Fathers, on

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the other hand, spend relatively little time at home, spending most of it at work. Their

children almost never see them, and as an additional discredit to the fathers authority,

they no longer actually see their fathers financial contribution to the family.

Consequently, mothers hold nearly all of the authority in the modern Japanese family,

while fathers are oftentimes merely seen as another son (Iwao, 1993; White, 1993).

In many ways, the structure, values, and roles of the Japanese family have

changed drastically over the past century, from very large and male-dominated to much

smaller and essentially female-dominated. However, there are still many ways in which

these families are very similar to their ancestors families: they share many of the same

traditions, even though some ideas have been changed through the years (Iwao, 1993;

Matthews, 1990; Sano, 1973; White, 1993). Nevertheless, in the end, they are all

families in one form or another, and not even a drastically new constitution could change

that.

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 Works Cited

Iwao, Sumiko (1993). The Japanese Woman: Traditional Image and Changing Reality.

Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Matthews, Masayuki Hamabata (1990). Crested Kimono: Power and Love in the

Japanese Business Family. London: Corenell University Press.

Okano, Kaori, and Motonori Tsuchiya (1999). Students Experience of Schooling,

from Education in Contemporary Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, pp. 53-83.

Sano, Chiye (1973). Changing Values of the Japanese Family. Westport, Conn:

Greenwood Press, Publishers.

White, Merry (1993). The Material Child: Coming of Age in Japan and America.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Yamada, Masahiro (2001). Parasite singles feed on family system. Japan Quarterly

48(1): 10-16.

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