Disillusioned by long hours at home alone and by demands from the older generation, Japanese women are marrying later, resulting in a sharp decline in the Japanese birth rate. Muriel Jolivet considers the reasons why Japanese women are finding it increasingly difficult to accept the terms and conditions of motherhood. Japan: The Childless Society explores the major factors contributing to maternal malaise in Japan including: * the 'Ten Commandments of the Good Mother' * the changing role of the father * education and careers * nostalgia from older generations Drawing on extensive interviews with Japanese women and translated into English for the first time, this innovative study examines the implications behind the declining birth rate and looks towards the future of a country that is in danger of becoming a 'childless society'.
With the ever growing contact between Japan and the rest of the world comes an increasingly important need to understand a society that is fascinating but still often confusing to the outsider. In this brand new fourth edition of Understanding Japanese Society Joy Hendry brings the reader up to date both with recent changes as Japan hit the world headlines under the triple 2011 disasters, and with underlying continuities in ways of thinking that have matured over a long history of dealing with foreign influences and an unpredictable environment. This welcome new edition of Hendry’s bestselling introductory textbook provides a clear, accessible and readable introduction to Japanese society which does not require any previous knowledge of the country. Fully updated, revised and expanded, the fourth edition contains new material on: the effects of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters of 2011 a renewed interest in politics and popular participation increased frequency of local spiritual support as unemployment continues to grow, and marriage gets later and later the effects of a dramatic drop in the birth rate on Japan’s education system the continuing global success of Japanese animation, manga and computer games despite a turn away from international travel the cool new Ainu, the attraction of healing Okinawa, and changes among other Japanese minorities a new role for Japanese fathers in child-rearing This book will be invaluable to all students studying Japan. It will also enlighten those travellers and business people wishing to gain an understanding of the Japanese people.
This book provides the keys to understanding the trajectory that Japanese society has followed toward its lowest-low fertility since the 1980s. The characteristics of the life course of women born in the 1960s, who were the first cohort to enter that trajectory, are explored by using both qualitative and quantitative data analyses. Among the many books explaining the decline in fertility, this book is unique in four ways. First, it describes in detail the reality of factors concerning the fertility decline in Japan. Second, the book uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to introduce the whole picture of how the low-fertility trend began in the 1980s and developed in the 1990s and thereafter. Third, the focus is on a specific birth cohort because their experiences determined the current patterns of family formation such as late marriage and postponed childbirth. Fourth, the book explores the knife-edge balance between work and family conditions, especially with regard to childbearing, in the context of Japanese management and gender norms. After examining the characteristics of demographic and socioeconomic circumstances of postwar Japan in detail, it can be seen that the change in family formation first occurred drastically in the 1960s cohort. Using both qualitative interview data cumulatively from 150 people and quantitative estimates with official statistics, this book shows how individual-level choices to balance work and family obligations resulted in a national-level fertility decline. Another focus of this book is the increasing unintended infertility due to postponed pregnancy, a phenomenon that is attracting great social attention because the average age of pregnancy is approaching the biological limit. This book is a valuable resource for researchers who are interested in the rapid fertility decline as well as the work–life balance and the life course of women in Japanese employment practice and family traditions.
Whether childless by choice, by chance, or by happenstance, women without children today are alternately pitied and scorned, and are rarely asked directly about the reasons for, and their comfort with, childlessness. Asking the right questions, Madelyn Cain thoughtfully uncovers the reasons for childlessness – from biological, to economic, and even political – and explores the ramifications for both the individual and society. Simultaneously compassionate and journalistically curious, The Childless Revolution is informed by the stories of over 100 childless or self-proclaimed childfree women, at long last giving voice to their experience and validating the jumble of emotions most feel about being part of this misunderstood population. The first book to put a face on these women who cannot conceive – or, for reasons as varied as womanhood itself, have chosen not to – The Childless Revolution dispels fears, removes ignorance, and corrects misconceptions about the ever-growing group of women without children in our midst.
In the Japanese language the word ‘ie’ denotes both the materiality of homes and family relations within. The traditional family and family house - often portrayed in ideal terms as key foundations of Japanese culture and society - have been subject to significant changes in recent years. This book comprehensively addresses various aspects of family life and dwelling spaces, exploring how homes, household patterns and kin relations are reacting to contemporary social, economic and urban transformations, and the degree to which traditional patterns of both houses and households are changing. The book contextualises the shift from the hegemonic post-war image of standard family life, to the nuclear family and to a situation now where Japanese homes are more likely to include unmarried singles; childless couples; divorcees; unmarried adult children and elderly relatives either living alone or in nursing homes. It discusses how these new patterns are both reinforcing and challenging typical understandings of Japanese family life.
While interest in the drivers, consequences, nature and manifestations of voluntary and involuntary childlessness increases, knowledge progress is hampered by poor linkages across disjointed research fields. The book brings together theoretical insights and empirical investigations into the phenomenon, united within a feminist conceptual framework.
Based on extensive fieldwork, Nature’s Embrace reveals the emerging pluralization of death rites in postindustrial Japan. Low birth rates and high numbers of people remaining permanently single have led to a shortage of ceremonial caregivers (most commonly married sons and their wives) to ensure the transformation of the dead into ancestors resting in peace. Consequently, older adults are increasingly uncertain about who will perform memorial rites for them and maintain their graves. In this study, anthropologist Satsuki Kawano examines Japan’s changing death rites from the perspective of those who elect to have their cremated remains scattered and celebrate their return to nature. For those without children, ash scattering is an effective strategy, as it demands neither a grave nor a caretaker. However, the adoption of ash scattering is not limited to the childless. By forgoing graves and lightening the burden on younger generations to care for them, this new mortuary practice has given its proponents an increased sense of control over their posthumous existence. By choosing ash scattering, older adults contest their dependent status in Japanese society, which increasingly views the aged as passive care recipients. As such, this study explores not only new developments in mortuary practices, but also voices for increased self-sufficiency in late adulthood and the elderly’s reshaping of ties with younger generations. Nature’s Embrace offers insightful discussion on the rise of new death rites and ideologies, older adults’ views of their death rites, and Japan’s changing society through the eyes of aging urbanites. This book will engage a wide range of readers interested in death and culture, mortuary ritual, and changes in age relations in postindustrial societies.
Contemporary Japanese women are often presented as devoted full-time wives and mothers. At the extreme, they are stereotyped as "education mothers" (kyoiku mama), completely dedicated to the academic success of their children. Children of working mothers are pitied; day-care users, both children and mothers, are faintly disparaged for their inadequate home lives; hired babysitters are virtually unknown. Yet historical evidence reveals a strikingly different picture of Japanese motherhood and childcare at the beginning of the twentieth century. In contrast to today, child tending by non-maternal caregivers was widely accepted at all levels of Japanese society. Day-care centers flourished, and there was virtually no expectation of exclusive maternal care of children, even infants. The patterns of the formation of modern Japanese attitudes toward motherhood, childhood, child-rearing, and home life become visible as this study traces the early twentieth-century rise of Japanese day-care centers, institutions established by middle-class philanthropists and reformers to provide for the physical well-being and mental and moral development of urban lower-class preschool children. Day-care gained broad support in turn-of-the-century Japan for several reasons. For one, day-care did not clash with widely accepted norms of child care. A second factor was the perception of public and private policymakers that day-care held the promise of social and national progress through economic and moral betterment of the urban lower classes. Finally, day-care offered working mothers the opportunity to earn a better livelihood with fewer worries about their children. In spite of emerging notions that total devotion to child-rearing was a woman's highest calling, Japanese nationalism, a signal force in the genesis of the modern Japanese state, economy, and middle-class culture, fed a deep wellspring of support for day-care and fostered significant reshaping of motherhood, childhood, home life, and view of the urban lower classes. Passages to Modernity is an important and original contribution to our understanding of the institutional and ideological reach of the early twentieth-century state and the contested emergence of a striking new discourse about woman as domestic caregiver and homemaker.
Fully updated, revised and expanded, this is a welcome new edition of this bestselling book providing a clear, accessible and readable introduction to Japanese society.
