Japanese Family

The contemporary Japanese family looks like the traditional western style family with a father, mother, and children settled in urban areas living in little apartments. The mother cares for the children and the father works in a company or governmental institution or is running his own business.

How does an average modern age Japanese family function? It all begins at home. Japanese people have a very particular concept of home called uchi, which literary means ‘house’ but also means ‘inside.’ Everything outside the house means soto, which literary means ‘outside.’ Uchi-soto, however, does not only refer to the literal meaning of house, or inside and outside, but is a form of the ie family system.

In this case uchi means house and every thing that is related to inside inner territories. At the same time it may be related to clean, beautiful, and everything associated with good. Uchi may also be related to ie where someone belongs.

In contrary, soto means outside, outer territories, but it is also related to dirt, unclean, etc. That is why when the Japanese enter their homes, uchi, they take off their shoes so that they will not bring the dirt of the outside soto in their homes.

Children

Children in their early ages are trained to become aware of hierarchy and to find their place at home and outside. Children are trained to think and act in the group they belong to and then to move individually. They are trained from a very early age to think of the good of others and to do to others as they would want others to do to them. Japanese kids are raised up to be group-oriented and not self-oriented. Consequently, every group may belong in various settings and times that make that group to be their uchi. One has to act for the sake and good will of the uchi where they belong. It can be at home with other siblings or at kindergarten or as classmates.

The personalized collective term mina-san is used to address and refer to the whole group and its needs. An individual whose behavior is to the detriment of mina-san is made to feel most uncomfortable (Joy Hendry, 2004).

More than fifty percent of married women are working. Parents are too busy to take care of their children. Therefore, the number of children is decreasing. In early postwar Japan, the husbands worked and the wives took care of their children. This is disappearing and children are hardly loved by their parents. The children have to spend a lot of time alone. With the coming of computers and the Internet things have become worse. The children communicate with the computer and Internet while contact with the outside world becomes poorer and weaker. This means that many of them have or will have many mental problems.

Wives, Mothers

The majority of marriages in Japan are arranged marriages, miai. Many of the women enter into a marriage by the arrangement of others. However, it is difficult to judge how many marriages are established based on affections.

Most contemporary couples describe their marriages as ‘in-between’ which means that someone introduced them and then they fell in love and decided to marry. Love alone is still not viewed as a sufficiently solid basis for marriage. The young Japanese couple is more cognizant than its American counterparts for the need for social support to keep the marriage going. Family investigations are an important precursor for marriage decisions, and a Japanese man or woman is still unlikely to marry a partner who is opposed by the family (Anne E. Imamura, 1990).

Fatherless Society

Postwar Japanese families are often referred to as ‘fatherless’. Japanese fathers are not very involved with their children. Long work hours and after work fellowships with colleagues mean fathers are away from home most of the day. As a consequence, they are less available to have time with their wives and children.

The word ‘fatherless’ describes two major situations. First it refers to those families where the father has less time to be with the family due to a hectic and busy work life. Those families of which the father is lacking due to divorce or separation describe the other situation. Both situations are alarming in Japan. A 1994 education ministry survey showed Japanese fathers spent an average of 3.32 minutes a day with their children on weekdays.

For the rest of the information, please refer to Understanding Japan through the Eyes of Christian Faith.