Japan's New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (34 page)

The wife and children are less likely to turn to him for emotional support, although they do rely on him for economic support. Furthermore, wives do turn to their husbands for help in making difficult decisions regarding the children, and young children do enjoy their relationship with their father. Older boys commonly look to their father for guidance, and older girls respond to the flirtatious joking with the father and enjoy listening to his exploits as a way of finding out about the outside world.

Part of the reason that the relationship between the father and the rest of the family is so stable despite the distance is that difficulties can be contained without disrupting the basic pattern of relationships. If, as in many modern young couples, the husband and wife desire to be closer, this is possible. But if there are difficulties and the father is disappointed with the mother and the children, he can simply enjoy more of the pleasures of the bars and the company gang and spend less time at home. Similarly, because the wife ordinarily expects to get much of her emotional comfort and support from her children and her intimate friends, she is not so disappointed if she and her husband do not have an intimate relationship.

Because the mother and children are not very dependent on the father for emotional support, they can more easily tolerate separation from him as long as he provides the family with money and assistance in placing the children. In a number of families, the husband's work separated him from his family for several months or even a year or two. Although the husband's absence did cause problems of adjustment for the family, the fact that the emotional mutual dependency was not so great as in the United States made separation easier to tolerate. The mother and children remained to-

gether and the father simply relied more heavily on work associates and visits to the local entertainment quarters.

Even if the wife and children are annoyed at the father for avoiding his family responsibility, they still have enough sympathy for him to contain their feelings. Even if the father is authoritative he generally reveals enough of his need for emotional support that the wife and children genuinely sympathize with him and recognize that he needs humoring, support, and attention.

One important consequence of the mother-child coalition is that it serves to minimize the differences between generations. In many societies with rapid social change, the difference between generations is so great that there is a sharp cleavage between the parents and the children. The common cleavages between father and the rest of the family militate against this generational break because it closely links the children with the mother, a member of the older generation, making them more receptive to her teachings.
^[9]
Even though Mamachi youth complain about the older generation in general, they are almost invariably sympathetic with their mothers. This close tie to the mother puts an effective damper on what might otherwise lead to more serious ruptures between generations as found, for example, in the cleavages between parents and children of many immigrant groups in American cities.

When the ideals of
ie
were still strong and the bride belonged to the
ie
and not to her husband, no great value was placed on the privacy of the married couple. In the evenings, if free time were left after the bride finished her work, while others were awake, it was thought improper for the young couple to leave the family circle and retire to their own room, if, indeed, they had a room of their own. This does not mean that husbands and wives had no affectionate relationship; on the contrary, almost like illicit lovers

[9] It may be argued that the same is true of many business organizations. While peer groups have in recent years increased in power, cliques combining older and younger people still remain important. To the extent that such cliques exist, cleavages based strictly on age differences are less likely to become disruptive. It may be said that cliques linking older and younger members are important for maintaining integration in a society of extremely rapid change.

they sometimes took advantage of moments of privacy. Yet on the whole, although emotional distance between husband and wife remains greater than between couples in America, opportunities for closeness have increased. They have more free time to be home alone now than a generation ago, and even if relatives live in the home, it is accepted as perfectly proper for a couple to have a chance to be alone together. The growth of opportunity for privacy is reflected in the courtship period as well as later during the marriage.

The common pattern of courtship in the previous era was for the families to investigate each other and then introduce the couple at a formal meeting (
miai
). If the
miai
went well, the families would proceed with the arrangements for engagement and marriage, but all arrangements would be handled by the family and go-betweens. The young couple would have no further opportunity to meet until the marriage. When people recount their own family's history, however, a sizeable minority of cases do not fit this pattern, either because there was no official
miai
, or because the couple or their families had known each other before serious arrangement began, or because the couple was given some opportunity to meet alone before marriage. However, even couples which did not have a
miai
usually had little opportunity to meet before marriage.

In recent years young people's freedom to meet before marriage has increased. It is now considered proper for a girl to have several dates with a boy between the
miai
and marriage,
^[10]
but it is still rare to date without an introduction by a close friend or relative who can provide assurance that the other person comes from a respectable family.

Although Mamachi residents believe that love marriages (
renai
) are getting to be the same in Japan as in the United States, the amount of freedom given to young people for dating in Mamachi is still very limited. Not only is high-school age considered too young for dating, but too young for any heterosexual interests. Many private high schools prohibit girls from wearing make-up, having permanents, or being on streets with boys. In psychoanalytic terms,

[10] For some statistical information on the frequence of
miai
(arranged marriage) as opposed to
renai
(love marriages), cf. Ezra F. Vogel, "The Go-Between in a Developing Society: The Case of the Japanese Marriage Arranger,"
Human Organization
, 1961, 20:112–120.

the Mamachi adolescent in his late teens has not yet resolved his Oedipal attachment to his parents and does not have a reservoir of unattached emotional energy available for falling in love with the first object he sees. As one girl put it, as much as she wants to date and form love relationships, she simply could not imagine the pleasure of suddenly just throwing herself into some boy's arms.

Parents implicitly encourage this caution because they feel it dangerous to give young people the opportunity to form love relationships without a solid objective basis in terms of social position, family background, education, and expected future life. Once there is this solid basis, however, it is considered desirable for love to proceed rapidly and for the marriage to be concluded within a few months, because a long courtship can lead to doubts and faultfinding which would interfere with eventual happiness. Besides, the extent of involvement would make it difficult to form a new relationship if the present one were terminated.

In their dating, young people now look for qualities compatible with personal companionship as well as objective qualities of family status, earning capacity of the husband, general good character, reliability, and health. Ambitious girls bent on a career are suspect by most young men. As one young college man said: "We want wives who are smart so that they can understand us, but not too smart." In a previous era, it was considered desirable for a man to marry a naïve, innocent, eighteen- or nineteen-year-old girl. It was thought that by taking such a bride, it would be much easier for the wife to adjust to marriage because she would not have developed hopes which would later lead to disappointment.
^[11]
Young men nowadays complain that such a bride would be too limiting because she would know so little about the world that it would be impossible to talk with her. The new ideal bride should know enough to converse intelligently with her husband, but not enough to have ambitions for herself that might interfere with marital happiness.

Before marriage, young couples make a determined effort to sound

[11] A girl is expected to be more receptive to her family's wishes than a boy, and evidence from projective tests given in rural Japan bears this out. Hiroshi Wagatsuma and George De Vos, "Attitudes toward Arranged Marriage in Rural Japan,"
Human Organization
, 1962, 21:187–200.

out the views of the partner. Because opportunities for dating are limited, each date takes on great significance. Casual dating with no consideration of marriage is almost unthinkable for a respectable young lady. On dates, most young people try earnestly to set forth their entire philosophy of life, their views about family relations in the modern age, their ambitions and goals, their interests in reading and music. These talks are usually held apart from the families, at a restaurant, a movie, play, or concert.

In the first year of marriage, before children are born, the newly married couple typically continues to go out occasionally. Many girls, however, in dating or early marriage still feel it wise to be reserved in expressing their opinions because they expect to learn and acquire their husband's opinions. Traditionally, the new bride never expressed her own views, fearing that they might not agree with the opinions of her husband's family. She listened to the conversations at her new home and, if she expressed an opinion at all, it would be in agreement with the family. Even today, the Mamachi wife does not feel as well-informed as her husband, and she is reluctant to state her opinion. Between her ignorance of the outside world and the husband's disinterest in the details of her daily life, there are not as many topics of conversation as in many American families.

Paradoxically, although discussion of children is one of the topics about which man and wife talk most enthusiastically, the arrival of children in some ways creates a greater distance in husband-wife relations.
^[12]
After the baby arrives, the mother devotes herself so completely to the child, that she sometimes neglects the husband. The husband often begins devoting himself more completely to his firm and the company gang. If he comes home late, the Mamachi wife, tired from caring for the baby and more independent than the traditional wife, does not feel she must wait up to talk with the husband. Small children generally take naps in the afternoon and then stay up until almost the time when the parents go to bed so

[12] Although this same tendency is found in American families, it seems more pronounced in Mamachi where the mother devotes herself so completely to the children. Cf. Robert O. Blood and Donald Wolfe,
Husbands and Wife
, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1960.

that even if the husband comes home early, the couple has only a few minutes to talk privately in the evening.

The interference of the small child in the privacy of the parents is perhaps best symbolized by the sleeping arrangements and the difficulty this creates for sexual relations between husband and wife. A small baby commonly sleeps between the father and the mother, on the same mat as the mother, while the father sleeps on the next mat. If children are born with no more than two or three years between them, the chances are that at least one child will be sleeping immediately next to the parents from the time the oldest was born until the youngest is several years of age. Compared to American couples, Mamachi couples have intercourse less frequently, and have less fore play and after play. The smaller role of sexual activity in the Mamachi marriage, and the fact that many couples have sexual relations after sleeping for a short period of time, would appear related to the couple's relative lack of privacy and intimacy.
^[13]

[13] A comparison of Shinozaki's Japanese sample of 635 persons in and near Tokyo in 1950 with the data from Kinsey's studies, completed in 1949, point up some of these contrasts in sexual behavior. Nobuo Shinozaki, "Report on Sexual Life of Japanese," No. 11, The Institute of Population Problems, Welfare Ministry, Tokyo, Japan, July 1957. Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, Paul H. Gebhard,
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
, Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1953. In the Japanese sample, 29 percent have intercourse after a brief period of sleep. Although the age groupings on frequency of sexual intercourse of married couples are not precisely the same, the following chart indicates the trend of the difference (Shinozaki, p. 16; Kinsey, p. 77);