CONTEMPORARY JAPAN: THE JAPANESE FAMILY Extra Children |
| Although Japanese family roles have changed considerably in the 20th century, aspects of the traditional ie, or “continuing family,” still remain. The Japanese have a saying that even if an extended family does not live together, parents and grandparents should live near enough to carry over a bowl of hot soup. In this video series, Harvard University professors Theodore Bestor and Helen Hardacre describe the enduring importance of traditional family values in Japan. |
Theodore Bestor :: In the traditional Japanese family system, because it was organized around the idea that only one child would inherit, and that was usually the eldest son, this of course raises the question: What happens to the other children? In the case of daughters, the normal expectation would be that the family would arrange a marriage with another family, and so a daughter would go as a bride and be incorporated into some additional family. And this is true in many societies where families’ traditional kinship organization is through arranged alliances by arranging marriages between members of the same generation. But this raises the question also of what happens to the sons. If a family has say three sons, and only one son is going to inherit, what happens to those other two sons? Well, Japanese kinship, traditional Japanese kinship, has an answer for that, which is to say that just as women can be married out as brides into another family, in essence men can be married out as grooms for other families. The particular social custom is called, in translation, “adopted sons-in-law,” so that a family that had daughters, but no sons, might adopt a young man and have him marry their daughter, and when the adoption and marriage was completed, he would take on the family name of his wife’s family, and for all intents and purposes would be considered the heir to that family. [So] it’s not inheritance through the female, but still inheritance through the male, but the male’s role is created socially through the process of adoption. |
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