CONTEMPORARY JAPAN: THE JAPANESE FAMILY Roles in the Family |
| 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. |
Helen Hardacre :: In the Japanese family today, the roles of mother, father, child, and grandparent are in some ways very much like the contemporary American family. In many families, the father goes out to a job — that is, does not work at home, though of course there are many family-owned businesses where the family may be living in the same building where their place of business is. In that case, we don’t necessarily see a separation between the family and the place of the man’s work. However, it’s probably more common for there to be such a separation, and that separation, so that the man is at a job for many long hours, creates a distinctive dynamic in family life. Theodore Bestor :: The fact that Japanese fathers in contemporary urban households spend so much time at work, and the company demands on them are so great, means that they often really have very little time or energy to spend with their children, and so not only does the responsibility for raising children, overseeing the education, fall onto the mothers, but fathers themselves are absent, removed, from the children’s lives. A few years ago I saw some statistics that a Japanese food manufacturer had compiled, on the number of times a week that children in Tokyo ate dinner with their fathers present, and it was — I don’t remember the exact figures — but it was an extraordinarily high percentage of children who reported that they never ate dinner with their father present except on weekends or special occasions. Helen Hardacre :: It is common for the mother to bear the full responsibility for raising children, overseeing their education, and also managing the family’s finances. This puts a heavy strain on Japanese women, and also a strain on the relation between the mother and the child. |
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