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CONTEMPORARY JAPAN: URBAN & RURAL LIFE Neighborhood Associations |
| The Japanese archipelago — with more than one thousand islands in all — spans diverse living environments: snowy mountains in the northern island of Hokkaido; bustling cities such as Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka; tropical rice paddies in southern Kyushu. In this video series, Harvard University professors Theodore Bestor and Helen Hardacre describe the character of both urban and rural life in Japan. |
Helen Hardacre :: Here’s an example of some of the things that a neighborhood association might do. Let me ask you, in your neighborhood, do you know who the oldest person living there is? This is something that happened to a friend of mine in Yokohama, which is as urban a place as Tokyo. You wouldn’t expect this, but her mother, living to the age of 94, after the age of 90 received a prize and a congratulatory visit every year from the head of the neighborhood association. And when she died, the whole neighborhood association went to her funeral. That meant the neighborhood association chartered buses, organized the people to know when it was going to be, and in that way the neighborhood showed their affection and appreciation for my friend’s mother, though many of them probably didn’t really know her personally. |
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