These gripping biographies poignantly illustrate the strengths and the vulnerabilities of professional housewives and of families facing social change and economic uncertainty in contemporary Japan.

This book offers a new perspective and empirical evidence that are relevant for understanding changes in family structures, intergenerational relationships, and female labor force participation in the “strong family” societies and that also shed light on those in the “weak family” societies. Focusing on the stem family and the gender division of labor, presenting detailed quantitative evidence, and testing the theories on family change and gender revolution, the book provides a comprehensive examination of change, continuity, and regionality in the Japanese family system over the twentieth century. By analyzing data from a nationally representative life course survey with event history techniques, it investigates factors affecting post-marital intergenerational co-residence and proximate residence along with those influencing continuous and/or discontinuous employment of married women across the life course. In this way, it reveals the mechanisms underlying the stem family formation and those behind married women’s M-shaped employment pattern. It further explores regionality in the Japanese family system, applying a demographic mapping method to data from a nationally representative community survey and official statistics. The mapping analyses demonstrate persistent geographical contrasts between two types of living arrangements (single-household versus multi-household) in the stem family accompanied by two types of maternal employment (full-time versus part-time). They also reveal a historical correlation between traditional communal parenting systems and modern childcare services, linking past to present from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century.

Bringing together a number of perspectives on the Japanese housing system, Housing and Social Transition in Japan provides a comprehensive, challenging and theoretically developed account of the dynamic role of the housing system during a period of unprecedented social and economic change in one of the most enigmatic social, political, and economic systems of the modern world. While Japan demonstrates many of the characteristics of some western housing and social systems, including mass homeownership and consumption-based lifestyles, extensive economic growth and rapid urban modernization has been achieved in balance with traditional social values and the maintenance of the family system. Helpfully divided into three sections, Housing and Social Transition in Japan: explores the dynamics of the development of the housing system in post-war Japan deals with social issues related to housing in terms of social aging, family relations, gender and inequality addresses the Japanese housing system and social change in relation to comparative and theoretical frameworks. As well as providing challenges and insights for the academic community at large, this book also provides a good introduction to the study of Japan and its housing, economic, social and welfare system generally.

This book explores how the relationship between child and parent develops in Japan, from the earliest point in a child’s life, through the transition from family to the wider world, first to playschools and then schools. It shows how touch and physical contact are important for engendering intimacy and feeling, and how intimacy and feeling continue even when physical contact lessens. It relates the position in Japan to theoretical writing, in both Japan and the West, on body, mind, intimacy and feeling, and compares the position in Japan to practices elsewhere. Overall, the book makes a significant contribution to the study of and theories on body practices, and to debates on the processes of socialisation in Japan.

In the Japanese language the word ‘ie’ denotes both the materiality of homes and family relations within. The traditional family and family house - often portrayed in ideal terms as key foundations of Japanese culture and society - have been subject to significant changes in recent years. This book comprehensively addresses various aspects of family life and dwelling spaces, exploring how homes, household patterns and kin relations are reacting to contemporary social, economic and urban transformations, and the degree to which traditional patterns of both houses and households are changing. The book contextualises the shift from the hegemonic post-war image of standard family life, to the nuclear family and to a situation now where Japanese homes are more likely to include unmarried singles; childless couples; divorcees; unmarried adult children and elderly relatives either living alone or in nursing homes. It discusses how these new patterns are both reinforcing and challenging typical understandings of Japanese family life.