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$Pretitle{}
$Title{Japan
Chapter 2C.   Patterns of Living}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Emma Louise Young}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{japanese
women
life
urban
percent
time
small
social
company
age}
$Date{1981}
$Log{}
Title:       Japan
Book:        Japan, A Country Study
Author:      Emma Louise Young
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 2C.   Patterns of Living

     The Japanese population has enjoyed a standard of living commensurate
with that of other highly developed and industrialized societies and
economies. It has reaped the benefits of the nation's economic progress since
World War II in the forms of longer life, better health, higher wages, and
more leisure time. At the same time, the country faces many of the issues
common to other highly industrialized nations, including pollution and urban
congestion.

Urban Life

     At the first census in 1920 slightly more than 18 percent of the
population was living in areas officially defined as urban. The figure had
increased to over 24 percent by 1930 and to almost 38 percent by 1940. The
trend was interrupted during World War II but resumed quickly thereafter, and
by the early 1980s more than 75 percent of the population was living in areas
officially defined as urban. Approximately 45 percent of the total population
lived in the Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya metropolitan areas, which together
occupied 10 percent of the national territory.

     Japan has a long tradition of urban living. The city of Kyoto was laid
out as early as 793 A.D., and in the eighteenth century, Tokyo-then called
Edo-was one of the largest cities in the world. These preindustrial cities
were known for their commercial areas, where small, household-run enterprises
produced foodstuffs, clothing, and articles of trade. Within these cities
neighborhoods came to be known for the production and sale of particular
commodities, and they developed a lively local culture, centered on a
neighborhood association and activities at the local Shinto shrine.
Contemporary Japan also has intimate urban "downtown" neighborhoods, mixing
retail stores, small industrial enterprises, and residences where community
feeling is strong. These neighborhoods provide a link with the past and a
vibrant contrast to the more subdued suburban neighborhoods of white-collar
workers.

     Another identifiable residential urban pattern has revolved around a
structure of small, low-cost modern apartments (danchi). Danchi living tends
to attract the families of young white-collar workers. One author has compared
danchi to a beehive. While the apartments composing a danchi are certainly
small and compact-tiny even by Japanese standards-the social life in danchi
does not resemble the bustling cooperative community of the beehive. Rather it
is a life of isolation, where mothers and small children confine themselves to
self-contained residences, see only persons of their own social and economic
class, and share in few cooperative activities. Danchi living is considered a
temporary phase, preliminary to the purchase of one's own house. People do not
expect to remain there for their entire lives.

     Houses and lots are small, one-third of the latter are less than 100
square meters in size. Particularly for urban dwellers the cost of acquiring a
house is formidable, land accounting for about 40 percent of the total cost.
The Shinjuku transportation and commercial district in Tokyo provides an
extreme example of high urban land prices; in 1980 land there sold for
5,480,000 Yen (for value of the yen-see Glossary) per square meter. The
government has attempted to remedy the problem by building subsidized
apartment houses, providing low-cost, long-term loans, providing tax credits
for homeowners, and reducing costs through standardization of materials and
construction techniques. In addition large companies frequently offer their
employees mortgages at favorable rates. Housing loan repayment costs could
still represent as much as 40 percent of a family's budget, however, and the
cost of purchasing a house represented 5.8 years of a worker's salary.

     Nevertheless consumer expectations in recent years have been on the rise.
Whereas until the early 1970s complaints about housing focused on small size,
high price, and dilapidated conditions, since that time they have focused on
such conditions as lack of sun, airiness, or a garden. Interior furnishings
have also improved. In living rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms, many households
have combined Western-style furnishings with more conventional Japanese
furniture. The possession of video-cassette recorders has replaced that of
refrigerators and color television as an indicator of a desirable level of
consumption.

     Consumers have begun to question the consequences of economic growth and
to demand higher quality social services, more libraries, and cultural
centers, greater access to sports facilities, and additional parks and areas
of natural greenery. Attention has been increasingly focused on the adverse
effects of urban life on families: modern children have been seen as more
demanding and less patient and disciplined than their forebears, who had
experienced war and poverty. Deference to parental authority has decreased.

     Despite these problems, urban life was much safer and more convenient
than in many countries in 1981. In contrast to tendencies in most
industrialized nations, crime rates in Japanese cities have been declining
(see The Criminal Justice System, ch. 8). The streets of Tokyo were safe, even
at night, and a public campaign was more likely to urge residents to lock
their doors than to suggest they install deadbolts. Public transportation was
congested, but convenient, clean, punctual, and relatively inexpensive.
Complaints were heard, however, that railroad station parking lots were too
small to accommodate all commuter bicycles. In urban areas, houses were close
together; but at the same time shops were close by, and housewives could
easily purchase fresh vegetables and fish daily. Urban life was made more
attractive for many by a wide variety of cultural and sports activities
including the symphony orchestra, theater, sumo, and professional baseball
performances, as well as museums and art galleries.

The Japanese Company

     The individual's social identification is made principally on the basis
of the group to which he belongs. People identify themselves and others
primarily according to group membership-such as household or neighborhood in
traditional times and place of work in modern times-rather than by social
class or function. Decisions in daily life tend to be heavily influenced by
the anticipation of their consequences for the group to which the individual
belongs. An individual's prestige and pride are founded on the relative
ranking of that group. The achievements of individuals are seen as an
affirmation of group strength, just as the achievements of the group affirm
the value of its members.

     The large, prestigious company provides an example in the modern setting
of a case in which an individual's loyalties and sometimes the preponderance
of his social relations are to be found among those with whom he works. The
huge companies at the top of the corporate system have been the engines of the
country's rapid economic growth (see Private Enterprise, ch. 4). On the
individual level they are the ultimate goal of those preparing for entry into
the labor market through the intensely competitive higher levels of the
education system (see Education in the 1980s, ch. 3).

     At the beginning of employment, extensive training focuses on the
company, that is, on group consciousness and loyalty. Workers sing the company
song, display company insignia on lapel pins, and introduce themselves and
friends as members of such-and-such company, rather than individually by their
jobs. Company loyalty is openly and frequently expressed in public as well as
in private.

     The relationship between company and employee is not a mere contractual
relation covering a specific job to be performed and the compensation to be
expected. Rather the company provides a total commitment to the well-being of
its employees and their families, which is returned with a total commitment to
the perpetuation and development of the firm. Wages, health care, recreational
facilities and activities, commissaries, and the company and social groups
draw the worker and his entire family into the corporate group. It is not
uncommon for the families of some large corporations to live together in
housing provided by the company at low rent or even rent free.

     Most companies recruit permanent employees from a few selected high
schools and colleges and use seniority as the basis for salary advancement and
promotion. Not only does the permanent employee's place of work remain
constant, but his circle of friends and associates remain the same as well.
Ideally there is little conscious conflict or competition within the group.
Competition tends to take place between analogous corporate groups, such as
one company against another or between plants in the same industrial
organization.

Rural Life

     The character of rural life has been changing in recent decades. Farming
as a full-time pursuit has become uncommon. At the same time, rural incomes
were catching up with those in urban areas. The median age of the rural
population was increasing as young persons left for the cities. Since the
early 1960s there has been a shift from full-time to part-time farming; thus
in 1978 more than two-thirds of farm households received their primary income
from a nonagricultural source-primarily industrial labor. The mechanization of
equipment and the development of chemical fertilizers and insecticides have
made it possible for a family to grow a major portion of its annual
consumption of rice and vegetables in limited bursts of activity over a year's
time. Rural households that depended on homebound members of the family-mother
(okaachan), grandfather (ojiichan), and grandmother obaachan)-to do the
agricultural work were said to be engaged in san-chan farming (the word san
means three).

     The community-wide network of interdependence and cooperative labor of
the past had been pulled apart by 1981. Fathers and young adults now left each
morning and returned at night, and farm tools, once shared, were now owned by
individual families. Some observers saw the decline of the Japanese village in
these trends, but while village solidarity has declined, it has not vanished
entirely. White-collar employees of large, successful companies may draw their
identity from their work place, but the part-time farmer who commutes to a
small, local transient business is more likely to find such identity in his
family and village.

     In 1981 families who lived near regional cities had larger living
facilities, shorter commuting time, and cleaner air than their counterparts in
Tokyo or Nagoya. In addition they could combine the advantages of industrial
employment with the pleasures of cultivating their own land. Despite all the
change, rural households have continued to hold together, and community
festivals are celebrated with all the pomp and glitter that higher wages and
more leisure time could command.

Women

     The status of Japanese women has varied in different historical periods.
In the late twelfth century, for example, women could inherit property in
their own names and manage it by themselves. In later centuries, however,
traditional viewpoints-some of them strengthened by legal codes-emphasized
that status differences between men and women were legitimate and that the
husband and wife were different. The behavior of the upper classes tended to
reflect these assumptions, as did the ideology of the society as a whole, but
among other strata of the society lines were less rigidly upheld.

     After World War II the legal position of women and the character of the
family were drastically redefined by the 1947 Constitution and the attendant
Civil Code (1948). The right of the individual to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness was declared to have precedence over obligation to
family. Individual dignity and essential equality of the sexes became basic
legal principles. The Civil Code withdrew the legal sanctions for the
traditional family system by recognizing each married couple as an independent
unit jointly exercising final authority over their own affairs and those of
their children. The Basic Law of Education opened educational institutions to
women; the Labor Standards Law mandated that they are to receive equal pay for
equal work; and in 1946, for the first time, women acquired the right to vote.
Legally few barriers to women's equal participation in the life of the society
remained.

     Thus the postwar years have seen a rise in the power and status of women.
Labor-saving devices have become widespread and have helped to free the
housewife from time-consuming, daily chores, and she has used some of her free
time to broaden her interests and activities. Young women slightly outranked
young men in the percentage of their age group entering upper secondary school
in the late 1970s, and a substantial number of young women continued on to
junior college or four-year universities. Women were active participants in
the labor force, especially young women; overall nearly half of all Japanese
women over the age of fifteen found employment in outside firms or family
enterprises. Rural families have been forced to upgrade the treatment of
daughters-in-law in order to compete against the attractions of a city job.

     Employment has tended to coincide with certain stages in the life cycle
and has been concentrated in the twenty to twenty-four and thirty to
forty-nine year age groups. Many young women have worked between graduation
from secondary school or junior college and marriage. Companies sometimes have
stipulated that women must  retire when they reached age twenty-four or
twenty-five, or when they marry, and most certainly by the time of their first
pregnancy.

     In general employed women have filled the least skilled and most unstable
jobs and rarely have held management positions even in professions having a
high proportion of women as employees. Moreover their wages have averaged only
about 55 percent of those of men, and in cases where their employment was
regarded as temporary they have been denied the usual supplementary payroll
benefits. The general tendency, however, has been toward improved status for
women.

     The Japanese frequently explain women's changing roles by contrasting the
life cycle of the woman in 1940 with that of her daughter in the 1970s. On
average a woman of the earlier generation married at twenty, had five
children, was widowed at forty-three, and died at fifty-only eight years after
her last child entered school. Her daughter marries at twenty-three, has two
children, and lives about forty years between the time her last child enters
school and her death at seventy-five. It is this change in population patterns
that has posed the greatest dilemma for Japanese society, which has emphasized
a woman's role as childrearer. Some mothers of grown children will be absorbed
into the labor market, but more are likely to channel their energies toward
the women's organizations that participate in civic and political movements
and demand changes in the society and environment.

The Aged

     The increase in the number of older persons is a phenomenon that will put
great pressure on Japan's economy and on the development of its social
services in the near future. The number of persons aged sixty-five and over
reached 8.6 percent of the population in 1978 and was expected to climb to 12
percent by 1995. This trend, in combination with lower birthrates, means that
a labor force not enriched by large influxes of young workers supports a
larger and larger percentage of retired persons.

     Most Japanese identify old age as beginning between age sixty-five and
seventy, although the customary retirement age is fifty-five (see Employment
and Labor Relations, ch. 4). In the traditional village system, the aged were
cared for by the heir to their household, usually the eldest son, who married
and remained in the same house. This continued to be the case in the
contemporary period as well; in 1975 some 75 percent of aged Japanese were
reported to be living in the home of one or another of their children.

     Among the aged, economics and health were primary concerns in 1981. Most
companies provided their regular employees with a retirement benefit of sorts.
Typically it was a lump sum benefit such as a year's salary, but an increasing
number of larger firms were beginning to offer the choice of a lump sum or
monthly payments, or alternatively, a combination of the two. Either way the
benefit was generally too small for the retired worker and his wife to subsist
on completely, so that many used the money to buy a small business or
attempted to find some other work. In this manner they could continue to
support themselves until they qualified to collect the government-controlled
monthly annuity-averaging about 42 percent of the average wage in
manufacturing, to which they had contributed while working. Even after
reaching that age, many Japanese continued to work, giving the country a
substantially higher rate of persons sixty-five and over in the work force
than in other industrialized nations. In 1981 over 40 percent of Japanese men
continued to work after age sixty-five and, though participation rates of
women in the labor force peaked at a younger age level, 25 percent of women
also continued to work past sixty-five. Salary, loans, or income from
self-employment have made up more than half of men's incomes after sixty-five,
but most women have been entirely dependent on public pensions.

     In the early 1980s concern for the health of the aged was receiving a
great deal of attention, and free medical care for persons over a certain age
and under a liberal given income was a national policy. Responsibility for the
care of aged, bedridden, or senile persons devolves primarily on family
members. Persons living in one of the few retirement or nursing homes are
objects of pity, appearing to have been abandoned by their families.
Day-to-day care of aged persons falls primarily on daughters-in-law.

Religion

     Japanese society is often described as being highly secularized and
indeed, widespread indifference and skepticism in regard to religious
beliefs-particularly among urban populations-lend credence to this impression.
In many respects tecularism reflects the profound impact of Confucian ethical
concepts introduced from China. Moral prescriptions governing social
relationships in contemporary Japan derive from such concepts, which find the
principles of right conduct not in the supernatural but in man himself.
Buddhism, introduced from China in the sixth century, has provided the comfort
and assurance of eternal salvation, and family ceremonies in veneration of
ancestors use Buddhist ritual. Shinto by contrast focuses on the welfare and
solidarity of the community. Buddhism and Shinto reinforce each other in the
Japanese context and many Japanese subscribe, at least nominally, to both
faiths at once. Christianity having been introduced in 1549 and vigorously
suppressed after 1638, was revived in the latter half of the nineteenth
century and had some 950,000 adherents mainly in educated urban circles. A
number of new religions representing a mixture of Buddhist, Shintoist,
Confucian, Daoist, and Christian beliefs flourish among less prosperous urban
and rural elements.

     The approach to religion is eclectic and tolerant. No conflict is felt in
simultaneously holding to beliefs derived from Buddhism, Shinto, and
Christianity-beliefs which, however, have been selected and modified to suit
the temperament of the people and the pattern of the society.

     Despite secularist trends, persons in all walks of life continue
religious observances, which, aside from the question of personal faith, are
communal and social acts valued in themselves. Social values and attitudes
have long been backed by primarily secular sanctions, and they have molded
religion more than they have been molded by it.

     The relationship between religion and government has been close in Japan.
Buddhism was first adopted by the ruling elite and did not become a popular
faith until later. Shinto, overshadowed by Buddhism for centuries, retained
its importance as the legitimizing doctrine for imperial rule. In the modern
period it was transformed into a political ideology, which an authoritarian
government used to gain popular acceptance of the sacrifices involved in
modernizing the country and embarking on the military conquest of Asia. Shinto
became the official doctrine of the state; and all other religions were
vigorously controlled by the authorities. Defeat in World War II was followed
by the dissolution of the state Shinto cult. Provisions in the 1947
Constitution guaranteed religious freedom and prohibited the government from
engaging in any religious activity.

     The great majority of people celebrate the principal Buddhist holidays
and preserve something of the form of the ancestor rites. For many these
practices are manifestations of faith; for a larger number, they represent
actions engaged in more out of the force of custom than of personal
conviction. In a time when the problems and issues of local and national life
are being stated in almost exclusively secular terms, religion and religious
leaders figure little in the conscious concerns of the community.

     There are six major doctrinal schools of Buddhism in modern-day
Japan-Tendai, Shingon, Jodo (Pure Land), Nichiren, Zen, and Nara. New
teachings and doctrinal disputes have led to the formation of numerous sects
within these major doctrinal schools.

     The once-flourishing Tendai school, which was a fountainhead of Buddhist
philosophical thought, still commanded respect if not widespread popularity in
1981. The Tendai temples on Mount Hiei near Kyoto, known collectively as the
Enryakuji, continued to shelter a number of priests who devoted themselves to
scholarly pursuits. The complex doctrines of the school limited popular
interest in it.

     Unlike Tendai, the Shingon school, which was founded at about the same
time, has continued to be popular. Its undiminished appeal lies in such ritual
practices as mystical gestures and the incantation of magical formulas, not
only for salvation but also for worldly gain. Shingon teaches that communion
with the universe, represented by the cosmic Buddha, Dai Nichi, can be
achieved through invocation of lesser deities-all of whom are manifestations
of the ultimate Buddha. Shingon mysticism has greatly influenced the practices
of all Buddhist sects.

     The Pure Land school has grown at a fast rate in the twentieth century.
According only a negligible value to meditation and ritual, it teaches that
man, immersed in sin, cannot achieve salvation through his own efforts but
rather through total reliance on the merciful compassion of the Amida Buddha,
who alone can decide the individual's destiny.

     The Nichiren school of Buddhism had the largest following in 1981. It
still exhibits much of the fanatic ardor bequeathed to it in the thirteenth
century by its founder. Its long association with nationalism drew many
supporters in the 1930s and has drawn even more since the end of World War II.
The Soka Gakkai lay movement founded in 1930, which supports the Nichiren
Shoshu sect, has been active since World War II; an offshoot of Soka Gakkai
developed into one of the present-day opposition political parties, the
Komeito (see The Opposition Parties, ch. 6). Nichiren Shoshu's evangelical,
intolerant, and militant tactics have brought it phenomenal growth. In the
early 1980s the sect had more than 31 million adherents (most but not all of
whom were Soka Gakkai members).

     Zen's continued strength is connected in part to its long association
with the samurai and, later, official groups and with its profound influence
on the traditional arts. Rather than theological investigation or dependence
upon a savior, Zen emphasizes self-discipline, meditation, and austerity as
the way to enlightenment. Before and during World War II it helped to foster
the discipline and courage of the Japanese soldiers.

     In addition to the sects belonging to the five other major schools, there
were three surviving Nara sects that have been of little importance in modern
times, except as points of cultural and historical interest. Their memberships
have been small and only government financial support of their temples in
Nara, which have been designated national treasures, has kept them alive.

     Temples and other places of worship, numbering over 76,000 in 1981,
appear singly and in groups in towns and villages throughout the country, and
there are great complexes of them in the traditional Buddhist centers of Nara
and Kyoto (see The Arts, ch. 3). The temples of each sect fall within a
hierarchy of national and regional chief temples and local temples and their
branches. Authority over the religious and administrative affairs of a sect
formerly was vested in one man, usually the head or chief abbot of the
principal temple.

     An elaborately organized clergy serves the temples and lay believers.
Since 1884 sects have maintained their own systems for conferring priestly
rank, which vary considerably. Generally speaking, however, they recognize
three classes of priests and one class of monks who can become priests when
sufficiently educated. There are also a few small orders of nuns.

     The term "new religions" covers a variety of groups established to
respond to modern problems of everyday life, especially those resulting from
urbanization, industrialization, and changes in traditional roles and
responsibilities. All of these groups are indigenous, and they identify
themselves as Shinto or Buddhist depending on which religion contributes more
elements to their eclectic philosophies. Many were founded by a charismatic
person, often a woman. Despite their being termed new religions, some were
established in the late nineteenth century.

     The new religions that have spread in the past century are often little
more than large social fraternities appealing to the least educated with
emotion-charged ritual, theology drawn from many sources, and often the
promise of miracles of healing. They are disdained as superstitious and
ephemeral by the educated, but they have shown remarkable vitality and
strength. They tend to have simple, easily understandable, syncretic sets of
beliefs, emphasizing health, prosperity, self-improvement, happiness, and
international peace and goodwill. Rather than promising a personal
relationship with a deity, which will help an adherent overcome difficulties,
they have provided a social environment that supports persons in solving their
problems. For many believers, they have provided succor at a time of personal
life crisis or frustration, becoming the focal point of intense feelings of
devotion and loyalty. Small, intimate groups that discuss personal troubles
are linked together in a firm organizational hierarchy. The founders and
earliest adherents of these groups were among the dispossessed, and membership
tends to attract persons from this level of society.

                                       * * *

     The best general survey of Japanese society and culture is Edwin O.
Reischauer's The Japanese. Harumi Befu's Japan: An Anthropological
Introduction deals with these issues in greater depth. The Japanese government
publishes excellent statistics and numerous information pamphlets on a variety
of subjects in English. George De Vos and Wagatsuma Hiroshi discuss minority
issues in Japan's Invisible Race, and Nakane Chie discusses traditional family
structure in Kinship and Economic Organization in Rural Japan. Women in
Changing Japan, edited by Joyce Lebra, Joy Paulson, and Elizabeth Powers is
the standard work on that topic, but there is not yet one on the elderly.
Rodney Clark ably sums up previous work and adds his own perspective on the
volatile topic of Japanese business organization in The Japanese Company.
Discussion of contemporary urban life is scattered in various periodicals, but
the classic works are Ronald P. Dore's City Life in Japan and Ezra Vogel's
Japan's New Middle Classes. Evocative reflections on changes in rural patterns
can be found in Robert J. Smith's Kurusu and Ronald P. Dore's Shinohata. The
best treatments of Japanese psychology, religion, and social values are Lebra
Takie Sugiyama's Japanese Patterns of Behavior, Hori Ichiro's Japanese
Religion, Nakane Chie's Japanese Society, and R.J. Smith's "Cultural
Continuity and the Shadow of the Past in Japanese Society." (For further
information see Bibliography.)