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Review Essay:
THE NUCLEAR FAMILY IN POSTWAR JAPAN
By KASE Kazutoshi (Professor of Economic History, Institute of Social Science,
University of Tokyo)

MORIOKA Kiyomi (1993) GENDAI KAZOKU HENDOU RON (Changes in the Contemporary
Family). Tokyo: Minerva. ISBN4-623-02301-X. OCHIAI Emiko (1994) 21SEIKI KAZOKU E
(The Family in the 21st Century). Tokyo: Yuuhikaku. ISBN4-641-18205-1.

The relationship between parents and their married children differs greatly
between Japan, America and Europe. In Japan, the causes, advantages and
disadvantages, and future development of this family relationship are the
subject of great debate. This debate is directly relevant to the question of how
much responsibility families should bear for looking after the increasing number
of elderly people.

The conventional view of the Japanese family is that after the Second World War
it began a rapid shift towards the two-generation nuclear or "western" family
model. Morioka is representative of this mainstream view, pointing to the rapid
jump in the number of nuclear families in the postwar years and the continuing
fall in the proportion of multi-generation families. In essence, Morioka finds
industrialization and a longing for a western-style family life responsible for
the shift to the nuclear family, part of a gradual westernization of Japanese
society as a whole. But his argument is not clear-cut. Sometimes his causal
chain is an active one, as follows:

industrialization -> improved economic situation of the family -> parents and
married children become able to live independently

but sometimes he switches to a passive causality:

regional differences in job opportunities -> young people have to leave home ->
multi-generation families become impossible to maintain

Unable to give a consistent explanation for the change, Morioka is reduced to
attributing the growth of the nuclear family primarily to a longing for
"westernization."

Attacks on this orthodox view have not been slow in arriving, and have singled
out for criticism the assumption that the increase in nuclear families has
caused a decline in multi-generation families. Ochiai has been the most
systematic proponent of this critique. She argues that during the 1960s and
early 1970s, when the number of nuclear families rose rapidly, heirs continued
to live with their parents while their siblings left home to start nuclear
families. This claim is borne out by the statistics, which show that the
absolute number of multi-generation families did not fall during this period.
The increase in nuclear families is instead explained by the "population
explosion" generation, those born in the period 1925-1950, forming households in
the traditional manner, that is, leaving the heir at home with the parents. The
younger generation clearly did not reject the idea of the multi-generation
family. After this demographic phase ended around 1975, the increase in the
proportion of nuclear families also slowed, undermining the conventional view
that the nuclear family is continuing to gain ground at the expense of the
multi-generation family.

Ochiai's demographic approach successfully explains most of the sudden increase
in nuclear families during the high-growth era. In portraying the following
twenty years as static because of a slower rise in the proportion of nuclear
families, however, Ochiai overlooks important recent changes in Japanese
families. If Ochiai's argument that there has been no change in the character of
the multi-generation family is true, we would expect to see a rapid increase in
the total number of multi-generation families, because the number of old parents
has grown rapidly. But no such increase is to be observed.

Neither Morioka nor Ochiai, therefore, is able to offer a satisfactory
explanation of the mechanisms by which nuclear families have increased, nor of
the relationship between the ideological and economic causes of the increase.

A further shortcoming of both authors' work is that they concentrate on urban
families, almost completely ignoring the continued prevalence of
multi-generation families in rural communities. This durability of
multi-generation rural families has, in fact, held in check the national trend
towards nuclear families. The authors' shared blind spot in this regard is
perhaps best explained by their tendency to learn from foreign family sociology
rather than to address properly the wealth of analysis and arguments regarding
the family put forward by Japanese agricultural economists and rural
sociologists. This is indicative of a deeper problem, the lack of dialogue
between family sociology on the one hand and agricultural economics and rural
sociology on the other. The major obstacle to such a dialogue is the assumption
by the latter disciplines that rural families are by nature multi-generational.

Scholars in many areas of social science can and should contribute to clarifying
the character of the Japanese family. Statistical analysis alone has a tendency
towards over-simplification, which must be corrected by scholars in other
disciplines and countries.

FURTHER READING:
HARADA, Hisashi (1994): Kazoku keitai no hendou to roujin fukushi (Changing
family structure and care for the elderly). Toshi Mondai Kenkyuu, March 1994.
ISSN 0387-3390.
TABATA, Tamotsu (1993): Nouka no kazoku kousei no henka to iji, keishou mondai
(Change and continuity in agricultural family structures). In ISOBE, Toshihiko,
ed. Kiki ni okeru kazoku nougyou keiei (Family farm management in crisis) Tokyo:
Nihon Keizai Hyouronkai. ISBN 4-8188-0678-1. ISHIKAWA, Hideo and NAGAYASU,
Sadako, eds. (1989) San nouson no hanseiki wo yomu (Fifty years in three farming
villages) Nousangyoson Bunka Kyoukai (Rural Culture Association). ISBN
4-540-89031-X. AIKAWA, Yoshihiko (1991)Nouzon shuudan no kihon kouzou (Basic
Structures of Rural Village Associations) Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobou. ISBN
4-275-01433-2.