This article looks at historical changes in the cultural superstructure defining the proper organization of elder care. Intergenerational mutual care in Japan developed in a context of various factors, including cultural ideals, centralization of the civil state, and the family unit, called the ie. In the Tokugawa period, care was often emphasized as men's morality in public, for the Tokugawa shogunate emphasized the Confucian ideology of filial piety. As Japan moved from the Tokugawa to the Meiji period, it became more feasible for the government to create legal pressures on women to care for children and the dependent elderly in the privatized ie. Although the ethics of care moved from the public to the private sphere, socioeconomic transformation enabled women to gain equal education and enabled the elderly to live longer. Generational differences now bring conflicts and tensions in Japanese society in determining where the morality of care should belong.
Masayuki O. Asai
and
Velma A. Kameoka
, “
The Influence of Sekentei on Family Caregiving and Underutilization of Social Services among Japanese Caregivers
,” Social Work50, no. 2 (2005);
Daisaku Maeda
, “
Societal Filial Piety Has Made Traditional Individual Filial Piety Much Less Important in Contemporary Japan
” Geriatrics and Gerontology International (2004);
Naohiro Ogawa
and
Robert D. Retherford
, “
Care of the Elderly in Japan: Changing Norms and Expectations
,” Journal of Marriage and Family55, no. 3 (1993); and
Robert D. Retherford
,
Naohiro Ogawa
, and
Satomi Sakamoto
, “
Values and Fertility Change in Japan
,” NUPRI Reprint Series 73 (1996).
2.
Asai
and
Kameoka
, “
The Influence of Sekentei on Family Caregiving”; and Susan Orpett Long and Phyllis Braudy Harris, “Gender and Elder Care: Social Change and the Role of the Caregiver in Japan
,” Social Science Japan Journal3, no. 1 ( 2000).
3.
Conrad D. Totman
, Japan beforePerry
: A Short History (
Berkeley: University of California Press
, 1982).
4.
Ibid.
5.
Ibid.
6.
William Wayne Farris
, Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan, 645-900 (
Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University
, and
the Harvard-Yenching Institute
, 1985).
7.
Totman
, Japan before Perry .
8.
Farris
, Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan.
9.
Ibid.
10.
Totman
, Japan before Perry .
11.
Farris
, Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan.
12.
Ibid.
13.
Ibid.
14.
Charles Holcombe
, “
Ritsuryo Confucianism
,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies57, no. 2 (1997).
15.
Akiko Yoshie
, “
Gender in Early Classical Japan: Marriage, Leadership, and Political Status in Village and Palace
,” Monumenta Nipponica60, no. 4 (2005).
16.
Ibid.
17.
Michiko Gotō
, Chūsei Kuge No Ie to Josei (Ie and women in Chūsei: Around 12th to 16th century) (
Tokyo: Yoshikawa Hirofumi Kan
, 2002).
18.
Yoshie
, “ Gender in Early Classical Japan.”
19.
Ibid.
20.
Ibid.
21.
Noriko Kasugai
, Kaigo to Lifestyle No Shakaigaku (Sociology of care and lifestyle) (
Kyoto: Sekaishiso-sha
, 2004).
22.
Ibid.
23.
Ibid., 18.
24.
Ibid.
25.
Ibid.
26.
Ibid.
27.
Ibid.
28.
Stephen R. Smith
, “ Land of the Rising Son? Domestic Organization, Ancestor Worship, and Economic Change in Japan,” in Family, Religion, and Social Change in Diverse Societies, ed.
Sharon K. Houseknecht
and
Jerry G. Pankhurs
(
New York: Oxford University Press
, 2000).
29.
Satsuki Kawano
, “ Finding Common Ground: Family, Gender, and Burial in Contemporary Japan,” in Demographic Change and the Family in Japan's Aging Society, ed.
John W. Traphagan
and
John Knight
(
Albany: State University of New York Press
, 2003);
John Knight
and
John W. Traphagan
, “The Study of the Family in Japan: Integrating Anthropological and Demographic Approaches ” in Traphagan and Knight, Demographic Change and the Family; Emiko Ochiai, The Japanese Family System in Transition: A Sociological Analysis of Family Change in Postwar Japan (
Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation
, 1996 );
John W. Traphagan
, The Practice of Concern: Ritual, Well-Being, and Aging in Rural Japan (
Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press
, 2004); and
Akiko Hashimoto
, The Gift of Generations: Japanese and American Perspectives on Aging and the Social Contract (
New York: Cambridge University Press
, 1996).
30.
Smith
, “Land of the Rising Son?”
31.
Chie Nakane
,
Kinship and Economic Organization in Rural Japan
(
London: Athlone
, 1967); and
Ochiai
,
The Japanese Family System
in Transition.
32.
Smith
, “Land of the Rising Son?”
33.
Erwin Johnson
, “
The Stem Family and Its Extension in Present Day Japan
,” American Anthropologist (1964).
34.
Smith
, “Land of the Rising Son?”
35.
Ibid.
36.
Ruth Benedict
,
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture
(
Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside
, 1946); and
Fumie Kumagai
, “
Families in Japan: Beliefs and Realities
,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies26, no. 1 (1995).
37.
Kasugai
, Kaigo to Lifestyle No Shakaigaku.
38.
Gotō
, Chūsei Kuge No Ie to Josei.
39.
Ibid.
40.
Ibid.
41.
Ibid.
42.
Akira Hayami
and
Satomi Kurosu
, “
Regional Diversity in Demographic and Family Patterns in Preindustrial Japan
,” Journal of Japanese Studies2, no. 2 (2001).
43.
Kasugai
, Kaigo to Lifestyle No Shakaigaku.
44.
Ibid.
45.
Ibid.
46.
Kenji Mori
, Haka to Sousou No Shakaishi (Social history of graves and burial services) (
Tokyo: Kodansha
, 1993).
47.
Kawano
, “
Finding Common Ground
”;
Laurel L. Cornell
, “
Infanticide in Early Modern Japan? Demography, Culture, and Population Growth
” Journal of Asian Studies 55, no. 1 (1996);
Mutsuhiko Yasuda
,
Ohaka Ga Naito Shinema Senka (Can't we die without graves?)
(Tokyo : Iwanami-shoten, 1992); and
Hiroshi Kito
, “
Jinsei 40 Nen No Sekai: Edojidai No Shussei to Shibou” (Life expectancy at birth around 40 years: Births and deaths in the Edo period)
” (paper presented at Nihon Jinrui-Gakkai Symposium, Tokyo, 2000).
48.
Satsuki Kawano
, Ritual Practice in Modern Japan: Ordering Place, People, and Action (
Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press
, 2005).
49.
Susan B. Hanley
, “
Toward an Analysis of Demographic and Economic Change in Tokugawa Japan: A Village Study
,” Journal of Asian Studies31, no. 3 (1972); and Hayami and Kurosu, “Regional Diversity in Demographic and Family Patterns.”
50.
Chie Nakane
, Japanese Society, rev. ed. (
Berkeley: University of California Press
, 1995).
51.
Ibid.
52.
Osamu Saito
, “
Infanticide, Fertility and `Population Stagnation': The State of Tokugawa Historical Demography
,” Journal of Asian Studies4, no. 2 (1992).
53.
Cornell
, “Infanticide in Early Modern Japan?”
54.
Hanley
, “Toward an Analysis of Demographic and Economic Change.”
55.
Ann Bowman Jannetta
and
Samuel H. Preston
, eds., Two Centuries of Mortality Change in Central Japan: The Evidence from a Temple Death Register, Japanese Economic History 1600-1960 (
New York: Garland
, 1998), and
Saito
, “ Infanticide, Fertility and `Population Stagnation.'”
56.
Hiroshi Kito
, Jinko Kara Yomu Nihon No Rekishi (Demographic analysis of Japanese history) , 7th ed. (
Tokyo: Kodan-sha
, 2001).
57.
Cornell
, “ Infanticide in Early Modern Japan?”; and
Saito
, “Infanticide, Fertility and `Population Stagnation.'”
58.
Hayami
and
Kurosu
, “Regional Diversity in Demographic and Family Patterns.”
59.
Ibid.
60.
Hanley
, “ Toward an Analysis of Demographic and Economic Change.”
61.
Ibid.
62.
Ibid.
63.
Cornell
, “ Infanticide in Early Modern Japan?”;
Hanley
, “Toward an Analysis of Demographic and Economic Change”; and
Hayami
and
Kurosu
, “ Regional Diversity in Demographic and Family Patterns.”
64.
John R. Weeks, Population
: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues , 8th ed. (
Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth
/
Thompson
, 2002).
65.
Saito
, “ Infanticide, Fertility and `Population Stagnation.'”
66.
Ibid.
67.
Osamu Saito
, “Marriage,
Family Labour and the Stem Family Household: Traditional Japan in a Comparative Perspective
,” Continuity and Change15, no. 1 (2000).
68.
Ibid.
69.
Ibid.
70.
Hayami
and
Kurosu
, “Regional Diversity in Demographic and Family Patterns.”
71.
Ibid.
72.
Ibid.
73.
Cornell
, “ Infanticide in Early Modern Japan?”
74.
Hayami
and
Kurosu
, “Regional Diversity in Demographic and Family Patterns.”
75.
Saito
, “ Marriage, Family Labour and the Stem Family Household.”
76.
Hayami
and
Kurosu
, “Regional Diversity in Demographic and Family Patterns.”
77.
Saito
, “ Infanticide, Fertility and `Population Stagnation.'”
78.
Hayami
and
Kurosu
, “Regional Diversity in Demographic and Family Patterns.”
79.
Ibid.
80.
Ibid.
81.
Saito
, “ Infanticide, Fertility and `Population Stagnation.'”
82.
Irene B. Taeuber
, The Population of Japan (
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press
, 1958).
83.
Hanley
, “ Toward an Analysis of Demographic and Economic Change”;
Hayami
and
Kurosu
, “Regional Diversity in Demographic and Family Patterns”; and
Saito
, “Infanticide, Fertility and `Population Stagnation.'”
84.
Cornell
, “Infanticide in Early Modern Japan?”
85.
Ibid.
86.
Ibid.
87.
Ibid.
88.
Ibid.;
Hanley
, “
Toward an Analysis of Demographic and Economic Change
”; and
Hayami
and
Kurosu
, “
Regional Diversity in Demographic and Family Patterns
.”
89.
Susan B. Hanley
, “
Family and Fertility in Four Tokugawa Villages
,” in
Family and Population in East Asian History
, ed. Susan B. Hanley and Arthur P. Wolf (
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press
, 1985); and
Osamu Saito
, “
Introduction: The Economic and Social Aspects of the Family Life Cycle in Traditional and Modern Japan
” Continuity and Change15, no. 1 ( 2000).
90.
Kumagai
, “Families in Japan.”
91.
Laurel L. Cornell
, “
Hajnal and the Household in Asia: A Comparativist History of the Family in Preindustrial Japan, 1600-1870
,” Journal of Family History12, no. 1 (1987).
92.
Kasugai
, Kaigo to Lifestyle No Shakaigaku.
93.
Ibid.
94.
Kumagai
, “Families in Japan.”
95.
Ibid.
96.
Saito
, “ Marriage, Family Labour and the Stem Family Household.”
97.
Ibid.
98.
Kingsley Davis
and
Judith Blake
, “
Social Structure and Fertility: An Analytic Framework
,” Economic Development and Cultural Change4, no. 3 (1956).
99.
Saito
, “ Marriage, Family Labour and the Stem Family Household.”
100.
Kito
, “ Jinsei 40 Nen No Sekai.”
101.
Keiko Yanagiya
, “ Nihon Kinse No Kōreikaigo to Kazoku” (Elder Care and the family in modern Japanese history), in Kaigo to Kazoku (Care and family) , ed.
Eisuke Yamanaka
et al. (
Tokyo: Waseda University Press
, 2001).
102.
Kasugai
, Kaigo to Lifestyle No Shakaigaku; and
Yanagiya
, “Nihon Kinse No Kōreikaigo to Kazoku”
103.
Yanagiya
, “ Nihon Kinse No Kōreikaigo to Kazoku.”
104.
Toyomasa Fusé
, “ Japan's Economic Development: Success, Stress, and Prospects for the Future ,” in Modernization and Stress in Japan, ed. Toyomasa Fusé (
Leiden: E. J. Brill
, 1975).
105.
Kasugai
, Kaigo to Lifestyle No Shakaigaku.
106.
Noriko Sugano
, Edo-Jidai No Kōkōmono (Filial piety in the Edo period) (
Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan
, 1999).
107.
Ibid.; and
Yanagiya
, “
Nihon Kinse No Kōreikaigo to Kazoku
.”
108.
Kyoto Prefectural Library and Archives
, “ Sogo Shiryoukan Dayori No. 145,” Kyoto Prefectural Library and Archives Report (
Kyoto: Kyoto Prefectural Library and Archives
, 2005).
109.
Kasugai
, Kaigo to Lifestyle No Shakaigaku..
110.
Elise K. Tipton, Modern Japan
: A Social and Political History (
New York: Routledge
, 2002).
111.
Ibid.
112.
Ibid.
113.
Fusé
, “ Japan's Economic Development.”
114.
115.
Akira Hayami
, Rekishi Jinko-Gaku De Mita Nihon (Analysis of Japan through historical demography) (
Tokyo: Bubgei Syunju
, 2001).
116.
Ibid.
117.
Kito
, Jinko Kara Yomu Nihon No Rekishi.
118.
Asai
and
Kameoka
, “The Influence of Sekentei on Family Caregiving.”
119.
Kumagai
, “ Families in Japan.”
120.
Asai
and
Kameoka
, “The Influence of Sekentei on Family Caregiving.”
121.
Joseph B. Tamney
, “ Confucianism,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Society , ed.
William H. Swatos Jr.
(
Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira
, 1998).
122.
Asai
and
Kameoka
, “The Influence of Sekentei on Family Caregiving”; and
Rie Kumabara
, “Kindai Kazoku to Kafucho-Sei” (Modern family and the Ie system), in Contemporary Sociology 19: Family Sociology, ed.
Shun Inoue
,
Chizuko Ueno
,
Masachi Osawa
,
Shunsuke Mita
, and
Toshinari Yoshimi
(
Tokyo: Iwanami-shoten
, 2000).
123.
Mikiyo Kano
,
“Bosei-Shugi to Nationalism” (Motherhood and nationalism)
, in Inoue et al., Contemporary Sociology19.
124.
This law was superseded by the Eugenics Protection Law passed in 1948. See
Elizabeth G. Harrison
, “
Strands of Complexity: The Emergence of Mizuko Kuyo in Postwar Japan
,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion67, no. 4 (1999).
125.
Harrison
, “Strands of Complexity; and
Kano
, “ Bosei-Shugi to Nationalism”
126.
Jannetta
and
Preston
, Two Centuries of Mortality Change in Central Japan.
127.
Tamney
, “Confucianism .”
128.
Phyllis Braudy Harris
and
Susan Orpett Long
, “
Husbands and Sons in the United States and Japan: Cultural Expectations and Caregiving Experiences
,” Journal of Aging Studies13, no. 3 (1999),
Long
and
Harris
, “
Gender and Elder Care
”;
John W. Traphagan
, “
Contesting Coresidence: Women, In-Laws, and Health Care in Urban Japan
” in
Traphagan
and
Knight
,
Demographic Change and the Family in Japan's Aging Society
;
Yongmei Wu
,
“Speaking of Life: Life Histories of the Institutionalized Elderly in Kotobuki,” Intersections: Gender, History & Culture in the Asian Context 7
(2002).
129.
Kano
, “ Bosei-Shugi to Nationalism.”
130.
Kasugai
, Kaigo to Lifestyle No Shakaigaku.
131.
Kōnosuke Okada
, “Redundancy Utilized: The Economics of Female Domestic Servants in Pre-War Japan,” in Japanese Economic History 1600-1960, ed.
Michael Smitka
(
New York: Garland
, 1998).
132.
Ibid.
133.
Ibid.
134.
Stephanie Coontz
, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (
New York: Basic Books
, 2000), 97.
135.
Kasugai
, Kaigo to Lifestyle No Shakaigaku.
136.
Ibid.
137.
Makoto Atoh
,
Vasantha Kandiah
, and
Serguey Ivanov
, “
The Second Demographic Transition in Asia? Comparative Analysis of the Low Fertility Situation in East and South-East Asian Countries
,” Japanese Journal of Population2, no. 1 (2004); and
Fumie Kumagai
, “
The Life Cycle of the Japanese Family
” Journal of Marriage and the Family46, no. 1 (1984).
138.
Sawako Shirahase
, “
Women's Increased Higher Education and the Declining Fertility Rate in Japan
,” Review of Population and Social Policy9 (2000).
139.
Robert D. Retherford,Naohiro Ogawa
, and
Rikiya Matsukura
, “
Late Marriage and Less Marriage in Japan
,” Population and Development Review27, no. 1 (2001).
Retherford, Ogawa
, and
Matsukura
, “ Late Marriage and Less Marriage in Japan .”
142.
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, and Science and Technology, Japan's Education at Glance2005 , ed. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, and Science and Technology (
Tokyo: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
, 2005).
143.
Atoh, Kandiah
, and
Ivanov
, “ The Second Demographic Transition in Asia?”
144.
Robert D. Retherford
,
N. Ogawa
,
R. Matsukura
, and
H. Ihara
,
Trends in Fertility by Education in Japan, 1966-2000
(
Tokyo
and
Honolulu: Nihon University of Population Research Institute, East-West Center, and Tokyo Statistical Bureau
, 2004); and
Chizuko Ueno
,
“Shusseiritsu No Teika: Dare No Mondai Ka?” (Declining fertility: Whose problem is it?)
, Jinko mondai kenkyu54, nos. 41-62 ( 1998).
145.
Retherford, Ogawa
, and
Matsukura
, “ Late Marriage and Less Marriage in Japan”; and
Shirahase
, “Women's Increased Higher Education .”
146.
Retherford, Ogawa
, and
Matsukura
, “ Late Marriage and Less Marriage in Japan.”
147.
Atoh, Kandiah
, and
Ivanov
, “ The Second Demographic Transition in Asia?”
148.
Harris
and
Long
, “Husbands and Sons in the United States and Japan.”
149.
Atoh, Kandiah
, and
Ivanov
, “ The Second Demographic Transition in Asia?”
150.
Ochiai
,
The Japanese Family System
in Transition.
151.
Yean-Ju Lee
and
Shuichi Hirata
, “ Women, Work, and Marriage in Three East Asian Labor Markets” in Women's Working Lives in East Asia, ed.
Mary C. Brinton
(
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press
, 2001).
152.
Ibid.
153.
Ochiai
,
The Japanese Family System
in Transition, 41.
154.
Retherford, Ogawa
, and
Matsukura
, “ Late Marriage and Less Marriage in Japan.”
155.
Dirk J. van de Kaa
, “
Europe's Second Demographic Transition
,” Population Bulletin42, no. 1 (1987).
156.
Ochiai
, The Japanese Family System in Transition; and
Retherford, Ogawa
, and
Matsukura
, “Late Marriage and Less Marriage in Japan”
157.
James M. Raymo
, “
Later Marriages or Fewer? Changes in the Marital Behaviors of Japanese Women
,” Journal of Marriage and the Family60, no. 4 (1998).
158.
National Institute of Population and Social Security Research
, ed., Population Statistics of Japan (
Tokyo: National Institute of Population and Social Security Research
, 2006).
159.
Abdel R. Omran
, “
The Epidemiologic Transition: A Theory of the Epidemiology of Population Change
,” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly49, no. 4 (1971).
160.
Walter Mertens
, “Health and Mortality Trends among Elderly Populations: Determinants and Implications,” Policy and Research Paper 3 (
Liège
, Belgium:
International Union for the Scientific Study of Population
, 1994).
161.
Kimiko Tanaka
and
Nan E. Johnson
, “What Japan Can Do to Push Its Longevity Envelope”
Population Reference Bureau
, 2006, http://www.prb.org/Articles/2006/WhatJapanCanDoToPushItsLongevityEnvelope.aspx .
162.
Keisuke Ota
, “Syoshi Koreika Sekai-Ichi Ni” (Japan became no. 1 aging society),
Asahi Shinbun
, 2006, http://www.asahi.com.
163.
Leonard J. Schoppa
, Race for the Exits: The Unraveling of Japan's System of Social Protection (
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press
, 2006).
