Introduction
My initial vision for this project was to study the history of family in Japan in order to clarify the relationship between collectivist family structures and the individualistic, free market-based neoliberal
socioeconomic policies that have become
increasingly prominent in Japanese society since
the 1980s.1
What emerged in my research was a striking narrative of continuity of state power over families, beginning in the Meiji period (1868-1912) and lasting through the postwar period (1945-1960s),
which complicates deterministic notions of
‘westernization’ in postwar Japan, and challenges notions of family and tradition that I had previously taken for granted.
Ostensible Reform in
the Postwar Period
Following the end of the Second World War, General MacArthur enforced a strong policy of liberalization in Japan. The government was purged of jingoist
politicians,9 while the ie family model was
effectively removed from the US-imposed postwar constitution of 1947 and replaced with a western-style nuclear family as the new ideal.
However, the emergence of the Cold War led MacArthur to quickly ‘reverse course’ beginning in 1947, deciding that Japan would best serve US interests as a bulwark against Communism in East
Asia, and allowing the previously purged
politicians—including previously detained war
criminals—to reassert their control over
government to effectively enforce McCarthyism in
Japan.9, 10
Seeing as the conservative politicians who had supported the ie family model and family-state politics leading up to the war were ultimately allowed to remain in power, it’s no surprise they found ways to reconfigure important social structures to retain the power relations of the ie and the family-state.
Company as Family and
the Enterprise Society
Echoing the ways family-state politics connected the family to the state in the Meiji period, the postwar government worked with corporations to reorient families to serve Japan’s emerging
“enterprise society”, 9(p247) and constructed the
company as a natural extension of the family.9
While the neo-Confucian principles of the ie family were employed as the basis for social organization
in the workplace,11 corporate New Life Movement
discourses and policies—popularized by the
‘depurged’ politician-cum-Prime Minister Ichirō Hatoyama—interpellated women as “professional
housewives”12(p247) whose job it was to support
their husbands and their husbands’ companies.12
In conjunction with the neo-Confucian principles of the workplace, New Life Movement initiatives helped naturalize the needs of the company as the needs of both the family and the society as a whole; they reinforced deferential attitudes in wives and children, and—in line with the McCarthyite goals of the ‘reverse course’— effectively silenced unions and socialist voices by inculcating austerity-serving frugality in the home and raising the needs of the company above the
needs of individuals and families.9, 12
Conclusion
Much as the line between state and family had
been deliberately blurred in the Meiji period, this research reveals the line between nation, company, and family was deliberately blurred in the postwar period. The state worked closely with the corporate sector to retain and exploit the ‘corporate orientation’ of Japanese families.
This exposes an important element of continuity in the relationship between state power and families in postwar Japan, which involved a strategic reconfiguration of the power structures that had supported the state since the Meiji period.
References 1. Reitan, R. (2012). Narratives of
“Equivalence": Neoliberalism in contemporary Japan. Radical History Review, 2012(112), 43-64. doi:10.1215/01636545-1416160
2. Befu, H. (1962). Corporate Emphasis and Patterns of Descent in the Japanese Family. In R. Smith, K., Beardsley, & National Academy of Sciences (Eds.), Japanese culture: Its
development and characteristics. Paper
presented at the Subscribers, no. 34, pp. 34-41
3. Kitano, S. (1962). Corporate Emphasis and Patterns of Descent in the Japanese Family. In R. Smith, K., Beardsley, & National Academy of Sciences (Eds.), Japanese culture: Its
development and characteristics. Paper
presented at the Subscribers, no. 34, pp. 42-46
4. Kondo, D. K. (1990). Crafting selves: Power,
gender, and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
5. Ueno, C., 1948. (2009). The Modern Family in
Japan: Its rise and fall. Melbourne, Vic: Trans
Pacific Press.
6. Gluck, C. (1985). Japan's modern myths:
Ideology in the late Meiji period. Princeton, N.J:
Princeton University Press
7. Skya, W. (2009). Japan's Holy War: The
ideology of radical Shintō ultranationalism.
Durham [NC]; London: Duke University Press. 8. Mackie, V. C. (2003). Feminism in Modern
Japan: Citizenship, embodiment, and sexuality.
Cambridge [UK]; New York: Cambridge University Press.
9. Tabb, W. K. (1995). The Postwar Japanese
System: Cultural economy and economic transformation. New York: Oxford University
Press.
10. Dower, J. W. (1999). Embracing Defeat:
Japan in the wake of World War II (1st ed.).
New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
11. Rohlen, T. P. (1974). For Harmony and
Strength: Japanese white-collar organization in anthropological perspective. Berkeley:
University of California Press
12. Gordon, A. (1997). Managing the Japanese household: The New Life Movement in postwar Japan. Social Politics: International Studies in
Gender, State & Society, 4(2), 245-283.
doi:10.1093/sp/4.2.245
Spring, 2019
This research was supported by
the Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award University of Victoria
Supervised by Dr. Andrew Marton
With special thanks to Sujin Lee and Hiroko Noro Background photograph:
Shinjuku, Tokyo
By Julian Ruszel (2018)
Family as Corporation and
the Family-State
Japan’s ‘traditional’ family model—called the ie
family—is an extended, patriarchal family
composed of stem and branch families operating as ‘corporate units’ whose members’ shared goal is the perpetuation of the family name and traditional
occupation.2, 3, 4 While this neo-Confucian family
model is typically referred to as ‘traditional’, prior to its institution in the Meiji Civil Code of 1896 it was primarily only employed in samurai families, which accounted for ten percent of the population at the
most.5
Strikingly, the ie model’s institutionalization was very much a political act aimed at gaining social
control in a time of rapid social change.5, 6
Employing family-state discourses and policies that situated the Emperor as the father of all Japanese— and the patriarchs of ie households as agents of the emperor—the state effectively subverted Confucian principles of filial piety and loyalty to break the traditionally protective function of family and gain
direct control over it. 5, 6, 7
This political process reoriented families and individuals towards service of the state in Meiji Japan, a dynamic that would last beyond the first
half of the 20th century.4, 8
Ie Family:
Foundation of the Family-State
Company As Family
4
:
Foundation of the Enterprise Society
Main Stem Family (honke)
Company
Branch families (bunke): 2nd, 3rd sons’ families;
temporary nuclear families
Nuclear families, temporary nuclear
families, stem families Members of often large
families work for the
perpetuity of family name and traditional occupation
Husband and wife work for the perpetuity and success of the company Paternalistic power
relations Paternalistic power relations
Meiji to Postwar
1868-1945 Postwar1945-1960s
Head patriarch and his wife, ideally w/ 1st
son and his family; ‘good wives and wise mothers’8
Husband devoted to job; ‘professional housewife’ supports husband and company from domestic sphere Government; politicians
and ideologues; policies and discourses
Government, Emperor; politicians and ideologues; policies and discourses
