Japan's New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (17 page)

When a wife first moves to the neighborhood, she makes the rounds to the
mukoo sangen ryoodonari
(immediate neighbors) carrying a small carefully wrapped present of towels, post cards, or soap, along with her husband's name card. But even on this occasion, it is unusual for a neighbor to invite her into the house. While the neighborhood group collects a few cents a year to pay for street lights and local shrines, and the immediate neighbors agree to help each other in case of fire or theft, the emotional significance of the neighborhood groups is very slight, a mere vestige of the powerful neighborhood groups of rural Japan in an earlier era. A Mamachi wife cannot expect to develop close relationships simply because she lives in the neighborhood.

A young wife's only close friends usually are relatives and former

school mates. Unless she is particularly fortunate in living near these friends or relatives she is not likely to see them often. Indeed, the young wife is expected to devote herself completely to her home, husband, and, when they are born, children. It is thought improper to spend much time away from home visiting relatives or friends, even before children are born. To avoid the intense loneliness of the first few years of marriage many wives arrange to live near relatives or friends. Many are even willing to live with or next door to in-laws in order to have somebody with whom they can have meaningful relationships.

Usually a child is conceived soon after marriage, and from then on the wife is completely occupied with the child. Since the Japanese wife considers child care a satisfying and all-encompassing occupation, the mother of a young child finds her social isolation more tolerable than a childless wife. Nevertheless, most mothers want to make friends, even though the time spent in caring for small babies leaves almost no opportunity for it.

Most deep friendships with neighbors develop slowly as a result of frequent meetings over a period of many years. Groups of women who were living in Mamachi during the war feel particularly close to each other. During air raids, food shortages, and difficult living conditions, the women often met together either voluntarily or in air-raid shelters. They took turns drawing food rations or going to the country for food, and if one had a sick child, friends would share food rations with her. Since many of the men were away during much of the war, either in the service or at their place of work, the wives became extremely close. No relationships formed since then equal the intimacy of those wartime ties. The closeness of the older inhabitants is enhanced by the fact that they consider many of the new residents to have lower social standing and especially consider recent immigrants from the country to be less refined.

Wives who have come to Mamachi more recently have developed friendships mostly through the PTA or other school groups. Through the frequent school meetings, mothers become friendly by discussing their common problems in rearing children. Besides the school meetings and introductions through friends, young women have almost no opportunities to become acquainted.

While most of the mothers enjoy the opportunity to attend PTA

meetings, younger, less educated women may feel uneasy. A new PTA member is reluctant to express herself for fear that some of the older women may criticize her. Since this is typically the only group to which she will belong, a young mother attending the PTA for the first time is making her social debut, and she is concerned about making a proper impression on the teacher and other mothers.

Older women of established position in the community generally are expected to accept the honor and responsibilities of PTA office. The honor of being a PTA officer was demonstrated by a mother who reported that when she was elected an officer one of her friends who wanted a position became much less friendly. PTA officers consider their work a great responsibility, and even the higher-status mothers are afraid that something may go wrong for which they will be criticized. They are expected to attend frequent meetings, plan programs, raise money, smooth the ruffled feelings of mothers who feel their children are slighted, and take the responsibility for all children on school trips. This hard work is not regarded lightly, and many PTA officers are relieved when their turn of office is over.

Although reticent in expressing their competitive feelings, mothers are aware of the relative social status of each family. The fact that schools require parents to pay for school trips, lunches, text books, and other supplies, and that PTA's rely heavily on donations accentuates the concerns about a family's financial standing. Some poorer families have to accept charity to send their children on school trips or to buy school lunches. Because such matters often become public knowledge, it can be embarrassing for a family that has difficulty in paying. For example, when one child was reported sick on the day of the school trip, some of the other mothers suspected the family could not afford the trip and sent a representative to the child's home to offer financial help. Of course the child was delighted, but the family was ashamed to admit they had so little money. They then had to try in various ways to repay the families who had made it possible for the child to go on the school trip. Although the salary man's family usually can afford the minimum expenses, many families cannot contribute to the frequent appeals to supplement the regular school budget.

Until all children are in school, most mothers are so occupied with their care that they have little time to participate even in PTA groups; afterward the situation of the salary men's wives changes drastically. Mothers who had been looking forward to having a little free time suddenly find themselves bored. Since the salary man's wife almost never has any work of her own or any responsibilities for her husband's work, she generally looks around for more neighborhood and PTA activities. If she has lived in Mamachi for several years she probably already has a number of acquaintances with whom she has become friendly through school activities or daily shopping. She and some of her friends may decide to start a study group for cooking or sewing (either Western or Japanese style), tea ceremony, or flower arranging, and sometimes she may be invited to join a group of older ladies. These groups, like the American ladies' bridge club, offer opportunities for regular visiting and casual gossiping.

Aside from such activities, not only does a mother's life center on the children, but her friends in the community are made largely through her children's activities, and children are usually her main topic of discussion. Younger and lower-status women will listen closely to the "veterans" telling how to persuade a child to study, how to motivate the child to keep her informed of his activities, how to teach the child co-operation, how to get the child into a good school or arrange a successful marriage. After they get to know each other still better they may complain about husbands, and "veterans" will give tips to the younger ones about keeping husbands satisfied and co-operative. Younger and lower-status women tend to be properly reserved, volunteering little except an occasional nodding approval or thanks for the advice they receive from the older ladies. Although mothers' groups may meet at the homes of wealthier families, poorer women are too embarrassed to invite a group to their "small dirty" home.

When talking with us, many expressed envy of American wives who go out with husbands, and many were curious as to what it would be like. Several went so far as to try it for the first time during our stay, but reported that they were too tense to enjoy themselves. When out with husbands and their friends, they have to be so careful to behave properly that it is difficult to go beyond polite pleas-

antries. Moreover, they must be so retiring that they generally prefer the more relaxed times with their lady friends. One wife, upon hearing about a husband and wife going on a trip for a few days responded, "how nice," but after a moment's reflection added, "but what would they talk about for so long?"

Most of these women have no chance to become casual friends with any man aside from their husbands, and it is considered bad taste to show any sign of friendliness toward another man. On the few occasions when a husband's friends come to the home, the wife may join in the conversations but more commonly she is little more than a polite waitress. There are occasional stories of a woman becoming friendly with her child's male tutor, or with a male teacher of tea ceremony or flower arrangement, but such relationships are almost unknown in Mamachi. There are occasional jokes about the attractiveness of certain men teachers, but that is about as far as it goes. Any suggestion of special friendship with a man could seriously hurt a Mamachi woman's reputation. One woman said that before she was married she was friendly with a group of young men and young women who called each other by their first names. However, nowadays when she sees one of these men she is extremely embarrassed because her instinct is to call him by his first name and yet it would be improper to do so in her role as a housewife. All this indicates how strict are the morals restraining the wife from any kind of intimacy with other men. By and large, a married woman's life is limited to her own children, a few intimate women friends, and the PTA, but these relationships often have a depth and significance that are rare for her American counterpart who has a broader range of contacts.

Until he finishes grade school, the child, like his mother, finds friends within the school district. Until late adolescence, the child is a part of the mother's world. His social network is limited to the mother's contacts and does not include children of the father's friends. In contrast to the American suburban child who is chauffeured by his mother, the child rarely goes farther from home than he can walk. It is unlikely that he would know any children living outside his immediate neighborhood except for relatives. His sphere

is limited to his home, the homes of neighbors or friends, the nearby streets, and the schoolyard.

For children who go into Tokyo for junior high school, the routine changes greatly when they first begin the commuting. Since they must leave home early in the morning and return home shortly before supper, they have little opportunity to play with the children in the neighborhood. At their junior high school, they develop close friends with whom they visit between classes, during lunch, and in the recreation period, but there are almost no extracurricular activities and no opportunities for meeting these children after school, or on Saturdays and Sundays. Ordinarily, evenings and weekends are spent at home with the family. Just as the mother's life centers on the children, so children center their life on her.

Because upper-class mothers often have more outside activities, and the child remains in the same school system for many years, he forms close friendships at school which ordinarily last throughout life. In poor families, the mother who goes to work, takes in work, or helps a husband in his shop cannot devote herself so completely to the children, and the child's peer group often assumes great importance by default. By contrast, the membership in the peer groups of the children of salary men are more likely to change as children are separated by the results of entrance examinations.

Although the membership may change, the child generally belongs to a single intimate group just as his father or mother belongs to a single intimate group. At the junior-high-school age this group may develop on the basis of mutual liking among students who attend the same class or commute to school together on the same train. Since students at this age generally have no opportunity to stay after school for extracurricular activities, the commuting ride usually is the key opportunity for developing friendships. Once relationships develop, friends may see each other occasionally in the evenings or on weekends. In high school or college, special activity groups often replace the informal commuting group, but the pattern of belonging to a single group, around which all one's activities center, does not change. The activity may be skiing, hiking, mountain-climbing, music, radio, literature, politics, or some special hobby, but it is more common for one group (even if formed primarily for a single activity) to perform several activities than for

one child to belong to more than one activity group. A child in a ski club who wants to go mountain-climbing is more likely to urge his ski companions to go mountain-climbing than to join a separate mountain-climbing club. Although girls in high school and college are usually expected to come home directly from school, boys are given more freedom to stop off at tea or coffee houses with their friends, just as their fathers stop off on their way home from work.

Just as some of the father's most enjoyable associations are on trips with company associates, so many of the children's closest associations are formed on the special trips which all schools sponsor. Although boys and girls go on these trips, their activities are strictly segregated by sex. In addition to overnight trips, at the end of the sixth grade and at the end of junior high school and high school, there are school trips ranging from two or three days to a week, arranged by the PTA and school boards. As on their father's company trips, activities are oriented to the group as a whole. Pairing or breaking into small groups is discouraged to the extent that sleeping arrangements might be rotated each night. Much of the fun is in just traveling, eating, singing, and sightseeing together. Out of a hundred students perhaps ninety-nine will be on the school trip. The hundredth will be very sick and remember sadly the rest of his life that he missed the trip. These trips are major events in the students' lives, requiring months of planning; they are discussed and commemorative photos viewed for months and even years afterward.

Some boys of high-school and college age form private groups of classmates for excursions, especially for skiing and mountain-climbing. Sometimes girls form their own groups and very occasionally, if boys are willing and the girls' parents are satisfied with chaperone arrangements, girls may go along with the boys. Ordinarily, however, girls are excluded and because of the frequent planning meetings and the excitement of the trip, these groups tend to become the center of one's deepest friendships.