Japan's New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (21 page)

[18] Cf. Yoshiharu Scott Matsumoto,
The Individual and His Group,
Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1960.

in the rural areas, and since many of them have not been to the country for many years, they are unaware of the extent of recent progress and imagine present-day rural life to be worse than it is. Some feel guilty for leading such comfortable lives while the farmer still has such hardships.

Furthermore, many Mamachi families became indebted to their rural relatives in the latter part of the war and the early postwar period when they sent their children and wives to the country to escape the air raids and to be near the source of food. Although the farm people were having trouble providing for themselves and were not always hospitable to the newcomers, they were often a considerable help. The people of Mamachi remember this with gratitude. However, the soldiers or overseas colonists who returned after the war are often bitter that their rural relatives did not give them more help. When they returned to the rural areas just after the war to set up a new life, many found that former friends or relatives ignored them. At that time farmers were commonly chary with assistance. They were in difficult straits themselves with shortages even more severe than during the wartime, but they welcomed the more affluent Mamachi evacuees more enthusiastically than the impoverished returnees from overseas who were in no position to return the favors.

Salary men are not as troubled by requests from rural areas as independent businessmen, who are frequently asked to offer employment. Nevertheless, some salary men receive similar requests, particularly if they are in companies which have openings for people lacking special technical skills. For many Mamachi families requests to find openings for rural relatives pose serious problems. Because a Mamachi family may be the only city contacts the country relatives have, the Mamachi resident feels responsibility for trying to find an opening in the city, but these openings are usually scarce, and the responsibility is a heavy burden.

Most people of Mamachi reported that they go back to the rural areas less often than they should. While they feel they ought to go back at least once a year for the traditional ceremonies honoring departed family and ancestors, many have not been to the ancestral home for years. By not returning they can avoid the presents and favors which are given in the hope of assistance in placing children in

Tokyo. If they do go back they try to stay only a short time and to see only the most intimate friends. However, the villages are small and news travels quickly, and at least some of those expecting to go to Tokyo are likely to come around with presents. In making a request the rural person entrusts everything to his city benefactor and conveys the feeling that his entire life depends on the benefactor's willingness to help. While guilty about his failure to help the needy people in the country, the Mamachi resident is caught between their dependence on him and the likelihood that he will be unable to help them. The result is often an effort to avoid the situation no matter how much one would like to see relatives or the ancestral home. If help is asked by letter, such avoidance would take the form of not answering or writing a noncommittal reply.

Success in job placements for rural friends or relatives imposes continuing burdens. One salary man, for example, has been successful in getting several village people jobs as boiler men and other laboring jobs in his organization. Since the young people are new to the city and know almost no one other than this sponsor, their parents look to him for supervision in the city. He must see that the boys do not get into trouble or marry the wrong kind of girl, and this responsibility cannot be taken lightly. When the sponsor and his wife visit the rural areas they are greeted with many presents and honored by the boys' parents and by other people hoping to place their children in the city. In this particular company, the boys worked out well, so the company is willing to use this village as one of its sources of unskilled labor. The company's view is that since the boys are known to one of the important salary men in the firm, they are likely to be more reliable and to do better and harder work than people with no such contacts. To show their appreciation these boys frequently come to the house of their sponsor and offer various kinds of help. For example, they do the annual New Year's house-cleaning. The home of their sponsor becomes their home away from home, a place to relax or to find help with their personal problems.
^[19]

[19] The problem of relatives or people from the country visiting or imposing upon urban families is a common theme in modern Japanese stories. In one television serial "home drama" during our stay in Japan, the story concerned a distant relative who came to visit an urban family posing as a close old friend even though theurban family could not exactly recall him. The story was filled with amusing incidents centering on the impositions he made on his hosts. For example, the visitor ate voraciously and was caught by the husband of the house in a midnight raid on the icebox.

Close friendships in Mamachi usually are limited to a small group of the same sex. Within this group people are relaxed and do not worry about formalities. They can talk and joke about their innermost concerns. It is partly the sharp contrast between seeing a close friend and a mere acquaintance that makes contacts with outsiders seem so stiff. This is in contrast to the United States, where one may be friendly with a casual acquaintance. The visitor to Japan who does not appreciate the difference in behavior toward friends and acquaintances is likely to consider the Japanese as more formal than they actually are.
^[20]

With close friends, one can argue, criticize, and be stubborn without endangering the relationship. There is inevitably a great deal of laughter mixed with mutual support and respect. In relationships of obligation, no matter how hard people try to relax the atmosphere, no matter how humorous or nice they are, some tension is inevitable. With true friends, even if small obligations develop they generally do not cause any serious problem because it is clear to everyone that these minor duties are only incidental to the friendship.

A few residents of Mamachi have close friends from school days with whom they still keep contact, although their meetings tend to be infrequent, perhaps once or twice a year. When they do meet, they enjoy themselves immensely, catching up on past events, exchanging gossip, swapping complaints. With old classmates one can talk about problems at work that are difficult to talk about with friends at work.

Most of the closest friendships, however, are between people in constant contact. The husband's friends are his co-workers, the wife's friends are her neighbors. These relationships are remarkably intimate. If, for example, a wife has difficulty with her husband, as most wives do at one time or another, she may turn to her neighbor-

[20] While Japanese like formalities, there is a systematic overestimation of their formality by Western observes, who see them on more formal situations.

hood friends for support and suggestions for dealing with them. She may describe an argument with her husband and ask whether it is wise to apologize or to remain firm in her wishes. Most wives say that they feel freer in talking to other wives than to their husbands, and they tell other wives many things they would not tell their husbands. The same is true for the men, who generally feel freer in talking to their close working associates about certain things than to their wives.

Even the most formal of women may be informal with her close friends. One proper middle-aged lady, for example, told my wife of an overnight trip with three or four women friends to a special hotsprings, one of the few places where both men and women can still bathe together. Although they were too modest to bathe during the day with other people, they secretly bathed there during the night when no one else was around. They laughed like schoolgirls about what they would have done if a man had come. Another lady told my wife how she and her small group of friends had come upon a fertility shrine, shaped like the male sexual organs. Although most women were too embarrassed to say anything, the most courageous member of the group asked the caretaker of the shrine many questions about the history of some displayed instruments which had been used by court ladies. The more bashful ladies listened to the discussion and laughed with amusement afterward, expressing appreciation for the courage of the one who had asked the questions and speculating about the possible satisfaction which could be derived from such instruments. These same ladies are very formal, stiff, and polite outside their group. They even tease each other about the politeness of their bowing and the stiffness of their formalities which they notice on other occasions.

Generally members of the most intimate group are of roughly the same status, but where status differences exist, they are acknowledged and do not seriously interfere with the closeness of the group. In a group of friends from work, for example, if one is treated as a "fair-haired boy" by his superior, he may be accorded more respect by his peers. Similarly among wives of the same social position, if one is slightly older or has more experience than the others, she may be listened to as an expert on certain kinds of questions. Such true friendships may take years to develop, but since there is rela-

tively little movement of the man from company to company or of the wife from neighborhood to neighborhood, once made they are seldom broken.

Because most groups are so stable and because people in the same group know each other intimately over long periods of time, social control does not ordinarily require overt reward and punishment or even the direct expression of negative feeling, something most Mamachi residents consider crude and unnecessary. Because people are so limited in the number of groups to which they belong they are very responsive even to subtle changes in attitude.
^[21]
This responsiveness and sensitivity makes the techniques of ignoring, overlooking, and postponing very effective instruments of social control. Although close friendship makes possible a wide range of behavior without creating antagonism, one is cautious not to go beyond acceptable bounds. A good group member never gossips about a friend to an outsider since it might get back to his friend, but he often gossips about outsiders to a friend.

The most effective way of dealing with a person who has caused difficulty is through the collusion of a group in rejecting him. The residents of Mamachi still use the expression
idobata kaigi
(the meeting around the well) to describe a group of women getting together to gossip about local events. Some of the suburban women jokingly comment that the new
idobata kaigi
is no longer at the well but at the playground where mothers exchange their views while watching their children's play. If a group of women together decide to ignore another woman, she can be devastated. While to my knowledge no one in Mamachi has been expelled from the community for violating the customs and morals (
mura hachibu
), the same term and method is still used socially to isolate a disliked person. People are, in effect, shut out from groups for their aggressiveness, egotism, or failure to live up to their group responsibilities. This sanction is effective in Mamachi because the mother who lacks

[21] In the sentence-completion test, one of the commonest answers to the item "most feared" was "rumors." Similarly, in the item, "what do you dislike most" many people responded "rumors." Judging from the frequency with which rumors were spontaneously mentioned, they are a potent force in Japanese lives; more so in rural villages, but still powerful in suburban Tokyo.

informal acceptance in her PTA group virtually has no other place to turn, and a husband rejected by his work group has no other opportunity for developing close friends. Quiet group pressures can be very effective.

The rules of politeness require very indirect ways for expressing disapproval and disagreement, and even fellow Mamachi residents sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between postponement and refusal, between exaggerated flattery connoting criticism and sincere praise, between a vague agreement meaning no and a vague agreement meaning a weak yes. Sometimes, of course, even the speaker may not be clear what his own final response will be.

But usually the general meaning, even from subtle clues, is perfectly clear. All that is unclear is the reason underlying the response. When a person complains that he cannot tell exactly what another is feeling, this almost always means that the other did not give a sufficiently positive response, but that one does not know why. Such vague replies often create anxieties greater than a direct explanation would create. Many people who are refused feel there is something wrong with them, and the diffuse nature of the rejection by postponement, avoidance, or vagueness is often felt as an attack on one's entire character. Undifferentiated emotional responses of fear, anger, or self-depreciation are common.

These subtle means of refusal are not unknown in the West but they are used much more frequently in Japan, and the implication is generally more negative than would be true in the West. If someone who has come to ask assistance begins by saying, "I am so and so. Do you remember me?" an effective refusal would be to say, "I don't think I remember" or "I am not sure" or to misunderstand purposefully the implication, then to resume talking in a friendly manner. The initial pause, the hesitation, and the refusal to acknowledge the memory is ordinarily sufficient to express the negative feelings and, in effect, constitutes a refusal to consider the request regardless of what polite conversation or formal assent is later expressed. Avoidance is also more widely used and accepted as a technique for refusal. If a man schedules an appointment with an unwilling acquaintance, the acquaintance simply may not show up. When they meet again, ordinarily it would be rude to mention the missed appointment. If the other person should be so bold as to