Japan's New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (35 page)

In the Japanese sample, 39.9 percent reported no fore play and after play connected with intercourse. In sharp contrast, all of the American sample reported fore play. In the American sample, 99.4 percent reported kissing, and more than 90 percent reported genital stimulation of male and female and breast stimulation of thefemale. Even the 60 percent of Japanese who did engage in fore play averaged less time than the American sample (Kinsey, p. 364; Shinozaki, pp. 20 f.):

The deep repressions of sexual desire before marriage make it difficult for most young wives to enjoy sexual activity soon after marriage.
^[14]
Most middle-aged ladies say they were completely ignorant about sex until the day of marriage when their mother or the marriage go-between gave them a brief explanation, and perhaps a picture or two illustrating sexual activity. Many recall vividly the rude shock they felt the first time they experienced sexual relations, and they remember having regarded sexual activity as an unpleasant part of their duties in satisfying the wishes of their husband. Before prostitution was abolished in 1958, a sizeable number of wives favored the continuance of legalized prostitution, on the grounds that their husbands needed some outlets and that they would be less demanding at home if they had an outside outlet. Some of the middle-aged women who feared sexual relations in their earlier days of marriage, now admit enjoying it. Younger wives have the benefit of sex education in schools, have much more opportunity to become affectionate with their husbands either before or shortly after marriage, and have begun to enjoy sexual activity earlier in their marriage. But newly wedded women still do have difficulty overcoming their repression of sexual interests, and it is still con-

[14] The following is the stage at which wives first had feelings of satisfaction in intercourse (Shinozaki,
op. cit.,
p. 23; in percent):

sidered somewhat embarrassing for a young wife to admit to her friends that she enjoys sexual activity.

The Mamachi salary-man's wife, being tied to the home and the children, has neither the interest nor the opportunity to engage in extramarital affairs.
^[15]
Traditionally, it was expected that before marriage a young man would visit a house of prostitution so he would know how to take the lead in sexual relations with his wife. The man, being older, more worldly, and more experienced at the time of marriage, did not suffer from the same sexual inhibitions as his wife. Although increasingly the young salary man's first sexual experience is with his wife, he still tends to be less inhibited toward sexual pleasures than she.

Although the problems of overcoming the wife's reluctance and of having privacy once children are born inhibit sexual intimacy between husband and wife, fear of pregnancy does not. Couples are increasingly using contraceptives,
^[16]
and others have no compunctions about using abortion should the wife become impregnated. Because of the widespread acceptance of contraceptive and abortion, there is no need to resort to abstinence as a means of birth control.

Despite the wife's inhibitions and the distance created by the birth of a child, the husband-wife relationship has attained a degree of privacy and intimacy unequaled by any relationship between the husband and other women. Even if the husband has friends among bar girls or office girls, they supplement the husband-wife relationship instead of replacing it. The relationship with the wife is viewed as permanent, and relationships with other women as temporary. The man ordinarily expects that a girl at the office will work there only a few years and will then leave to get married herself; and the relationship with bar girls is generally not an exclusive one. The bar girl is expected to wait on many people and carry on conversations with many men. Although she tries to encourage

[15] This accords with Shinozaki's findings. "As regards wives, almost no one has the experience of intercourse with men other than their consorts except women who have remarried." Shinozaki,
op. cit.,
p. 26.

[16] A
Mainichi
survey found that 48.8 percent of salary men now use contraceptives, compared to 31 percent of farmers or fishermen, 34.7 percent of laborers, 37.1 percent of workers in factories and business establishments, and 48.9 percent of independent entrepreneurs.

steady customers, she must avoid getting so preoccupied with any one person that this interferes with taking care of other customers. The man also often regularly visits several bar girls, and even if he does not have several at one time, he changes from one to another. In some ways the bar girl's relationship with a man is hardly even a personal relationship. She takes little interest in him personally, and the pressures of her job set sharp limits on the intimacy she can have with any one person.

Although at times the husband may prefer the bar girl's worldliness, charm, and flattery to his wife's pressures and demands, the bar girl, typically, has a lower-class background and neither understands nor shares his fundamental attitudes in the same way his wife does. Although the husband may turn to a bar girl for entertainment and sympathy after his daily work, in any real difficulty he turns to his wife because her loyalty to him is much deeper than any bar girl's.

What a husband looks for from a bar girl or office girl is the attention, the charm, and the pleasure, the fun without the responsibility. Though the wife can provide some charm and attention, she is so concerned about the home and so preoccupied with the children, that she cannot give her husband the relaxed joking that permits him to escape his worries. To the contrary, the typical wife is always using her techniques to get the husband to bring home more money for her and the children. Because the wife can do little to increase the income of the home except by coaxing the husband, she tends to concentrate her pressure on him. Finally she has difficulty completely relaxing with her husband because he has superior authority, and because he does not fully share the intricacies of her world. For this reason and because the wife often exerts subtle pressures to get him to accept more responsibilities at home and because he is aware of the inconveniences he causes her, the husband is not always completely comfortable at home. If a man wants fun without responsibilities, he can get it from bar girls, but he ordinarily does not expect it from his wife.

The search for fun without responsibility may at times lead to intensive even though temporary attachments. Because these affect the relationship with the wife, and because they may affect how completely the husband fulfills his responsibilities to her, the wife

is usually upset by strong outside attachments. The husband-wife relationship is sufficiently close so that the wife is sensitive to slight changes in the husband's moods, and, to some extent, she feels she has failed if the husband's relationship with an outside woman becomes too close. Yet the husband's and wife's spheres are sufficiently separate that the husband may derive some pleasures from relationships with outside women without fearing their interference. The husband's relationship with other women need not have any effect on the wife's limited social sphere. Because they rarely go out together and because their friends are separate, it is possible for the husband to have affairs with bar girls or office girls without this having a direct effect on the wife's social activities. As long as the husband is meeting his responsibilities at home, the wife usually tries to overlook his activities away from home.

Although most salaried households include only parents and children, many homes did at one time, or will later, include relatives, and many other families have relatives next door or within the immediate neighborhood.
^[17]

Perhaps the most common coalition pattern in homes with grandparents is for grandparents to have close positive affectional ties with grandchildren. They commonly spend a lot of time playing with children and are sympathetic with them against the strictures of the parents. But this relationship tends to be limited to the affectional sphere. The grandchild often bathes with the grandparent,

[17] The rate of doubling is still much higher than, for example, in the United States. According to Japanese national statistics, in large cities 73.3 percent of the households are either single-person households or nuclear families, compared to 56.7 percent of the households in villages and towns, and 64.3 percent in small and middle-sized cities; 20.0 percent of large city households included lineal relatives (three generations or married children and their spouse); and 6.7 percent more included nonlineal relatives: Takashi Koyama in Robert J. Smith and Richard K. Beardsley, eds.,
Japanese Culture,
New York: The Viking Fund, 1962. In a survey of a Tokyo apartment-house area largely inhabited by salary men, Koyama found that 79.3 percent of the households included no relative beyond the nuclear family. Takashi Koyama,
Gendai Kazoku no Kenkyuu
(An Investigation of the Contemporary Family), Tokyo: Koobundoo, 1960, p. 59. Unfortunately, there are no data that would make it possible to estimate precisely how many families will at some time live with relatives. Estimates based on the past would not be conclusive since during and immediately after the war the housing shortage caused a large amount of doubling which continued for many years, but which is unlikely to recur.

rubs his back, sits on his knees, receives little presents, and in return does little favors. But in areas of task performance, the grandparents generally take an inactive role. Generally it is the parents who see to it that children do their work around the house and their homework. If the children want comfort they may go to their grandparents, but if they want assistance in solving difficult problems, they are more likely to go to their parents. The affectionate relationship between grandparent and grandchild does not represent a simple pursuit of pleasure, but also includes obligations. Many a grandparent, exhausted from playing with a child, feels obligated to continue, and many a child, bustling with energy, remains quiet so as not to disturb his grandparents.

If there is only one child, grandmother and mother may compete for the attention of the child, and the child may waver from trying to please one to trying to please the other. In this conflict over the child, the mother usually has a head start during the first year or so because she is nursing the child, and hence sleeps with the child and cares for him when he cries. During this period the grandmother may comfort the child at times, but to the extent that she participates in child-rearing it is largely in guiding and directing the mother in dealing with the child. Later the grandmother often has the advantage because the mother may be busy doing the housework but the grandmother is almost always free to look after the child.

If there is more than one child, it is common for one of the children to be assigned to the grandmother and one to the mother. While the process of assignment is not necessarily conscious, the fact of the assignment is recognized by everyone. If there are three children and a grandfather also lives with the family, one of the children may be assigned to him. A child assigned to his grandmother is actually called and referred to as
Baasan ko
(grandmother's child). He (or she) sleeps and bathes with the grandmother and perhaps massages the grandmother's back and runs errands for her. If the grandmother is sick or bed-ridden, the child will look after her, tend to her needs. In any kind of family dispute, the grandmother can be counted on to look after the interests of "her" child.

The common method of dividing up children is for the oldest to be the grandmother's and the younger to be the mother's child. This assignment does not resolve the battle over the children's loyalty

completely, because sometimes the grandmother will be away from home visiting or shopping and both children will be cared for by the mother. At other times if the mother is busy working, both children may be cared for by the grandmother. Furthermore, since the mother had an extremely close attachment to the older child during the period of nursing, she often finds it hard to give up the eldest child to the grandmother even after a younger child is born. Even when the coalition of mother and youngest child and of grandmother and eldest child is clear, there are often disputes between the children which inevitably affect the mother and grandmother on their respective sides, and disputes between mother and grandmother may later affect the children.

Another problem with this coalition pattern is the probability that the grandparent will die before the child is fully grown. A child who has been assigned to a grandparent often feels lonely after the grandparent's death, because he misses him and also because he then lacks a protector in family discussions; it is hard for him to break back into the close relationships from which he had been excluded. We knew of several cases where a child was especially sad and withdrawn for several years after the grandparent's death. Many children who were assigned the role of grandmother's (or grandfather's) child have difficulty finding any relationship that will ever replace the intimate devotion which they received before their grandparent died.