Japan's New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (36 page)

Until the end of World War II, standard guides like Kaibara Ekken's classic on the proper conduct of women set forth precisely the moral duties of wives to husbands, and of children to parents. But the government leaders and Confucian moralists who sponsored the guidebooks, did not offer advice to the parents on how to handle children. As a result, there is no formal tradition, setting forth the ideal parent behavior comparable to the set of injunctions regarding filial piety. Advice on child-rearing
^[1]
was left for older women to pass down to younger women informally by word of mouth, and even the consensus about child-rearing which did exist in many communities was never standardized or rationalized. When one asks a Mamachi mother about "traditional" patterns of family relations, she cites a well-ordered stereotype of the ideal patterns she was taught, but when one asks about "traditional" patterns of child-rearing she has no such rationalized overview and is more likely to cite her own experiences.

Nor is the Mamachi mother clearer about what the new pattern is, for despite the plethora of printed advice now available on child-rearing and the attempt by many mothers to develop an integrated rationalized approach, there is no clear consensus on desirable practices that compares to the consensus in America represented by the wide acceptance of Spock. There is not even a single integrated set of practices which can be called the "new way."

[1] Child-rearing is here understood not as a body of specific techniques to train children but as the sum total of familial relationships of all kinds as they impinge upon the child and affect his development.

The Mamachi mother, lacking a single standard guide and confronting the difficult problem of providing her child with proper training for a constantly changing society far different from the society of her childhood, must seek advice from a variety of sources and then reconcile the conflicting advice with her own intuitive sense of what is proper. Most Mamachi mothers have worked out relatively consistent patterns of dealing with their children, but they are filled with doubts about whether their methods are the best.

Mamachi mothers approach the task of selecting proper methods every bit as seriously as husbands approach their work. Their attitude is expressed by a mother who explained that her task is more important than her husband's because he merely deals with things while she is responsible for moulding lives. Because this is the main work for salary men's wives and because of the limitless range of suggested methods, no topic evoked more lively discussion among Mamachi women or more close questioning of us about practices in America than child-rearing. On no topic do they read more avidly. They read advice columns in the daily papers and weekly magazines, information bulletins on nutrition or psychological problems issued by various branches of the government, accounts of mothers who have traveled abroad, "scientific investigations" of experts, and some even read the Japanese translation of Spock. But the amount of reading material is so overwhelming, the suggestions so numerous, and the possible solutions so different, that mothers look to intimate friends or meetings with other mothers and teachers at school for specific answers to concrete problems. These discussions with friends and other mothers are earnest, serious, and full of lively interchange of experiences and opinions.

Many conventional practices are questioned by the more modern mothers. Some question whether it is good for the small child to sleep on the same
futon
(mattress) with his mother. Some argue that the practice of carrying a child on the back is old-fashioned, and refuse to follow the custom. While almost no mother defends outright the desirability of bottle-feeding over breast-feeding, most no longer think it right to criticize the small but increasing number of mothers who find that they do not have enough milk and must use bottles. Others think it is not good to scare children with stories

of ghosts, and many modern mothers are adamantly against teaching the child anything that smacks of superstition. Some are even experimenting with leaving grade-school-age children at home alone while the mother goes out shopping. Others argue that it is sometimes best to allow a small child to cry and believe this principle so firmly that they are willing to endure the disapproval of neighbors who still think that a baby's crying is a sign of inadequate maternal attention. But many just as staunchly, though perhaps more quietly, defend more traditional patterns, and many who advocate new ideas find it difficult to put their views into practice. Some mothers who see nothing wrong with crying find themselves so upset by their own child's tears that they cannot permit the crying to continue. Others resolve not to carry their baby on their back but later find themselves doing so because of the convenience.

Despite the wide divergence of opinion and practice among women of different ages and social classes about child-rearing, Mamachi women consistently approach the task of child-rearing in a way which contrasts with the modal patterns in the American middle-class suburbs. This difference is illustrated by a Mamachi mother who prided herself in being modern and rearing independent children even to the point of incurring the disapproval of some of her relatives but was shocked when a three-year-old American child took such an active interest in playing in the home of a stranger that he did not even notice when his mother went into another room. After this mother heard in detail some of the freedom granted to American children, she concluded that by comparison the freedoms she granted her children were minor. Indeed, the typical mother-child relationship in Mamachi is very close, both physically
^[2]
and

[2] As part of my investigation of child-rearing practices, I arranged to have questionnaires distributed to about sixty families each in seven different communities—five in rural areas, one a salary-man neighborhood in a Tokyo suburb, and another a small-shopkeeper neighborhood in a Tokyo suburb. The results presented in thetable below are the mean age (in months) at which certain steps in child-rearing were reported to have taken place.

psychologically.
^[3]
It may seem paradoxical that even though the salaried family represents the most radical departure from tradition in many ways, the opportunity of the wife of the salary man to be home and devoted to the children has made the mutual dependency of the mother and child even stronger in the salary-man families than in other occupational groups. Because of the relative isolation of the mother and child from other maternal relatives, the mother-child relationship of the Mamachi salary mother is perhaps even more intense and less subject to outside interference than in traditional rural families. The father is occupied away from home long hours of the day, the mother's opportunity of seeing friends is usually limited, and once the children are born the mother turns her affection to them. She provides them with continuous attention, and, because her social sphere is so limited, she relies on them

[3] This observation and its implications for psychoanalytic theory are discussed by Dr. Takeo Doi, the only practicing Japanese psychiatrist with Western psychoanalytic training, and by Dr. William Caudill, who is currently carrying out large-scale research on mother-infant relationships in Japan. William Caudill and Takeo Doi, "Interrelations of Psychiatry, Culture, and Emotion in Japan," in
Medicine and Anthropology
, New York: Werner Gren Foundation, 1962. See also Takeo Doi's analysis of the passive dependency of the model Japanese personality. Takeo Doi, "Amae—A Key Concept for Understanding Japanese Personality Structure,"
Psychologia
, 1962, 5:1–7. Dr. Doi has noted that mothers foster this passive dependency, and the techniques of child-rearing elaborated above can be thought of as a further specification of the techniques giving rise to this type of personality.

for companionship just as completely as they rely on her for care.

When a second child is born, and the mother must sleep with the baby, the eldest child ordinarily stops sleeping with the mother and begins sleeping with the father or a grandparent. While elementary-school-age children often sleep in a separate room, and certainly have their own mattresses and covers, it is not unusual for grown children to sleep next to their parents. Mamachi mothers may be embarrassed that this practice may not conform to how the modern mother is supposed to behave. They argue that sleeping with small children is convenient and comfortable. The baby and mother can go right to sleep after nursing; the mother can comfort the child without getting out of her quilt; in the winter, they can keep each other warm and the mother need not worry about the child getting out from under the quilt. One mother after seeing an American movie expressed her pity for the "poor foreign babies" who were forced to sleep alone. Even putting a baby to sleep is not done by rocking or sitting beside a crib and singing a song, but by close physical contact, by nursing him or later carrying him on her back until he dozes off. If the child is too heavy to carry, the mother may lie down beside the child, singing or telling a story until he falls asleep.

Breast-feeding generally continues slightly longer than one year. Many advice columns and even some government publications advise that it is wise to begin weaning at a fairly early age, and a few mothers are even using bottles. But there are also some at the other extreme, like the mother who weaned her two-year-old the day a younger child was born, or the mother of an emotionally disturbed child, who complained of the pain of waiting with full breasts for her six-year-old son to return home each day from school. Most mothers, however, begin weaning their children shortly after their first birthday while introducing supplementary food. The actual weaning may be abrupt but often, even up to the time the child enters elementary school, the mother's disapproval may not always be strong enough to stop him from teasingly fondling her breasts occasionally. Most mothers feel it unnecessary and even cruel to deprive the child of close physical contact.

Bathing is another opportunity for close physical contact between mother and child. While poorer families go to the public bath,

virtually all salaried families now have their own wooden tubs, which are shorter but deeper than the average American bath. One washes before entering the tub and sits in the tub for relaxing and getting warm. While older children and adults bathe alone, the mother usually bathes with small children until they are old enough to enter elementary school. Even after the child is in elementary school, on special occasions when the mother wants to have a particularly close talk, she may have the talk while she and the child bathe together in the tub. One Mamachi parent suggested that the expression
hadaka de hanasu
(figuratively, talking frankly; literally, talking nakedly) probably derived from the practice of informal talks in the bathtubs.

Until the child is one or two, the mother carries the child on her back in a special strap when she works around the house or goes out shopping. When she goes out in the winter, she straps the child on her back, then puts on a loose fitting coat which covers both her and the infant, and the infant's head can be seen peering out of the coat. To mothers and children alike, the idea of a child on his parent's back is a pleasing one, with connotations of pleasant intimacy. In advertisements, happy children peer over their mothers' shoulders; in children's books, monkeys or bunny rabbits gayly climb around the necks of giraffes; in their play, girls strap their dolls on their backs.

Sexual feelings between parent and child tend to be deeply repressed, and the close physical contact between mother and child during the day and night are not thought of in sexual terms. Rather physical contact is seen as a natural expression of affection, which is desirable and necessary for the proper rearing of children.
^[4]

Even when the Mamachi mother and child are not in actual physical contact, the child is seldom out of his mother's sight or earshot. No one is considered a substitute for the mother, and rarely does a mother think of leaving her children with a baby sitter. Even if a grandmother is at home to care for the children, many mothers try to avoid leaving her with children younger than two or three.

[4] Cf. Drs. Doi and Caudill,
op. cit.
See also their articles in Robert J. Smith and Richard K. Beardsley, eds.,
Japanese Culture,
New York: The Viking Fund, 1962. This more complete repression of sexual feelings also helps explain the great length of time it takes a Japanese couple to begin enjoying sexual relationships after marriage.