Japan's New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (45 page)

But in addition to these families whom we saw on a regular formal basis, we had numerous contacts with many families through our neighborhood, the local school, shopping, places of work, and friends and relatives of people we met in these places.

It is our feeling that an accurate picture of Japanese life comes not through any sudden or semimagical penetration into their inner secrets but through the patient accumulation of observations in a wide variety of situations. Of course, in interviewing, getting a straight forward account of the informant's experiences is essential, and it is our impression that this is most likely to come from a relationship with the informant based on mutual trust. In any conflict between information-gathering and the development of a good relationship, we gave priority to the development of the latter. If a person seemed reluctant to talk on a subject, we did not press him. If someone wanted us not to see them at a certain time or did not show us certain parts of their house, we did not insist, nor did we attempt tricks or pressure to see what we might not otherwise be shown. We raised questions and expressed an interest in seeing or hearing about virtually everything and tried by winning their confidence to overcome their reluctance to tell us or show us something. It is our conviction that this basic trust was repaid in the long run by a willingness to relate their feelings freely and honestly. We tried to show by our actions as well as our words that we were deserving of their trust. Early in our research we said that information would be treated confidentially, but this was less convincing than our refusal to pass on gossip when asked questions about other families.

In general, we felt that we received more reliable information when people discussed concrete instances than when they answered on a general level. Hence, in our questions and in our responses to their comments, we indicated an interest in their concrete experiences. Most people responded to our interest in them, and many even seemed to enjoy and look forward to having someone listen to their problems. This kind of relationship also required our willingness to tell about ourselves, and often people responded to our self-revelations with spontaneous revelations about themselves.

At first we underestimated their interest in us, not as social scientists, but as Americans. The first time we entertained friends in

Mamachi we were anxious to show how completely we were living Japanese style; only toward the end of the visit did it become clear to us that they had been disappointed not to have a chance to see what an American home was really like. Some of the clearest expressions of their attitudes came from their questions or expressions of surprise about our American habits.

As a whole, we feel we were successful in establishing close personal relationships with Mamachi families and in receiving an opportunity to observe their lives. The fact that we were foreigners trying to understand their culture made it natural for them to explain to us how they did things, what they believed, and what their family and community was like. Some even said they felt freer in talking to us than to their friends and neighbors since we would never be involved in community gossip and evaluation. Some were reluctant to explain the mundane common experiences of their lives, apparently thinking it not worthy of "research" by an American associated with Harvard University—a university with high prestige among educated residents of Mamachi. We feel, however, that we were able to overcome this resistance by our obvious interest in ordinary details. However, the process of developing close relationships was more taxing for Mamachi residents and for us than we had anticipated. For one thing the process of mutual understanding that goes beyond surface pleasantries and comes to terms with differences in attitudes and patterns of living requires considerable adjustment. Moreover, Mamachi families were extremely generous in entertaining us and extremely patient in answering our questions. They entertained us more elaborately and with greater expense and trouble than we felt comfortable in receiving. We tried to return their kindness by giving presents, by offering return entertainment, and perhaps most of all by giving English-conversation lessons to their children. For many, it was the first time they had come into direct contact with Americans. Some eagerly sought out our acquaintance, either to practice English conversation, to find out how Americans handle child-rearing or business problems, to find out how a child or relative of theirs might visit America, or just for the exciting experience of getting to see and know some Americans. In almost every group discussion, when an issue arose, someone would turn to us to find out how it would be handled in America.

A few seemed somewhat frightened of us at first and later somewhat relieved that we did not fit their image of Americans, which they had derived from stories of American soldiers in Japan. A few people remained cautious in talking with us, but they were invariably polite in answering our questions. Many found it easier to relate to our three-year-old son, who quickly acquired the Japanese language, than to us, and our son's presence often softened the stiffness of conversation with other adults. Most people were impressed by our seriousness and willingness to learn the Japanese language, but some, not completely comfortable with the thought that we were studying them, were concerned about presenting what they thought was the good side of Japanese life. Most, however, after getting to know us, spontaneously talked of their own lives and asked questions about ours.

We soon found that if we presented our opinions first, they would find some way to agree with us. If we started a question by saying, "We have been impressed that . . . ," they would usually answer in a way that would support our observations. Only the frankest and closest of friends directly corrected our misunderstandings. We soon realized that we should ask questions in such a way that would give them an opportunity to answer in a variety of ways without causing them embarrassment. We also learned, however, that they were very responsive to our definition of the situation. If we were stiff in asking a question, they were usually stiff in answering, but if we were jovial and light, though frank, they tended to respond in the same way.

When we went to Mamachi, we had certain general questions about family life to which we hoped to get answers, but we had no formal questionnaire. In addition to the questions which we were seeking to answer, we determined to be sensitive to clues that would indicate strong feelings about problems that we had not anticipated. The process of drawing generalizations was one of following up observations with detailed questioning about the meaning, context, and extent of the practice. We conducted roughly six hundred hours of scheduled visits in people's homes specifically for the purpose of research. Altogether we accumulated several thousand pages of typed notes based on these interviews. Although

we had discussions during these visits, the fact that we were in private homes gave us the opportunity to see a wide variety of situations, many of which arose spontaneously during our visits.

In families of disturbed children, the weekly therapy was conducted by staff members of the National Institute of Mental Health, except for one family where my wife treated the mother. In addition, I conducted one or two lengthy home interviews per family. The well families were visited primarily by my wife and me, but a few brief interviews were conducted by a Japanese assistant; besides, the projective test material was given by Japanese psychologists. Once we had made an observation or learned something of interest, we then followed it up by asking relevant questions of other families with whom we were in contact. The use of intensive interviewing techniques makes it more difficult to count precisely how many people engage in a certain practice, but it makes possible a thorough check on the context and meaning of a practice or attitude when it arises. It does make it necessary to rely on a variety of informants to achieve an estimate of how widespread practices are. On this matter, obviously some people are much abler than others. Many wives, for example, had a very limited range of social contacts and did not prove reliable but some wives with a wide range of contacts and acute sensitivity to others' attitudes were extremely useful for our aim to obtain a picture of the extent to which certain practices are followed. Fortunately, there are many studies based on larger samplings now available in Japan, and it was possible to compare specific items obtained in our work with the results of larger surveys. Although our better informants could not give precise statistics on the extent to which certain practices were observed, on items covered by surveys we were pleased to find a high level of agreement between the results of the surveys and the opinions of our informants.
^[4]

In addition to questionnaires available from other researchers, we developed some questionnaires of our own to supplement our intensive material on basic information about family relationships and child-rearing practices. Also we used a sentence-completion test,

[4] The results of some of these larger sampling surveys are included in the footnotes accompanying the text.

essentially a translation of the one developed by Robert Hess and Gerald Handel.
^[5]
We felt that it would unduly stiffen our relationships with Mamachi friends if we distributed these questions in Mamachi, but we distributed them to about sixty families in each of seven other communities. These communities included one salary-man neighborhood, one small shopkeeper neighborhood, three agricultural villages, one deep-sea fishing village where fathers were away for eleven months a year, and a nearby off-shore fishing village where fathers returned home every day.

I also interviewed a number of expert informants in various cities throughout Japan. For the most part they were either marriage arrangers (who had investigated various family backgrounds, brought together suitable couples, and obtained parental consent for the wedding) or social scientists. We have also had the opportunity, both while in Japan and after returning to the United States, to consult with Japanese and American scholars interested in the Japanese family. Although we have not used this information directly in the writing of our Mamachi material, it has permitted us to correct some mistaken impressions, to see new dimensions in some of the things we observed, and to alert ourselves to the specific context in which we conducted our interviewing. In general these experts have lent considerable support to our feeling that the patterns we have described in Mamachi are widespread in many parts of Japan.

To spell out in detail how we arrived at each of our conclusions presented in the text would require several thousand pages. The conclusions presented reflect not only a simple recording of facts which we heard and observed but occasional leaps in interpretation. In order to convey our general approach to the problem of getting information and drawing conclusions, I present the following examples:

The uniqueness of the salary-man pattern.
—Of the twelve families which we studied intensively, it happened that six were salary-man families, one was an independent professional family, two were businessmen families, and three were families of white-collar workers in small enterprises. We soon noticed patterns of difference

[5] Cf. Robert Hess and Gerald Handel,
Family World,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.

between these groups of families, but our attention to the problem of the salary man first came from the contrasts which the professional family and one of the business families drew between their way of life and the way of life of the salary man. The descriptions they gave were even more detailed than the observations we had made to that point. From that time on, I began exploring the sociological factors that might be associated with these differences. With every salary man, I began exploring the relationship with his family and outside in terms of the relationship with the firm. With all nonsalary men, I began comparing their lives with those of salary men. Through medical colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health and elsewhere, I could get more detailed information about how friends of theirs had entered private practice. However, I did not decide to focus on the salary man in the write-up of the material until after returning to the United States and analyzing the questionnaire responses of the salary men and the small shopkeepers. There were many consistent differences between shopkeepers and salary men which seemed to sharpen the distinction between the salary man and other occupational groups. We had not had any formal interviewing experience with small shopkeepers, but our daily contacts with them and what we had heard about them was fully consistent with what we learned from the questionnaires. Once I had decided to organize the material around the topic of the salary man, it was then necessary to go through all the interview material which we had collected to trace the implications of this pattern in various social spheres.

The patterning of community relationships.
—Many of our early observations about the community grew out of our concern with our own relationships with Mamachi residents. For example, we found that we were treated very differently by high-status people in the community than by those of low status. We were concerned as to how to develop smoother and easier relationships, but we noticed that in general high-status people seemed relaxed and were not overly polite. Low-status people were extremely polite and seemed anxious to prove that they came from respectable families. This sensitized us to certain clues to look for in groups of people in higher and lower status. We noticed, for example, that in the meetings of the six well families the higher-status families behaved to

the lower-status families much as they had toward us. The reserve, caution, and anxiety felt by the lower-status families toward us was also reflected in their relations toward higher-status families but not toward other lower-status families. We noticed that people of high status were polite but seemed wary about deep involvement. Having received a number of vague requests and presents from people who wanted favors, we sympathetically asked the higher-status families how to deal with such requests, and they replied with a spontaneous and lengthy outpouring of feeling and information reflecting their deep concern with this issue. Once we had made concrete observations, we could use them without mentioning names as a basis for seeking explanations and for eliciting related experiences of other families.