Imagined Families, Lived Families: Culture and Kinship in Contemporary Japan (review)

As historical and contemporary studies of Japanese families are relatively few, publication of Hashimoto and Traphagan's collection of essays is timely and welcome. Highlighting "'the family' as a dynamic and changing unit that is interpreted in a variety of ways" (p. 11), the anthology is divided into two sections. Following an introduction, the three essays in the first part examine representations of families in media ranging from newspaper comic strips to anime and film. The three chapters in the second part analyze familial behavior and attitudes of post-World War II repatriates from Manchuria, family members confronting elder care decisions, and parents and children in families of student radicals plus their support organizations.

Chapter 1, a compact introduction by Hashimoto and Traphagan, is rich in useful data and insights, including overviews of family change since the modern era (1868-1945), shifts in marriage and domestic expectations after World War II, and economic and international factors underlying contemporary transitions in images of family life as well as in norms and behavior. Despite some glitches in the prose, overall the introduction to Imagined Families, Lived Families is quite valuable, not only for specialists in family studies but for Japanologists and the general public—that is, for almost anyone with a serious interest in contemporary Japanese society or comparative analysis of contemporary families.

Chapter 2 begins with the newspaper comic Blondie and continues through Sazae-san (and Granny Mischief), Hi, I'm Ak'ko, My Neighbor Yamada/Nono-chan, and People of the Earth Defense Family as Akiko Hashimoto analyzes "shifting discourses of the family that each successive generation defined, as they were contested and accommodated" from the occupation period into the twenty-first century (p. 18). She focuses on family composition and division of labor, particularly hierarchy or authority, with some attention to the relationship between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. The trend toward egalitarianism sparked by the postwar changes in family law and increased emphasis on democratic values is reflected in the lessened authority of mothers-in-law and the decreasing authority of parents in these comic strips, with the impact of high economic growth accompanying the transition to a mass consumer society marking a watershed in the 1970s.

In chapter 4, which explores selected anime released over three decades from the late 1970s, Susan Napier finds "impotent males" and "ghostly" or "absent mothers" populating dysfunctional families rather than happy, competent mothers and authoritative fathers (pp. 36-37). Factors underlying the increasing prominence of these images include: the dismantling of the stem family (three-generation) household (ie) and the weakening of the household head's powers in the revised postwar civil code; egalitarian values fostered during the Allied occupation; the transition to a consumer society; and prolonged economic stagnation undermining the links between family, education, and secure employment.

In chapter 5, Patricia Steinhoff considers how police and criminal justice practices, the attitudes of parents and children, and the advice of third parties (organizations supporting arrested youth or their parents) influenced students and their parents confronting crisis situations when college students and older leftist radicals were detained for political crimes ranging from participation in mass demonstrations in the late 1960s to hijackings and bombings after the 1970s. Parents, incarcerated leftist children, and support groups also worked with the state to bring home the stateless offspring of exiled radicals who were born overseas. Because factors such as political views and respect for children's right to choose their response to a critical situation shaped parental reactions, responses to the crisis situations were varied and not simply the cookie-cutter reactions that might be anticipated on the basis of family honor or filial expectations. Yet apparently, without the intervention of the radical support group, some youthful leftists were susceptible to police pressures designed to end their activism by appealing to notions of dishonor and shame. Such susceptibility reveals...