Gambling with Virtue: Japanese Women and the Search for Self in a Changing Nation

Chapter 3. Backstage Selves: Housewives

75 3 Backstage Selves Housewives Middle-aged women in the ’80s responded with cautious enthusiasm to the idea that middle-class housewives not only could but should get out of the house to pursue hobbies, work, and consume. They made choices and strategies to develop personhood in new directions, but were always aware that like a pattern in a kaleidoscope, their movements could look different with a turn of perspective. Their own lives had passed through a multilayered history. As a northeastern woman of 50 said: When I was younger, we recited the Imperial Rescript on Education. It taught us that country comes before family, elders before young people, and men before women. It was a kind of religion for us. Then after the war, our high school teachers told us about ideas of equality between men and women, marriage for love, women getting jobs, democracy and individualism. I enjoyed those ideas and I had a lot of individual hopes. After school, I got married and my husband had been educated completely in the prewar system. He hadn’t been taught the new ideas and he depended on the ideas in the Imperial Rescript on Education. I’ve always felt that I sympathize with his ideas. But I sympathize with the new ways, too. I’m caught between the children’s ideas and my husband’s ideas. The kind of personhood carved out by women was a compromise with family members, local customs, and political ideologies old and new—all of which were under pressure to be more Japanese or more Western. Within each person’s kaleidoscope the colors and shapes varied depending on whether women lived in large urban areas, regional cities, or rural areas, and whether they belonged to working-class, farm, or professional families. Compared with the ’70s, women in the ’80s were questioning their 76 Backstage Selves position in relation to old and new ways. Enticed by promises of individuality and diversity, most women were open to more mobility and individual purpose in their lives—many had been reaching in that direction already. Although they tried to exploit the way their lives and bodies were managed to their own advantage, they were careful to accommodate husbands , children, relatives, bosses, and neighbors. Women were well aware of the need to adapt as the kaleidoscope turned so they would not be marginalized as threatening or useless. The idea of personhood on multiple stages was as useful to them as it was to the larger forces shaping their lives, for women had to follow the script of the underlying plot of economic growth, with a main stage set of male-centered work and femalecentered home. Backstage spaces were invaluable for experimenting with new patterns that seemed too bright and chaotic for front stage (see also Bernstein 1983; Bumiller 1995). I had returned to Japan to do dissertation research between 1980 and 1984 in Tokyo and the northeast. Now a mother of two small children, I felt sharply the dual responsibilities of family and work. In part it was my own need to work on these multiple positions that led me to focus my research on middle-aged women because they were struggling with similar questions. Together we were participating in a late-twentieth-century debate over how women were to manage movement between roles as consumers , workers, mothers, housewives, and leisure seekers. Praising me for both studying and raising children, many women said they would tell their daughters who might have a chance to enact a similar combination. Not a few gently chided me, however, to make sure I spent time with my children while they were young so I would not have regrets later. “Your children are waiting!” they would warn as dusk approached and we still lingered over tea. Their approval and criticism of me pointed to their own personal debates about the tensions and opportunities offered by current discourses.1 Tokyo: Women of Suburban and “Downtown” Origins Plied with information from media and government, barraged with opportunities to work and consume, women living in Tokyo were at the center of public discourses and practices. Compared with northeast middle-class women, Tokyo middle-class women found it much easier to take the risk of using side stages and creating backstages outside of home. Higher levels of education and income helped them do so, but they were Backstage Selves 77 also surrounded with less critical neighborly...