Constructing an Interior Public: uchi and soto in the Japanese Sharehouse

Abstract

The present article considers how the categories of private and public spheres (uchi and soto)—key terms of Japanese social behavior—are constructed through material practices in the home. In response to earlier discussions of uchi and soto that emphasized their stability, the article will explore how, in practice, their distinction is not absolute but relative, and relatively fluid. Based on fieldwork in a Japanese sharehouse, I discuss how residents used personal belongings, signs, and techniques of self-presentation to make claims about the nature of shared space, and what these claims reflected about their understandings of public and private in the more conventional Japanese home.

KEYWORDS:

• Japan
• uchi and soto
• sharehouse
• space

Notes

1. The entryway of a home where one removes his shoes, traditionally regarded as marking the boundary between the home and the outside world.

2. This marketing rhetoric holds an especially strong appeal for young women, who continue to make up more than 60 percent of sharehouse residents nationwide. In the first years of the “sharehouse boom”, this figure was more than 70 percent (Hitsuji Real Estate 2013). It should be added that the “sharehouse boom” was assisted by a rising vacancy rate in Japan and flexible zoning laws, which left cheap residential and commercial infrastructure available for sale and hasty renovation.

3. Shoji are traditional doors used to divide areas of the home, traditionally constructed of a wooden frame and paper and allow for greater spatial fluidity than Western-style doors.

4. Naraigoto (literally, “something learned”) refers to education for personal enrichment, often traditional artistic skills like flower arranging or tea ceremony.

5. Many sharehouse names reference European salons or cafés, and every sharehouse I surveyed with adequate space provided a “café space” for residents to gather casually and chat. This is likely because coffee shops are understood as consummate “third spaces” in Japan. “In cafes, there is space for the performances of personal, and social modernities—in the forms of choice and expression—may be seen. There the lines between ‘individual’ and ‘community’ are drawn lightly, and the freedom to be anonymous can be indulged” (White 2012: 3).

6. Familiar to Western readers as “Super Nintendo.”

7. Omiyage are travel souvenirs, typically carefully packaged food specialties.

8. “Darashinonai” is an Edo-era inversion of the syllables in shidaraku (“self-indulgence;” “moral corruption”) for a cool, slangy effect and is used to imply a lapse in appropriate self-presentation or sexual morals.

9. In a subsequent article, “Sharehouse underwear discourse,” Marina-chan considers the question of whether it is necessary to wear a bra in the sharehouse, based on conversations with her own sharemates. While one does not want to feel constricted, one should wear things in the sharehouse that one would not be embarrassed to wear outside (ShareParade n.d.-b, vol. 26).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Caitlin Meagher

Caitlin Meagher is visiting assistant professor of Anthropology at Antioch College. Her research interests include infrastructure; social change and cultural continuity; material culture; and the Japanese home.

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