The Political Economy of Familial Relations: The Japanese State and Families in a Changing Political Economy

Abstract

This article explores the ongoing negotiation over the boundaries between the world of political economy and families by analysing the reactions and responses of the Japanese government and feminists to changes in the political economy as well as popular patterns of family forming since the 1990s. This negotiation has occurred through the transition in the political economy brought about by globalisation and neo-liberal political reforms, and the re-calibration of family and gender roles has emerged as its primary ground. As a result, Japanese women are being required to make a hasty leap from the Fordist model of family life to a more self-steering idea of the individual. This ineluctably re-calibrates the bio-political arrangement into a more advanced mechanism, while discussion of the ‘ethics of care’ has been left relatively absent. Taking up these issues, this article discusses the implications of a changing political economy on Japanese families.

Keywords:

• Political Economy
• Family Policy
• Gender
• Neo-liberal Reform
• Japan

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for the support from the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee (JFEC), the White Rose East Asia Centre (WREAC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The author would also like to thank Glenn Hook and Andrew DeWit for their comments and editorial support. Following convention, Japenese names are formatted with the family name before the given name (including the author's name) unless the British convention is explicitly preferred by the author in question. Long vowels are represented by macrons except in cases where the words are conventionally used without them (for example, ‘Tokyo’).

Notes

1. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss migration-related issues. But it is noteworthy that due to Japan's immigration policy, the entry of foreign migrants is strictly based on skills, conditioned by their job categories, except for those immigrants who are descendants of Japanese emigrants to Latin American countries. As a result, on the one hand, the number of unskilled migrant labourers coming into Japan is controlled by the Japanese government, and hence, the introduction of foreign domestic/care workers that can be observed in other industrial advanced countries is not a realistic option in Japan. On the other hand, women as a group appear to be the primary reservoir of labour force. And despite the strict migrant policy, the increase of international marriages between Japanese husbands and foreign brides from East and Southeast Asia are rapidly increasing, and in those cases, the boundary between being a wife and a worker is often blurred (cf. Piper and Roces, 2003).

2. ‘Parasite Single’ is a phrase used to refer to young, single Japanese in their 20s and 30s who still reside at their parents’ homes. It was coined in the 1990s by the sociologist Yamada (1999) and quickly attracted public attention.

3. There are a number of reasons why out-of-wedlock birth-rates remain significantly lower in Japan than other industrially advanced countries, the following two points being particularly noteworthy: First, by law children born out of wedlock are listed in a different manner in the family registration system (koseki). Because the family registration is required at the start of school and job entry, the different manner of family registration tends to stigmatise those children. Second, the reality of lone motherhood remains very harsh. According to a report published by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), approximately 8% of lone mothers are employed and about 50% of them work part-time. The average income of lone-mother households in 2003 was 2.24 million yen. By contrast, the overall average was 579.7 million yen, and the average for households with more than one child is 702.6 million yen (Kōsei Rōsō Shō, 2004). The legal and social stigma and difficult economic situations tend to dissuade and discourage Japanese women to give birth out of wedlock. For lone motherhood in Japan, see for example, Yuzawa (2004).

4. The economic stagnation of the 1990s inevitably narrowed the range of job opportunities available to women; in particular, jobs with better conditions had become rather scarce. Consequently, many women with child-care responsibilities stayed at home, balancing the cost and benefits of engaging in paid work, despite the relative decline of household income (Higuchi and Ōta, 2004). According to the White Paper on Gender Equality (Naikakufu, 2007), the ratio of female workers in the irregular mode of employment (part-timers and contracted workers) was 52.7% in 2006.

5. The interview that Ueno conducted with Ōsawa revealed that one of the senior bureaucrats serving on the advisory council told Ōsawa that he did not realise the radical connotation of the concept of gender, which is heavily influenced by the post-structuralist discussion, that was employed in the government documents relating to the legislation of the Basic Law until he read Ōsawa's article (Ueno and Ōsawa, 2001: 25–29). This has suggested that the legislation happened without clear understanding on the part policy-makers, which has invited fierce criticism of the law by conservative critics.

6. The English translation of the Basic Law is available at http://www.gender.go.jp/english_contents/index.html

7. The initial national legislation stirred many heated reactions from conservative politicians and social critics. Those reactions were politically manifested when sub-regional authorities undertook the legislation process of local statutes on a gender-equal society. In some case, there were some provisions that contradicted the national Basic Law included in local statues, and hence it is not easy to assess the actual impact of the Basic Law.

8. In 1989, the total fertility rate recorded its lowest rate ever (1.57) in the post-war period. This statistical fact hit the main headlines of major newspapers and swiftly led to keen interest on the part of leading politicians and business leaders on the issue of birth-rate.

9. It is worth noting that the ‘female gender role’ in the family in post-war Japan had a wider scope than what is normally perceived of as domestic work. Many housewives joined grassroots political movements in order to manage/tackle issues in their local communities, and as represented by the activities of the Seikatsu Club and Seikatsusha Net, some of those political endeavours brought about some concrete outcomes in local politics. In this sense, women's domestic gendered work has been dealing with the ‘externalities’ of post-war Japan's political economy. For women's civil movements in post-war Japan, for example, see LeBlanc (1999) and Ueno (2007). I also extensively discussed issues relating to women's civil movements in Takeda (2005a) and Takeda (2006).

10. Needless to say, Foucault's discussion on panopticon is inspired by Jeremy Bentham's writing (Foucault, 1995).

11. Koizumi stepped down from the Premiership in September 2006 and Abe Shinzō took over the job. Abe kept the line of structural reform policies, and ‘challenge again’ was Abe's main slogan. The development after the Koizumi government is certainly worth discussing separately.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Takeda Hiroko

Hiroko Takeda, PhD, is with the National Institute of Japanese Studies and the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield