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7
Single Women and Their
Households in Contemporary
Japan
Laura Dales
Introduction
State promotion of particular kinds of gender relations and household
structures in Japan since the post-war period has constructed the reproductive family as an official ‘“absorber” of economic and social risks’
(Takeda 2008: 161). While the last three decades in Japan have seen the
introduction of legislation and policy designed to encourage women’s
participation in the paid workforce, a gendered labour division operates whereby household work and child-rearing are seen primarily as
women’s work. Women who are neither mothers nor wives, and particularly women who are mothers but not wives, occupy a peripheral space
in dominant constructions of the family as the basic social unit. Single
women, particularly those who live alone, challenge what MacKenzie has
called ‘conjugal order’, referring to ‘the broader social norms associated
with marriage and the family, including the privileging of heterosexual
sex’ (2010: 205). However, as unmarried women may also be workers
and/or unpaid carers, their contributions to the household and broader
economy are not insignificant. In contemporary Japan, an ageing
low-birth rate society where increasing numbers of women (and men)
are remaining unmarried, the households and consumption patterns of
single women are increasingly significant.
The contributions of households to the international economy have
been well-documented by feminist economists, economic anthropologists and political scientists. Safri and Graham document the intrinsic
economic importance of the global household, and the flow-on from
household transformation to social and economic transformation at a
macro level (2010: 117). In the Japanese context, the shifting composition of households (specifically resulting from the ageing, low-birth rate
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population) has drawn state and social concern, both for its economic
implications as well as its discursive challenge to conceptualizations of
the family and society.
As Teo observes in the context of Singapore (Chapter 1), the familialist,
non-welfare state predicates its social policies on the availability of
women as primary caregivers and the universality of the (reproductive)
family as a support base. In Japan, state efforts to shape gendered roles
and gender relations indicate the centrality of the household as an
anchor point of neoliberalization in the last decade (Takeda 2008: 154).
As Broadbent comments (Chapter 8), the continuation of the male
breadwinner model in Japan has meant that women’s employment is
‘constructed … as insecure and with low pay and poor conditions’. This
has enabled the state to draw freely on women’s unpaid labour, to minimize spending on social welfare services involved in the care of children
and the elderly. While women’s unpaid labour is freely absorbed by the
state, another important trend can be observed in terms of the way in
which women’s practices of consumption are problematized as either
excessive or insufficient. This is particularly so for single women who do
not fit neatly into the reproductive family as wives and/or mothers. The
concern with women’s consumption patterns is, in part, reflective of
the broader preoccupation with consumption (specifically the need to
boost domestic consumption) that characterized economic debates during the ‘lost decades’ of recession. But in relation to discussions of single
women’s economic behaviours, these debates also have an important
disciplinary role – marking single women as aberrant and irresponsible
(economic) actors.
Constructions of the single woman as a consumer-actor stretch from
festively lavish luxury shopper through to the parasitic non-producer
of wealth. These images, popularized through television, magazines and
film, and critiqued by feminists, suggest the resilience of another idealized model of feminine consumer: the thrifty housewife, financially
dependent but family focused (Takeda 2008: 163).
In this chapter I introduce ethnographic data in order to explore
the connections between individual women, their households and the
broader socio-economic context in Japan. The aim here is not to provide an exhaustive survey of single-woman households in Japan but
rather to illustrate some of the issues inherent in being unmarried and
living alone, with reference to specific examples. In doing so, I draw
attention to the multiplicity of household forms, and the diverse roles
that single women perform within households, as daughters, mothers,
care-givers and household heads. I also suggest that socio-economic
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conditions and demographic shifts provide a context for individual acts
and life choices, which must then be interpreted in light of the existing
structures and available opportunities for agency.
Demographic shifts and conceptualizations of
single women
In Japan the average age of first marriage has steadily increased over
the last century. In 2010 the average age of first marriage for women
was 28 years and for men 30 years (NIPSSR 2012). In 2005 more than
7 per cent of women and nearly 16 per cent of men remained unmarried
at age 50 years (NIPSSR 2010b). One-person households have similarly
increased, both numerically and as a proportion of the total population,
and among young adults aged up to 34 years, the proportion of nevermarried people exceeds 70 per cent (NIPSSR 2008; Beppu 2010: 16). The
divorce rate in Japan, remarkably low for most of the twentieth century,
began to increase in 1974 (1.03) and peaked in 2003 at 2.3 and has since
hovered between 1.99 and 2.25 (NIPSSR 2012).
The increase in single-person households primarily reflects the hyperageing population, and the increased number of elderly people living
alone (NIPSSR 2012). It also reflects the urbanization of the population,
and the delay of marriage and subsequent formation of new households.
In this discussion I focus on the latter trend, particularly addressing
the situation of single women. In this category I refer to both women
who live alone and women who live with their children or parents,
noting the significant differences between these two groups and their
experiences of singlehood. While single women do not necessarily live
alone, and married women may not live with their partners, in this
chapter I use the category of single women as a basis from which to
consider the ways in which demographic shifts impact upon household
formation. The line of difference between women who are married,
and women who are not married, is clear: to be single implies the
attachment – if not now, then in the future – of symbolic and practical
responsibility for the household and any dependents (young or ageing)
within. The discussion here addresses the specific experiences of women
who are currently unmarried, and suggests that these experiences may
shape the socio-political present and future of Japan.
The English-language term ‘single’ requires unpacking, as it masks a
number of disparate categories: never-married, divorcees, widows and
those in de facto relationships, as well as those who identify as lesbians
and/or cannot legally marry. In Japanese these categories may be separated
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out with different terms: mikon for never-married, rikon for divorcees
and mibôjin for widows. Shinguru mazâ (single mothers) are women
who have children and are currently unmarried, but may be divorced or
cohabiting with a partner. These situations import discursive differences
to the experience of singlehood, reflecting their proximity to particular
feminine ideals. For example, being a single (never-married) mother is a
particularly marginal status, reflecting a deeply ingrained adherence to
marriage as the appropriate site for childbearing (Hertog 2009).
However, in this discussion I focus on the practical and material
implications of unmarried life for women, and in this sense the categories are not dissimilar. I suggest that factors apart from specific
marital status, namely economic stability, dependents, family support
and health, can critically shape women’s lifestyles and experiences of
singlehood. The discussion in this chapter begins by overviewing the
demographic and political economic changes that have led to shifting
understandings of women’s household roles and conceptualizations of
‘singlehood’ amongst women. In the second part of the chapter I draw
upon interview data conducted with three single women, exploring
how the marginal status of single women plays out in relation to their
own life stories and lived experience. My account serves to bring in
women’s voices and agency into discussions of the ‘problem’ of single
women in Japan.
Changing households
In modern Japan, the gendered division of labour in the housewife
(sengyô shufu) and salaryman binary constructs women as full-time
homemakers and men as full-time earners (sararîman or salaried workers,
typically white-collar workers). Although the discourse of the salaryman
began to take form in the late nineteenth century, it was in the postwar decades of economic growth that this model became hegemonic,
and the ‘discourse of the salaryman/sengyô shufu family was embedded
within both corporate ideology and the socio-political and economic
ideology of the Japanese state’ (Dasgupta 2011: 376).
Although the codified ie (family or household) system,1 stipulated
in the Meiji Code (1898), was officially abolished in 1947 under the
new Civil Code, particular aspects of the family system have remained
entrenched (Hidaka 2011: 115). Post-war social policy and employment
practices that support the single breadwinner household have reified
a ‘traditional’ gendered labour divide, whereby women provide domestic
labour and care work that supports a core male workforce, and also
relieves the government from the responsibilities and expense of this
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work (Lambert 2007: 26). The performance of unpaid domestic and care
work also represents one aspect of idealized Japanese femininity: the
nurturing and care embodied by the full-time housewife (sengyô shufu)
(Long 1995). That the ideal should dovetail with state policy is not coincidental, but reflects the concerted incorporation of particular gendered
identities into nation-building, a process that began in the Meiji period
(1868–1912) with modernization, and which has continued through
the neoliberalization of the last two decades (Liddle and Nakajima 2004:
532; Takeda 2008: 154).
State promotion of a family ideal based on optimum productive and
reproductive capacity has underpinned post-war Japanese political
economy (Takeda 2008: 162; Dasgupta 2011: 376). Policies designed to
address the issues of declining fertility and extreme ageing were introduced from the late 1980s, and feminists have convincingly argued that
the subsequent promotion of gender equality over this time was politically expedient (Osawa 2002). While (unmarried) women’s employment
was boosted in the 1980s, with the introduction of laws such as the
Equal Employment Opportunity Law (1985), since the 1990s the issue
of women’s underemployment and unemployment has been subsumed
by broader discourse on recession and crisis (Broadbent, Chapter 8).
In consideration of the diminished labour force resulting from the
ageing population, female labour participation has been flagged as
a solution to the diminishing labour pool. A recent International
Monetary Fund (IMF) working paper suggests that increasing female
labour force participation in Japan to the level of other G7 countries
(excluding Italy) could produce a 4 per cent increase in gross domestic
product (GDP) (Steinberg and Nakane 2012: 5). The paper proposes policy
intervention to increase childcare provision and encourage mothers
(back) into the paid labour force, and to close the gender gap in hiring
and promotion. It is worth noting, however, that whilst policymakers
have long recognized the potential of married women as a reservoir of
untapped labour, there has been a persistent tendency to blame women
for their decision not to work without seeking to address the broader
institutional and social structures that limit women’s labour force participation. Interestingly these discussions have taken a critical tone
that is (as will be discussed below) similar to that levelled at unmarried
women living with their parents: implying that full-time housewives
are ‘parasites’ on the national economy and society (Takeda 2008: 161).
State-sponsored promotion of women’s paid labour is predicated on
an assumption that the gendered division of domestic labour – and
specifically the weight of care work done by women – will ‘naturally’
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realign to a new balance point in which women are freed to work. For
married women whose husbands work typically long hours, this is
implausible. It is even less possible for women who have sole responsibility for dependents (particularly single mothers) and for women who
lack the capacity for financial self-sufficiency (particularly the infirm).
Furthermore, shifts in marriage patterns also suggest that an increasing
percentage of currently unmarried women will ultimately be forced to
be financially self-sufficient as they continue to live outside the malebreadwinner model household. Shifts in marital patterns are not unique
to Japan: that individuals are marrying later and less is a phenomenon
common to a number of countries, reflective of transnational labour
flows, education trends and market forces, as well as shifting cultural
norms (Jones 2007). While resisting the temptation to explain the phenomena as purely cultural, it is important to note the specific cultural
implications of macro-level ebbs and flows.
In Japan, the last two decades of recession have rendered more men
unemployed or underemployed and therefore less able to take up the
idealized sole-breadwinning model of masculinity (Hidaka 2011: 126).
Recession has also impeded women’s capacity for financial independence,
leading some to an increased investment in singlehood, in education
or non-marital relationships. Nonetheless, the resilience of the ideal of
marriage can be partially traced to the modern preservation of the ie
system and the post-war promotion of the nuclear family as the basic
social unit. This construction is supported by the social, economic
and political implications of the twin trends, declining fertility and an
ageing population, namely that reproduction and domestic care-work
are no longer universal features of the feminine life course. In this way,
living alone disqualifies women from achieving the idealized household
that enables the social reproduction of the economy: the salaryman/
housewife dyad.
While singlehood is more likely to feature, and for longer periods, in a
Japanese woman’s life, marriage remains a commonly accepted path to
financial stability, built on the assumption of a stable, single (or at most
1.5) breadwinner model of the household. Socio-cultural implications of
singlehood aside, the resilience of marriage as the safest economic path
is unsurprising when women are economically disadvantaged by social
security and corporate policies that privilege the male-breadwinner
household (Hirayama and Isuzuhara 2008: 641). Unmarried women are
much less likely to own their dwelling than their married counterparts,
and more likely to live in private rental dwellings or with their parents
at all ages (Hirayama and Isuzuhara 2008: 649). In terms of the political
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economy of the nation, single women and their households remain
marginal. Nonetheless, demographic changes have challenged the
reproductive family as the basic unit of society, and increased attention
to the diversity and needs of single-person households and unmarried
women and men. Popular media representations of singles, such as TBS
television dramas Around Forty (2008) and Ohitorisama (‘The Singleton’)
(2009), focus on the glossy consumeristic life of female urban professionals without care responsibilities (Freedman and Weitgennert 2011;
Dales forthcoming). This depiction of single women as keen consumers
echoes earlier discourse. Sociologist Yamada Masahiro coined the term
‘parasite singles’ for unmarried adults who remained living with their
parents. In his 1999 book The Era of Parasite Singles, Yamada suggested
that a lack of independence and commitment to work, coupled with
unsustainable habits of luxury consumption, spelt impending doom
for the Japanese economy. While Yamada did not explicitly define the
label as feminine, his critique of previously unchallenged behaviour
(i.e. women living with parents until marriage) highlights the ‘problem’
of women’s transgression, laying the blame for socio-economic decline
at their feet (Dales 2005).
The thread of luxury spending runs through both earlier and more
recent conceptualizations of single women. A significant point of contrast
is that recent depictions emphasize women’s financial independence,
as professionals with independent income to indulge their sophisticated consumer tastes. This construction of single women as ‘festive’
(a construction explored in more depth below) marks them as beneficiaries of a healthy capitalist economy: the consumption of goods and
services involved in the commodification of beauty, leisure and even
matchmaking, suggests that the ‘festive’ single is a willing participant in
the neoliberal project of keeping the economy afloat through spending.
Although these representations offer a valuable alternative trope for
considering singlehood, they are inevitably limited by their focus on
a particular demographic stratum. For women with dependents and
for women who lack earning capacity (due to mental health or other
structural obstacles), the unmarried life is more fraught than festive,
at least from an economic perspective.
In the following section I introduce three case studies from recent
research, to illustrate some of the disparities and commonalities of
unmarried women’s lives. In doing so, I aim to highlight the ways that
family, household and work impact on unmarried women, and to address
the residual significance of marriage as a state and socially inscribed ideal
that affects the way that single life is lived.
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Unconventional women in Japan
The women introduced below were interviewed as part of an ongoing
research project begun in 2009. In this project Beverley Yamamoto
and I have to date interviewed 34 ‘unconventional’ women, on topics
including singlehood, marriage, family, work, friendships and romantic
relationships. We use the term ‘unconventional’ (tenkeiteki janai) to signify a life course that diverges from the stereotypical, and this sample
includes never-married and divorced women, single mothers, women
who cohabit and women who have married late (first marriage after
35 years). The women range in age from 30 to 49 years, with nearly half
of the sample aged 30–35 years. At the time of interview, 21 women
were never-married, eight were divorced, three were married and two
were cohabiting. None of the women identified as lesbian or queer. Five
of the women interviewed have children, and another was pregnant at
the time of interview.
This small sample is non-representative, developed through contacts
and the snowballing technique, whereby women we have interviewed
then introduce other prospective interviewees. One notable feature of
the sample is that it is more educated than average: 14 interviewees have
postgraduate qualifications. While extended education represents one
factor in delayed marriage and declining fertility in Japan, it is tightly
intertwined with factors such as class, family support, residence (urban
or rural) and financial capacity. In this research, the interviewees’ experiences of singlehood and perceptions of marriage appear to be less
specifically influenced by their education levels than by these other
related factors.
Family support represents one strut in the scaffolding. The relative
absence of direct familial pressure to marry experienced by women in
this study might be reflective of a more accepting Japanese society, and
of changing social mores. It is not necessarily the case that unmarried
women are not contributing – both financially and emotionally – to their
households (Dales 2005). Women who live with their parents may be
more likely to be involved in their old-age care, suggesting reciprocal
benefits to shared living (Nakano 2011: 142).
The relative neutrality of this situation might also be seen as enabled
by the relative wealth of the baby-boomer generation, which has largely
enjoyed the seniority-based wage system that characterized post-war
Japanese employment (Ogawa 2009). Families with a senior worker
may be able to subsidize an adult child co-residing, particularly when
the child contributes to the household finances. However, in light of
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the imminent retirement of baby-boomers, the stress upon the pension
system and medical systems, and the effects of nearly two decades of
recession, it is likely that the number of families with the economic
capacity to maintain this pattern will decrease.
Marriage may be perceived as shielding women from the need to be
independent and may well enable agency among women who otherwise lack the earning capacity to live alone, to secure a legitimate social
status and a degree of economic stability. In reality, the increasing
divorce rate and economic recession mean that marriage does not necessarily secure anything, at least not permanently, for women. Instead, as
leading feminist scholar and social critic Ueno Chizuko advises,
women need to prepare themselves, to obtain the know-how not just
to ‘do family’, but also to live alone. If everyone – at some point –
ends up alone, the difference is just whether one starts preparing for
it earlier or later. (Ueno 2008: 2)
For women who are not married, identity and security must be sourced
elsewhere. For some of the women in this research, single life is perceived as period of relative freedom, enabled by economic autonomy
and consumption.
Unmarried women, work and consumption
Work features as a significant shaper of identity, both in and of itself
and for its financial implications. In the first instance, work functions
socio-culturally as a marker of maturity, productivity and an individual’s
commitment to society (Shimazu et al. 2011: 401). For unmarried women,
and certainly for many women in our research, work can also function
as an alternative source of socially sanctioned fulfilment.
Work also ideally provides economic stability, allowing for greater
range of choice in lifestyle decisions, including housing arrangements.
As Stevens (2010: 202) notes, ‘(c)onsumption is an individual yet collective
personal act that engages both financial exchange and abstract ideologies
of pleasure, power and status’. It is not surprising, then, that journalist and
author Iwashita Kumiko (2001), in her treatise on life as ‘an individual’
(or ‘singleton’), advocates consumption as a means of increasing the social
visibility of single women (2001). She suggests that even women who live
alone should consider an occasional stay in a luxury downtown hotel.2
Like the ‘new woman’ of early twentieth-century Japan, for the contemporary single woman (or ohitorisama, in Iwashita’s discussion) consumerism
is a means of self-expression and a way of navigating social changes that
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destabilize feminine norms (Sato 2003: 16–17). Consumption is both
the means and the goal: by consuming, women assert their economic
capacity, and by consuming alone they challenge notions of appropriate
conformity that discourage women’s sole social engagement as ‘lonely’
(sabishî). Iwashita’s book explicitly references Tokyo establishments for
eating and drinking, evoking a metropolitan, able-bodied subject with
considerable disposable income and the time (and social capital) to cultivate sophistication (Dales, forthcoming).
Furthermore, Japanese structural reform since the 1990s has encouraged women to be more engaged in the economy, as consumers and
workers, supported by notions of individual (financial) autonomy and
self-determination that are echoed in media depictions of singlehood
mentioned above (Takeda 2011: 47).
If urban, luxury consumption crafts a positive social identity for
unmarried women, the security engendered by a stable income also
shapes experiences of singlehood. The autonomy that some women
identify in singlehood contrasts with perceptions of marriage as limiting,
weighted by familial obligation and sacrifice. For professional women
who derive satisfaction from their work, marriage is counterbalanced
by its perceived cost to autonomy, and by the additional burden of care
(domestic and childrearing work) that typically falls to wives.
Tanioka-san (36 years) is a professionally employed, never-married
woman who lives alone in a large city. She also identifies freedom as a
benefit of living alone:
You can do as you please. The best thing is that there is no one interfering in things. You can come home whenever you like. No one gets
angry if the dirty clothes build up … What is difficult? I don’t find
it particularly difficult, even when I’m sick. Sometimes I feel lonely.
When I’m alone on my days off.
(Tanioka, 36 years, never-married, 26 October 2010)
At the time of interview, Tanioka was between jobs, living on unemployment benefits. She had resigned from her job because it had been
unsatisfying to her:
I expected a lot from work, and even though I expected a sense of
purpose, there was no sense of purpose, so I think psychologically it
made for imbalance … If you have the space to think [about things],
even if you are busy, you make time to see people and do things.
I think you have the energy to have fun, but if you don’t have any
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sense of satisfaction from your main occupation then that energy
doesn’t come. I thought, am I going through this just so I can pay my
rent, and it was stupid so I thought I may as well quit.
In her previous full-time (seishain) positions, Tanioka had been
employed for 10 years, and was therefore entitled to three months of
state support. She left her workplace to find work in another company.
Tanioka has lived alone since she was 31 years old. Prior to that she
lived with her parents, working in another field while studying to pass
a professional entrance exam:
I went to a specialist school while working. It was exhausting. But
I was living at home so I didn’t have to worry about cooking. It took
me four years, from when I started to when I passed the test.
Tanioka’s commitment to work and the satisfaction it brings her means
that she expects to continue working after marriage:
I want to work, so it would be hard to have a husband who says he
definitely wants me at home. Though it would be fine if I were to
work and contribute to the household finances. There are some working women who keep their earnings themselves, and their husbands
pay for all the costs of living, but I’d have no problem putting the
money that I earn towards the household running costs. I definitely
want a man to work. That’s a non-negotiable point.
While Tanioka had no definite plans for marriage at the time of the
interview, she was interested in the possibility. For her, the attraction of
marriage was security, and the possibility of building a household with
children. She identified a perceived lack of freedom as the greatest demerit:
Even if you can use your money as you please, you have to factor
it into the household budget. You lose your freedom with time and
money. And the compensation for that is that you get to be with the
person you love.
Where consumption is intrinsic to identity as well as livelihood, and
where other familial financial support is lacking, the potential for individual women to attain stability is dependent on their opportunities for
paid work – the conditions and wages of the work, as well as their own
physical capacity to fulfil its demands.
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Single women and their households in Japan 121
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Dependent unmarried women and unmarried women
with dependents
Suzuki-san is a 38-year-old never-married woman who lives with her
ageing parents in a suburb about one-and-a-half hours from a major
city. She graduated from university but has only worked for 18 months
(and never full-time) since her graduation, a result of ongoing mental
health difficulties. Suzuki’s mother is a housewife and her father is
a retired salaryman, now rapidly dementing and requiring care. The
household subsists on his pension and Suzuki worries how she will
survive, both financially and practically, when her parents die. She does
not go shopping, lacking the financial and psychological space for this
activity, and she is not interested in the kinds of entertainments that
she perceives to be typical feminine hobbies:
On TV you see only young women, pretty and fashionable and they
go shopping in fashionable places, eating gourmet foods. And that
sort of thing is totally foreign [to me], a different world. (Suzuki,
38 years, never-married, 15 January 2010)
Suzuki’s lack of work history and earning potential, in addition to her
mental illness, exclude her from the consumer freedom that marks
Tanioka’s experience. Although she lived alone for a period in her twenties,
Suzuki found the experience difficult and she became homesick. She
moved out once more for a six-month period in her early thirties, renting
an apartment in the countryside not far from a major city, and at that
time she enjoyed the experience. However, just as she felt adjusted to her
lifestyle, Suzuki was forced to return to her parents’ house because her
savings were depleted and there were no available jobs in the countryside.
Although she has never wanted to marry, Suzuki keenly perceives the
value of family, particularly children:
In the end, if you have kids they will be on your side. They’ll look after
you as you get old and start to become unable to do things yourself,
and they will follow you – because this is how it is in my household.
Suzuki regards media depictions of typical young women’s lives as alien,
but she sees the need for an alternative discourse of singlehood, a path
open to women who do not marry.
Around me there are no ohitorisama. I might not end up having one of
those families, getting married and having children. (emphasis added)
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122 The Global Political Economy of the Household in Asia
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The correlation between parental wealth and the likelihood of children
leaving home is unclear, and the effect of higher personal income on
the individual’s decision to leave has not been determined (Suzuki
2010: 41). In contrast with Tanioka, Suzuki does not find her lifestyle
freeing, nor does she suggest that living alone would resolve the difficulties she faces. Suzuki is economically vulnerable both because of her
mental health and because of her lack of work prospects, leading to
her dependence on the traditional structure of support for unmarried
women: the (birth) family.
In contrast with Suzuki, Irie-san is a 32-year-old single mother with a
four-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. At the time of interview
she had been divorced for two years. She had been working since her
youngest child was one year old, initially in door-to-door sales/delivery
and then becoming a trainer for new employees.3
Irie works 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Saturday, and her children are
in local childcare, which she can use for free as a single mother.4 She
receives public assistance (seikatsu hogo) and the dependent children’s
allowance (jidō fuyō teate), with the latter a major source of assistance
for unmarried mothers since its introduction in 1962 (Ezawa 2006: 62).
However, the sum of this assistance is Y46,000 (AU$555), which Irie
supplements with her wages, and her alimony and child support.
Of her employer, a large national food and beverage company, Irie says:
They only employ people with kids. That’s how low the wages
are, most people can’t get by … With [this employer], they have a
childcare centre. That’s why people work there. Though it costs, to
have them in the childcare centre – 8,000yen/month [AU$97]. Just
for that you work for a low wage. Everyone has kids, so it’s easy
to take time off work, if one of the kids gets a fever or something.
They understand, because they know what it’s like. (Irie, 32 years,
divorced, 5 September 2010)
Although Irie has a Master’s degree from a top national university, she
keeps this hidden because of the stigma she feels would attach in her
workplace, among lower-educated colleagues:
Just because I’m highly educated doesn’t mean I can’t do this job.
At the moment, to raise my kids, it’s that kind of job, I’m doing a job
where if the kids get a fever I can take time off.
For the moment I do what I can, because I have children [to think
about] in my life. I’m satisfied, at this point.
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Here Irie suggests that her approach to her work is based on a fundamental
commitment to providing for her children. She negotiates paid and
unpaid work in her daily routine, and has little financial leeway for
extras, nor time off to relax. Like Suzuki, but for different reasons, Irie’s
lifestyle diverges greatly from the model constructed by Iwashita and
enjoyed by Tanioka.
Irie’s experience of marriage highlights the concerns that Tanioka
articulates about sacrifice and burden of care. When asked if she would
consider remarriage, Irie was clear:
Definitely not. I don’t want to look after anyone but my kids. If it
was someone who could look after (him)self then that would be ok,
but someone who says ‘I’m going to work so you do the housework’?
No way.
To some extent, the lifestyles of urban, educated, single women like
Tanioka, without care responsibilities, match the stereotypical depiction of singlehood that is promoted – and critiqued – in media and
popular social commentary (Yamada 1999; Iwashita 2001). Women in
our research who did not have care responsibilities, and did have an
established career (or were building one), enjoyed a ‘festive’ single life,
with benefits such as freedom with time and finances, and the freedom
to focus on work.
By contrast, we see that the urban, educated woman with care responsibilities, such as Irie, experiences a radically different single life. Neither
festive nor parasitic, singlehood for Irie means pragmatic decisionmaking based around her childcare duties and financial responsibilities.
Her view of marriage is unsurprisingly shaped by her own unhappy
experience, but reveals a similar core concern as that identified by the
never-married women: that marriage involves sacrifice and care work
that goes unrewarded.
At the other end of the spectrum to Tanioka, Suzuki presents an
example of the extreme vulnerability of some unmarried women. Like
Irie she is dependent on external financial support, but unlike Irie she
lacks the capacity to engage in paid work which might ameliorate her
situation. For Suzuki, her birth family and the state offer protection that
marriage might provide for others, but the protection is both bounded
and tenuous. Suzuki’s plight reflects the worst outcomes of a nonwelfare state, where families – and the sole breadwinner – bear ultimate
responsibility for the care of the elderly and infirm. As the baby-boomer
population ages and families lose their primary breadwinner, it is not
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difficult to imagine an increase in the number of mentally ill Japanese
who are left to fend for themselves.
Conclusion
As LeBaron suggests, political economists must attend to the processes
of everyday life, highlighting the agency of individual actors and the
connections between their acts and the global economy (2010: 891).
The increased prevalence of single living – both single-dwelling and the
tendency to remain unmarried longer – has drawn attention to the centrality of marriage and the reproductive family in the political economy
of Japan. Constructed as symptomatic of social decay and conflated
with economic decline, single-person households challenge, but do not
entirely displace, the ideal of the nuclear family household. However,
demographic shifts and economic destabilization provide a context for
individual acts and life choices, which must then be interpreted in light
of the existing structures and available opportunities for agency.
Shifts in marriage trends are at one level reflective of micro-level
changes in gendered norms and ideals of life course. Thus women who
have invested in higher education and career may be less likely to accept
a marriage in which these are compromised. The delay in marrying may
be understood as partly reflective of new ideals and opportunities for
women, bringing a shift in the perception of marriage as less worthwhile
in opportunity cost. Additionally, expectations of economic stability
through marriage are undermined by the effects of two decades of recession. The choices in work, relationships and housing that unmarried
women make both shape, and are shaped by, broader shifts.
Women with stable income and satisfying careers may enjoy a buffer
from the worst aspects of unmarried life, namely, economic uncertainty.
For the women in our research this does not necessarily displace the
desire to marry, but it might be understood as a factor that mitigates the
pressure to marry. The achievement of financial independence may also
make it harder to sacrifice work in favour of unpaid domestic labour.
Thus it is unsurprising that many (though not all) of the professional
women in our study who intended or hoped to marry, sought a partner
who would accommodate their work.
However, the emphasis on individual accountability and financial
independence through work is punitive to women who are dependent
or who have dependents (Takeda 2008: 167). While Irie balances on
her own income, state support and child-support from her ex-husband,
for women like Suzuki, who cannot participate as ideal (able-bodied,
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geographically mobile and highly flexible) workers, the opportunities
for stability are limited. The possibilities for Suzuki, in a household with
one limited income, are bleak.
Neither the ‘festive’ nor the ‘parasite’ construction fully captures the
experience of singlehood in Japan. Depictions of single women living at
home as ‘parasites’ obscures the unpaid emotional and physical labour
within households where women are caring (partially or fully) for elderly
parents. Single women who do not live with parents are labelled ‘festive’,
a label that excludes unmarried or divorced women with children, dependent upon the state and/or family support but unable to participate in
luxury consumption. Both categories overlook how many single woman
cannot work and lack financial resources. Nonetheless, these constructions
of singlehood matter in the sense that they remain bound to normative
assumptions of the feminine life course, and of women’s place within
the heterosexual, reproductive, male-breadwinner Japanese family.
Furthermore, the potential for singlehood and the single-person
household to be agentive, liberating and fulfilling is expanded by recognition of singles as a growing population, challenging the universality
of the nuclear, reproductive family. Further, there is a need for more
than symbolic recognition, in light of the ways that this demographic
shifts existing assumptions about family. As Nakano observes:
The current model of the family in Japan does not provide comfort
and support for many of society’s members nor does it inspire confidence that the elderly and the sick will receive care. (2011: 147–8)
While the decision to embrace singlehood can sometimes indicate resistance to marriage or hegemonic ideals, on another level it can be seen
as relating to bigger trends and overarching structures. For the women
introduced in this chapter, being unmarried does not mean unfettered
freedom, nor do single women themselves present single life as an ideal
alternative. It is clear that the socio-economic structural barriers to
unmarried women’s agency remain robust. In this context, decisions of
lifestyle, including how and where to live, how to spend time and money,
mark the borders of agency: what is possible, and what is desirable.
Notes
1. The ie is most simply defined as the Japanese patrilineal family or household.
Comprised of living and dead members (who are venerated), the ie system
refers to the idealized basic social unit through to the postwar period. The
head of the ie is usually the oldest living male, and households typically
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comprised three generations. However, more than just a family, the ie is perhaps better understood as ‘a corporate group with a wide variety of functions
covering the domestic, economic, political and religious lives of its members’
(Shimizu 1987: 85).
2. Iwashita recommends the exclusive Four Seasons Chinzansou in Tokyo, and
indeed the hotel today offers several women-targeted packages, including the
‘Reward yourself for working hard’ Lady’s Sanctuary Stay (28,785 yen/night).
3. As a salesperson, Irie’s wage was calculated as 20 per cent of her sales per
month. Thus if she sold 350,000 yen (approx. AU$4,264), she would received
70,000 yen ($AU853).
4. Irie uses the local childcare centre rather than the work centre because it is
open longer, allowing her to work past 3.30 p.m. when the work centre closes.
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