The Continuing Case of Japan

Abstract

In that Japan was closed to the outside world until the middle of the 19th century, it began the process of industrialisation considerably later than many Western countries. Now, however, the country has already ‘caught up’ in terms of economic achievement and political participation in international relations. For many years commentators in Japan and elsewhere have expected the Japanese family increasingly to approach that of other industrialised societies. They have looked for the breakdown of the traditional system, and accordingly they have faithfully recorded the rise in the number of nuclear families and a drop in the number of individuals per household (Fuse, 1984, pp. 5–6). Indeed, in certain superficial respects such as these, Japanese families may be said to resemble more closely those of other industrialised countries. Nonetheless, Japanese institutions have a habit of persisting just below the Western veneer which has sometimes been quite skilfully created, and it can be argued that the family is no exception in this respect.