Abstract
Changes in family care in Japan have been gradually evolving. The Confucian ideal of filial piety (oyakoukou), the basis for the ideal traditional family, was viewed skeptically in the early 1900s, as Nagai Kafu wrote, and no doubt long before then. Although as Himeoka (2008) points out, a variety of Japanese household patterns have existed prewar and postwar, the traditional family where the eldest son and his wife live together with his parents from their marriage, while the other children leave and start new households, still has a strong hold on the practice and imagination of Japanese, both old and young. Even as the role of the daughter-in-law as the primary caregiver has decreased, the image of the burden of caregiving is still viewed as a great burden placed on the daughter-in-law. As Japan became a pioneer in the world of longevity with 25 percent of the population over age 65 in 2013 (Statistics Bureau, 2014) and life expectancies of 85.93 for women and 79.27 for men (Japan Times 2012), questions of how to provide care for the elderly become more challenging and intense.
“The day when a child could be relied upon to console a parent in his old age is past in any case. Today a parent is respected only if he has money”
(Nagai, K. 1972).
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Campbell, R. (2014). Changes in Family and Informal Care in Japan. In: Campbell, J.C., Edvardsen, U., Midford, P., Saito, Y. (eds) Eldercare Policies in Japan and Scandinavia. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137402639_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137402639_6
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