Recently I have finished reading the following book. The book summary and my comment are as follows:
Book
title: Suzanne Hall Vogel with Steven Vogel. The Japanese Family in Transition: From the
Professional Housewife Ideal to the Dilemmas of Choice. Lanham: Rowman
& Littlefield Publishers. Inc. 2013.
Book
summary:
The goal of the book is to argue that the role of the
professional wife had both constrained and empowered Japanese women. The book
also suggests that the professional housewife ideal continued to cast a shadow
over Japanese society today although its influence was fading (p.2).
The book presents the life stories of three ordinary
professional wives for a period of over 50 years. They respectively were wives
of a doctor (Tanaka-san), an accountant (Itou-san), and a business owner
(Suzuki-san). The purpose was to gain an insight into the strength and
vulnerability of postwar profession housewives, and to see how their roles shifted
as they grew older and as the Japanese society changed (p.19).
The author first met these three housewives in 1958 that
were living in a middle-class suburb in Tokyo. They were wives of professionals
or “salarymen” and were called the sengyou
shufu, i.e. full time “profession” housewives (p.4). As the research
progressed, Vogel found that in many ways these Japanese wives were actually
much more independent than she had thought (p.7). They had a separate role in the
family which their husbands had little influence (p.7).
As a clinical caseworker/psychotherapist by
profession, Vogel was able to discover how the cultural context affected the
manifestation of psychological stress, for example the troubled youth in Japan,
including the children of these housewives, tended to “act in” by withdrawing
into their homes while the American youth like to “act out” by engaging in
mischief of violence in streets.
The first professional housewife introduced was Mrs.
Tanaka (Hanae). Her husband was a family doctor. Hanae was born in 1914. She
was the second of 8 children who had attended a girls’ high school (p.24). At 44
she had five children aged 12 to 19 (p.23). Hanae’s children represented the majority
of children who were born during or soon after the war. They had enjoyed
improved technology. They had fewer siblings compared to their parents’
families. The female children put less emphasis on trying to become a
professional wife (p.58). Vogel regarded Hanae as a natural fit for the
professional housewife role, excelled and found fulfilment in this role (p.60).
The second housewife was Mrs. Yaeko Itou. Vogel found
that she was less constrained by either the prescribed feminine manners or the
mandates of the professional wife role (p.61). In Yaeko’s family the mukoyoushi pattern appeared in her
mother’s line. Mrs. Yaeko’s mother was adopted into the Itou family (p.62). Yaeko
went to Tokyo and entered a high school by the age of 13. In Tokyo she
continued to follow her own interest and ambitions (p.66). When her parent tried
to find her a suitable husband, she turned it down because he was not college
educated (p.69). Later she married Tokuzou
in 1949. She gave birth to a boy (Ken), a girl (Mari) and then another girl
(Katsuko). Yaeko was surprised when
Vogel told her that all her children were very much like her: they were smart,
able, independent, realistic, sociable, strong and determined in pursing their
own interest and own path in life (110). When Vogel reflected on Yaeko, she always
pondered what price Yaeko had paid for her rebelliousness against the narrowly
defined housewife/mother role of her day. She had been confronted with
criticism, conflict, and had broken relationship with her children.
The third housewife was Mrs. Suzuki (Mieko). Married
to a successful businessman, at the age of 38 in 1958 she had five children
(p.114). While recognized the explicit authority held by men, she believed in
equality in her heart and was aware of a wife’s covert power which was based on
a strong alliance with her children (p.115). Often while she said ‘yes’ to his
husband, she thought of ‘no’ in her heart (p.117). Vogel found the Suzuki children
to be free and easy, fun-loving, open-minded, and warm-hearted (p.121). In
conclusion, Vogel knew that when Mieko was raising her children she could
develop a balance of power with her husband: she controlled the household. Yet
during her husband’s retirement year, she was less able to control the home
life, merely addressing her husband’s wishes. Feeling less in control, she
clung harder to control her physical body instead. When she was on longer able
to control the situation, her silent “no” took over.
In the final chapter Vogel tries to analysis social
changes in Japan in two periods. From1960s to 90s, professional wives’ ideal
for the Japan’s new middle class women was giving way to greater diversity and
complexity. Arranged marriage dwindled, more women got jobs, some refused to
marry men whose mother lived with them, the average age of marriage for women
increased, and women achieved equality with men in education (pps.150-1). While the
profession housewives ideal eroded, it was difficult for women to combine
marriage with career. Although they had freedom of choice, they often filled
with conflicted feelings (p.161). In the second period from the 90s to present, the
established structures became less dependable; there was more freedom, more
choices and fewer rules. A gap arose between men and women. While women pushed
for changes, men were content with the status quo. When the status quo began to
crumble, men were more confused about how to redirect their goals (p.169). Vogel
concluded that for the women, it might be less a matter of finding alternative
than a matter of adjusting to essential values of the professional housewife to
a new era and new circumstance (p.177).
Comments:
The book is successful in showing how respectively 3
wives of the salarymen in Japan had changed over a period of some 50 years. Yet
the book is difficult to read. The writer often uses a pronoun to start a
sentence thus causing confusion as to what that pronoun was meant to represent,
for example on page 46 second paragraph, and on page 52 last paragraph. The
second confusion was caused by the repeating of ideas, for example the first
paragraph on page 130. Also the usage of English idiom was difficult to understand,
for example “to wait on him hand and foot” on page 134. Furthermore, sometimes topics changed too much
in one single paragraph, for example in the last few sentences on page 131.
Apart from the above I think this is a good book.
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