Culture

The Japanese Family System

Like many Asian family systems, the Japanese family system was an extended family which included distant relatives as well as the dead. In the earliest times, and certainly with the influence of China, ancestor worship was a strong and vibrant belief which made deceased real, active members of the family. Noble families, and families of the warrior class, placed great value and importance on their ancestors. One of the problems of newly arisen aristocratic families was to 'find' sufficiently impressive ancestors who would justify contemporary importance.

Ancestors continue to have significance today, a reflection of the importance of the family system itself. Buddhist belief holds that ancestors are able to exert influence over affairs in this world. The spirits of ancestors return to this world at Obon, a summertime festival of the dead. The spirits are fed and treated well to ensure their aid in the future and so that they do not linger after the three-day period and cause damage to the living. Obon is one of the two yearly festivals which bring distant relatives together, the other being New Year.

An extended family consisted at least of grandparents, parents and children in addition to ancestors. A main or stem family might have affiliated to it branch families. Each branch family at some time might itself, while maintaining its subordinant position to the main family, become the stem family to several branches. Thus, a well-established, well-organized, and rich family could become extremely large.

In addition to real familial relationships, families often adopted as "branch families" people who were not related by blood. This kind of branch family was often in an economically subordinate position: perhaps a family of farm workers who depended on the stem "family" for land and tools. The fictive familiar relationship added extra depth and strength to the economic relationship. Theoretically, an entire village might be one large extended family in this manner.

In fact, very few families were organized along the lines of the extended family. Simply put, few were rich enough to sustain or require such a complex system. For the majority of Japanese, even the three-generation family (grandparents, parents, and children) was more of a dream than a reality. Life expectancy was so short until recently that few lived long enough to see grandchildren; certainly few families experienced the pleasures of more than one grandparent until well after World War II when life expectancy reached eighty years.

Another difficulty in achieving the ideal extended family was conflict between the eldest son inheriting the family headship and the need to have an able person as head of the family. Who filled the position was crucial because the family head held absolute authority over the family's property and its members; a series of wrong decisions could ruin everyone. Many a family chose to give the family headship to a younger but more able son; this threw into disarray the strict hierarchy of the ideal. Furthermore, many younger sons strove to prove their ability; in the case of samurai families in tumultuous times, this might mean that a younger son killed his less able elder brother in order to become family head.

Yet another difficulty was that some families did not produce a son or an able son. In such cases, it was common for a son to be adopted. In some cases, a daughter might be adopted and then her eventual husband would be adopted as son and heir. A full chart of almost any family would reveal adoptions which have maintained the family name, but not necessarily the blood line.

Family is particularly important in many trades or craft industries where skills are passed down from generation to generation. The familial relationship helps maintain the continuity of a business entity.

In the modern period many factors have worked against continuity of this family system, although attitudes toward marriage still follow an essentially traditional pattern. As in most modern economies, the average number of children in each family has steadily decreased and now stands at less than two. Family continuity becomes more difficult, raising the possibility of greater reliance on adoption.

The high cost of housing and small size of dwellings makes it virtually impossible to house more than the nuclear family under one roof. Modern values which emphasize independence and self-interest make children less willing to have grandparents live with them while housing aimed at retired people encourages the older generation to maintain separate homes. Generational conflict has steadily risen and driven wedges into the three-generation family while salaries give each nuclear family a life separate from relatives both close and distant. The distance between generations has risen to such a degree that at least one company does a large business renting actors who play children or grandchildren to lonely elderly people who nostalgically pine for the large, close-knit, extended family of yesteryear.

Housing

I don't know if you'd noticed through anime and manga, but most Japanese people tend to live in apartment complexes. Why? Why not live in houses? Land is at a premium in Japan. It's a chain of islands after all so there's limited space. Only wealthy people live in houses.

Now, I lived in a house in Japan when I was there. It was a small, two room house with a bathroom/laundry room and a kitchen/dining area. That house belonged to the school my husband was working for. I know of exactly one other foreigner living in a house and it, too, was provided for her by the school she was working for. Unlike us, she had to pay rent on it (but that's another story).

So, back to the houses. I only ever went in to three in the entire time I was there (not including mine or my friends' place). One was owned by an elderly couple, one was a gift to a young couple and their kids from the father's parents (who had a house built on the same lot), and another house owned outright by the family that lived there as they were quite well off. Why was I there? Teaching private English classes.

So you're more likely to see a person living in an apartment than a house. Don't ask me what the rent is like. I honstly couldn't tell you and it would vary from place to place like it does everywhere else, even from city to city. In smaller towns and villages, you'll find more people living in houses but that's because the land is cheaper (reletively speaking) and it's less densely populated.

Furniture

The inside of the Japanese home, regardless of whether it's an apartment or a house, isn't really like ours. For example, it's extreemely rare to see a couch or love seat. Most commonly seen are cushions on the floor or high backed chairs that sit low on the ground like this one That chair is right on the ground. Please note, that's me and my baby girl Aislyn from when she was only a couple months old.

Another common furniture item is the kotatsu. It's a low table that has a heating coil under the top. In the winter, it gets plugged into the wall and the top is removed to put a blanket over the bars that seperate the heating coil from the table top. The top is then put back on, resting on top of the blanket. You put your legs under the blanket to stay warm. Very few buildings in Japan have centralized air conditioning or heating, so these tables are a necessity as are space heaters, which come in electric and kerosene versions (we had one of each), and electric blankets (we had two, one that was under our blankets on our bed and another in our baby's crib).

Bedding is almost always a traditional futon on the floor. They're thin but are insanely comfortable to sleep on, moreso than the Western 'futon' you see for sale. And they tend to last longer, especially if you fold them up and put them away on a regular basis when they aren't in use. The summers in Japan get very, very humid and mold is a big problem, so to keep your futon from getting mouldy (I had that happen to me once, it was gross), you need to put them away and keep the floors meticulously clean. It also helps to air your futon out by hanging it up out doors once in a while (I did this freequently).

Air conditioners are also commonly seen. They're mostly rectangular in shape and located in the main living area. Many models come wtih a heating function as well as a cooling (for the winter), but ours didn't have one.

While most people have a washing machine or access to one, dryers are another matter. We had one in our house, but most people hang their laundry up to dry. I used a combination of both methods. Using the dryer for things that I would rather the students not see and hanging things like pants and shirts out to dry when it was nice out.

Ovens aren't normally seen in Japanese houses unless you happen to have a Western style range. Stoves are usually two burner things that are gas powered. The sink is usually pretty big wtih a seperate heater to make hot water. Out of the tap itself, you really only get cold water.

Appliances are pretty similar to what we have in Western society.

Bowing

In Japanese society, bowing is an extremely commonplace activity. The bowing process has its own set or rules and procedures and these can get somewhat complex. Bowing is used to express politeness, respect and humility, all at the same time. It can range from bowing in a somewhat automatic manner to a customer in a store or it can range up to the extreme form of getting down on the floor, the person's forehead against the ground in an all-out bowing action.

From the book 'The Japanese Self in Cultural Logic', 2004:

"In bowing, angles of the upper body to the floor signify the levels of politeness, ranging from deepest obeisance to a light nod, each level of which has a name. One extraordinary gesture of awe is called ‘dogeza', in which one kneels with the entire upper body lying flat on the ground-the Japanese version of prostration."

The general principle is that the depth and length of the bow depends on the status difference (real or perceived) between the two people. In other words, if the person you are bowing to is of a higher status then you are, your bow will be deeper and longer held than theirs. The methods are different for men and women, and is easily seen whenever one watches any Japanese doramas, for example. I've even watched TV shows featuring, for example, Morning Musume on a talk show and the girls all bow when they are introduced. It's basically a form of politeness and respect that's takes little time, costs nothing and can help social things to flow more smoothly. Nothing bad about that at all, really.

When living in Japan, you get used to bowing a lot. It in fact becomes very automatic to do this little bobbing bow that isn't quite a full bow.

Funerary Customs

A Japanese funeral includes a wake, the cremation of the deceased, a burial in a family grave, and a periodic memorial service. Most of these are then buried in a family grave. The average cost for a Japanese funeral is USD 40,000, the most expensive in the world. One main reason for the high cost is the scarcity of funeral plots (it is almost impossible to buy a grave in Tokyo). Another reason is the price gouging common at Japanese funeral homes, combined with the hesitation of the relatives of the deceased to negotiate and to compare prices.

A typical Japanese grave is usually a family grave (haka) consisting of a stone monument, with a place for flowers, incense, and water in front of the monument and a chamber or crypt underneath for the ashes.

The date of the erection of the grave and the name of the person who purchased it may be engraved on the side of the monument. The names of the deceased are often but not always engraved on the front of the monument. When a married person dies before his or her spouse, the name of the spouse may also be engraved on the stone, with the letters painted red. After the death and the burial of the spouse the red ink is removed from the stone. This is usually done for financial reasons, as it is cheaper to engrave two names at the same time than to engrave the second name when the second spouse dies. It can also be seen as a sign that they are waiting to follow their spouse into the grave. However, this practice is less frequent nowadays. The names of the deceased may also be engraved on the left side, or on a separate stone in front of the grave. Often, the name is also written on a sotoba, a separate wooden board on a stand behind or next to the grave. These sotoba may be erected shortly after death, and new ones may be added at certain memorial services.

Some graves may also have a box for business cards, where friends and relatives visiting the grave can drop their business card, informing the caretakers of the grave of the respects the visitors have paid to the deceased.

The high prices of funeral plots have led to a new service of Grave Apartments (Ohaka no manshon), where a locker sized grave can be purchased for USD 4,000. Some of these may even include a touch screen showing a picture of the deceased, messages, a family tree, and other information. Due to the cost of land, a graveyard in Tokyo has recently been opened by a temple in floors 3 to 8 of a nine story building, where the lower floors are for funeral ceremonies.

People who kill themselves by jumping in front of a train in Japan are often charged by the railway company for the cost of the delays and cleanup. Of course, with the person being dead, the money is deducted from the relatives' inheritance, often giving the impression that the relatives are being charged for the person's having died. This is also an attempt by the railway companies to reduce the number of suicides by train. The most popular railway line for suicides in Tokyo is the Chūō Main Line between Tokyo and Shinjuku, owing to the high speed and frequency of the trains. Since 1995 1,210 people have committed suicide on the lines of Japanese railways, 156 of them on the Chūō line.

The coffin is placed on a tray in the crematorium. The family witnesses the sliding of the body into the cremation chamber. According to the Yamaguchi Saijo Funeral Parlor and Crematorium in Sapporo, it takes about an hour and a half to cremate an adult body, 45 minutes for a child, 15 minutes for a stillborn baby. The gurney with the final remnants is allowed to cool for fifteen minutes before being presented to relatives for bone and ash collection. The relatives pick the bones out of the ashes and transfer them to the urn using chopsticks, two relatives sometimes holding the same bone at the same time with their chopsticks (or, according to some sources, passing the bones from chopsticks to chopsticks). This is the only time in Japan when it is proper for two people to hold the same item at the same time with chopsticks. At all other times, holding anything with chopsticks by two people at the same time, or passing an item from chopsticks to chopsticks will remind all bystanders of the funeral of a close relative and is considered to be a major social faux pas. The bones of the feet are picked up first, and the bones of the head last. This is to ensure that the deceased is not upside down in the urn. The hyoid bone (a bone located in the neck) is the most significant bone to be put in the urn.

In some cases, the ashes may be divided between more than one urn, for example if part of the ashes are to go to a family grave, and another part to the temple, or even to a company grave or a burial in space. Many companies, for example, have company graves for their employees in the largest Japanese graveyard on Mount Kōya. Depending on the local custom the urn may stay at the family home for a number of days, or be taken directly to the graveyard.

It is customary to visit the grave on the anniversary of the death and clean it tos how respect. Gifts of food are often left as well.

While in former times white clothes were worn for funerals, nowadays all guests for the funeral wear black. Men wear a black suit with a white shirt and a black tie, and women wear either a black dress or a black kimono. The black is of a special pitch-black shade. A Buddhist prayer bead called juzu may be carried by the guests. A guest will bring condolence money in a special black and silver decorated envelope. Depending on the relation to the deceased and the wealth of the guest, this may be of a value equivalent to between USD 30 and USD 300. The guests are seated, with the next of kin closest to the front. The Buddhist priest will read a sutra. The family members will each in turn offer incense three times to the incense urn in front of the deceased. The wake ends once the priest has completed the sutra. Each departing guest is given a gift, which has a value of about half or one quarter of the condolence money received from this guest. The closest relatives may stay and keep vigil with the deceased overnight in the same room.

Death-related words in Japanese

Japanese has a large number of different words related to death. Not all of these are still commonly used in Japan.

* jisatsu for suicide
* Seppuku and hara-kiri for ritual suicide
* inseki jisatsu, suicide due to feeling guilty - this is still somewhat common in Japan
* junshi, following one's Lord into death
* jumonji giri, a version of seppuku with a second and more painful vertical cut across the belly
* shinjū (心中, shinjū?) for double suicide, and also more recently for murder suicides
* jōshi (情死, jōshi?) for a double suicide of lovers - this is still somewhat common in Japan
* oyako shinjū (親子心中, oyako shinjū?) for a double suicide of parent and child
* boshi shinjū for a double suicide of mother and child
* fushi shinjū for a double suicide of father and child
* ikka shinjū (一家心中, ikka shinjū?) for a family suicide
* muri shinjū (無理心中, muri shinjū?) for murder suicide
* gōi shinjū for voluntary suicide (as opposed to murder suicide)
* funshi for suicide to express indignation (for example, that of Yukio Mishima)
* tonshi for unexpected, sudden death

The following terms are archaic expressions from the Hagakure, a practical and spiritual guide for a warrior, written between 1709 and 1716:

* oibara, to follow one's Lord into death by seppuku
* maebara, to precede one's Lord into death by seppuku
* sakibara, to follow one's Lord into death by seppuku after the death of the lord
* kobara, suicide to protect one's children
* rokubara, suicide to protect one's family