The Japanese House: Formation of Family and Home in Meiji Japan
by Lim Si Yi (A0157956L)AR5957G Modern Architecture, Cultures of Building and Representation in East Asia
Abstract
The Japanese house is emblematic in both internal and foreign perceptions of Japanese architecture as well as a Japanese way of living or culture. Within and beyond the discipline of architecture, the Japanese house appears as a vital object, medium and icon through which notions of culture and tradition, as well as the modern intersect, are embodied and conversed with. Historically, the Japanese house epitomizes hierarchical social networks and relationships beginning from that of the family and expanding to the surrounding neighborhood, communities and society or the nation. However, through its rebuilding after the Second World War and, later, the bursting of its bubble economy, notions of what constitutes a family and, hence, what makes a home have evolved to reflect radical shifts in Japan’s social and economic conditions. Yet, despite evolutions in technology, construction, architectural movements, social networks and familial relations, the Japanese house as representative architecture has not only persisted but constantly reflected these shifts in Japanese society. This is further complicated by the discourse on tradition and modernity, and the assimilation of both in Japan’s attempt to hold on to a national identity whilst rebuilding and presenting itself as a modern nation. Through the examination of the formalization of the Japanese house and family from the Meiji period (1868-1912), this paper will explore how symbolisms and ephemeral ideas of ‘family’ and ‘home’ preserve the Japanese house as an enduring iconography of both traditional and modern architecture in Japan in spite of several physical transformations it has undergone.
Introduction
The Japanese family as an essential, irreplaceable and detrimental component of Japanese society has been emphasized and perpetuated by both internal and external sources alike . While the Japanese family and house embodies Western influences and systems such 1 as lifestyles based on capitalistic consumption patterns and the normalization of home ownership , it has managed to retain a sense of ‘Japan-ness’ – a continuity with indigenous 2 3 traditions and aesthetics – in accordance with a unique or distinct ‘Japanese modernity’ . In 4 the discourse of art and architecture, the continued reception and perpetuation of an ‘elegant Japanese house’ has splintered into various reductive (mis)representations that, without context, reveal and propagate purist, caricature-like essentialization of Japanese people and 5 their lifestyles by select token aspects of their culture such as ‘wabi sabi’, zen aestheticism
6 and the ‘elegant Japanese house void of decorations’ . 7
Through an ethnographic biography of the imposition of various ideals and aesthetics onto the Japanese family and house, beginning from the very (re)construction of the family unit in the Meiji Civil Code, the paper aspires to identify and denaturalize its representations in the discourses of culture, architecture and aesthetics, while emphasizing the cruciality of the forces of tradition, modernization or westernization, and consumerism in the formation of
1
(Buntrock 2010)
2
(Hirayama and Ronald 2007)
3
(Hirayama and Ronald 2007)
5
4 (Ronald, Homes, and Houses, Senses and Spaces 2011)
(Ronald and Hirayama, Home Alone: The Individualization of Young, Urban Japanese Singles 2009)
7
6 (ibid)
(Daniels 2001)
9
the Japanese house as an essential, enduring and adaptive notion unbound by physical transformations of Japanese society and architecture. In doing so, the paper will explore the idea of the Japanese family and house as ‘site and artifact’ reflective of more expansive 8 ideas of the state and capital, as well as larger operations of socio-economic transitions and transformations.
8
The Construction of ‘Ie’: Denaturalizing the Modern Japanese Family and House
The significance of the Japanese House or Home as a central archetype and typology in the discourse of Japanese architecture and society may be traced back to the formalization of a ‘family system’ denoting familial boundaries and responsibilities as well as its relation to the state as ‘ie’ . Although the modern, nuclear Japanese family with its accompanying 9 gendered roles and synthesis to larger notions of neighbors, community and the state has since been naturalized and anchored in feudal and Confucian traditions and morals such as filial piety (ibid), ‘ie’ as a means to define and regulate the roles and obligations of members of the household to each other and the state was only formalized in the National Family Registry system (1871) and its accompanying in laws regarding rights and property ownership during the Meiji period (1868-1912) . 10
Implemented and enforced by legislation, the ‘ie’ family model was central to the Meiji family-satte (Kazoku kokka) ideology – a ‘politico-ideological strategy’ converging Confucian familial values with a Shinto notion of the imperial state . The Japanese word 11
‘ie’, meaning home, refers to both the family house and household which inhabits it, and (Sand 2003)
(Ronald and Alexy, Introduction: Continuity and Change in Japanese Homes and Families 2011)
10
(Ronald and Alexy, Introduction: Continuity and Change in Japanese Homes and Families 2011)
11
(Ruszel 2019)
further defines the house as a paterfamilias or patriarchal system in which roles and 12 responsibilities are inherited across generations . Furthermore, the term ‘ie’, as defined in 13
the Daikangorin , denotes, includes, and bounds the ‘household, whole family clan, ancestor 14 lineage, and the family’s wealth, possessions and territory’, thereby constructing the family, house and its possessions as inseparable . Thus, ‘ie’ perpetuates ‘economic, political and 15 religious’ continuity between generations, bounding an individual to his or her role in the family and the family’s position within larger hierarchies of capitalism and society16
The formalization of ‘ie’ – a key beginning of the modern, Japanese family unit and house – during the Meiji Restoration is symptomatic and reflective of period as a seismic rupture and end to Japan’s 250 years of isolation and the dismantling of the longstanding system of feudal rule . In this period made turbulent not only by a change in governing powers and 17 political ideologies and made complicated by the influx of western media, institutions and values, as well as the pressing need for parity with the West , the establishment and 18 perpetuation of a standardized family unit subsumed to responsibilities and in alliance with the state and rooted in preceding Confucian and feudal morals and structures reveals few things: an awareness of the state towards the disruptive potential of modernization (and westernization), and reactionary construction of ‘tradition’ in opposition to that . 19
12
The male head of a family or household, or a family or household with a male head
13
(Ronald and Hirayama, Home Alone: The Individualization of Young, Urban Japanese Singles 2009)
14
15
(Chinese Character / Kanji Dictionary) (Tadashi and Yoneyama 1992)
(Daniels 2001)
16
(Daniels 2001)
(Ivy 1995) 17 (Ibid) 18
(Buntrock 2010) 19
Therefore contemporary tendencies to represent Japanese society and culture through sentiments towards the Japanese family and house builds on a relationship between families, homes and the state – one that does not derive merely from language, Confucianism or a feudal past ; The construction of a basic Japanese family unit as part of a linear lineage 20 eventually subsumed under responsibilities to the state in Meiji Japan through ‘ie’ situates contemporary tendencies to represent and examine Japanese society through the Japanese family and house, by Japan and onlookers alike, within a older and larger history of domestication, control and self-legitimization21
While ‘ie’ was formally dissolved in the New Civil Code of 1947, the standardized ‘family (system)’ endured as a potent regulating force familial and social relations . As an 22 ideological hegemony, ‘ie’ – and, by extension, the emblem of the Japanese family and house – has largely endured since its conception while gradually absorbing and adapting in spite or, perhaps, because of variations in familial structures and respective alternative housing solutions – products attributable to the world wars and their respective socio-economic rebuilding, the burst of Japan’s economic bubble in 1992, as well as the forces of capitalism and modernization or westernization . 23
Although the appropriation of the ‘ie’ family unit is eventually challenged and eventually dismantled by the Second World War, the rise of nuclear families and the increasing economic and political presence of women in households and in Japanese society , the 24 gendered and state-subsumed characteristics of the ‘ie’ household would eventually be
(Ronald and Alexy, Introduction: Continuity and Change in Japanese Homes and Families 2011) 20 (Daniels 2001) 21
(Ronald and Alexy, Introduction: Continuity and Change in Japanese Homes and Families 2011) 22
23 (Ruszel 2019)
(Ronald and Hirayama, Home Alone: The Individualization of Young, Urban Japanese Singles 2009)
rebranded and strengthened in the ‘New Life Movement or New Life Campaign’ (shin seikatsu undo) of post-war Japan (1950s) . The movement heralded an ‘enterprise society’ in 25 which the corporate company was an extension of familial ties and obligations . Notions of 26 service and loyalty to the state were now transferred to capitalist corporations with the convergence of state and capital, and the service of the Japanese family unit to the capitalstate motivated by financial stability . Thus, through longstanding relations to the state and, 27 now, capital through legislation and propagated ideology, the Japanese family’s endurance as a vital mode and representation of the broader Japanese society is aided by forces of the state and capitalism.
The Japanese House in Architectural Discourse: Contestable Space
Central as heavily-utilized allegory in discourse regarding Japanese society at large, the Japanese House is particularly significant in the discourse of Japanese architecture as a valuable archetype escaping or synthesizing often divisive and conflated dichotomies present in Japanese architecture such as modernity and tradition, public and private or public and domestic, and – with rising consumer culture and middle-class sentiments, and the commodification of the house and its property – bourgeois or affluent and mainstream.
The first three decades of Japan’s Meiji Restoration saw an unprecedented influx of western products and ideals, namely a highly westernized modernization, in tandem with the creation and representation of the Meiji nation-state in the built environment. Subsequently,
(Garon 1994) 25
(Ruszel 2019) 26
(Ibid) 27
new spaces, territories and thresholds were produced: As foregrounded by the establishment of the family unit in relation to the state through ‘ie’, the first three decades of Japan’s Meiji Restoration saw the creation of a unified nation-state and a respective political space further realized through the transcending of previous physical or geographical boundaries via the construction of nationwide transport and telecommunication networks . This was in turn 28 supplemented by the parallel creation of an ‘ideological space of native landscape’ in which notions and imagery of the nation-state may be found and propagated by authors and artists29
At the same time, the privatization and commodification of property and land through capitalism made it possible to estrange the Japanese house and family from previous notions of inheritance and familial or state obligations, thrusting it into new ‘legal-economic’ space30 removed from notions of the state, public and ‘ie’.
While the home was not without politicization and reconfiguration by the Meiji state , the privatization and commodification of the family house and its property as an
accompaniment or remnant of the public political and ideological space of the state granted it distinction and, thus, allowance as a private, un-politicized space removed from Meiji ‘society’ further enabled by its role as a distinguishing core, site and product of the emerging bourgeois or middle-class masses . The creation of distinct modern spaces amplified the 32 distinction of family and home as a ‘kinship-based institution’ by circumscribing a private 33 (Sand 2003)
territory or domain of domestication vital as an escape from broader structures while simultaneously functioning as a fundamental module for governance34
Emergence of the Middle-Class and Commodification of the Dwelling
The Japanese House or home as a site or artefact for discourse, and especially in modern discourse regarding consumption culture, may be largely attributed to its function as a key centre for as well as a product of bourgeois culture . While material culture was 35 prevalent from the preceding Tokugawa period, it was only upon its convergence with westernization and modernization during the Meiji period that it would resemble modern consumption culture characteristic of the Japanese household today. 36
The Meiji and Taisho periods saw the establishment of systems and infrastructure – such as nation-wide education systems and curriculum, societies and organizations –, and the 37 eradication of categories of class divisions and the re-stratification of the Japanese people based on capitalist notions of risshin shusse, centered on the individual and his or her identity in society, as well as the freedom to pursue wealth and socio-economic progress . 38
By the second decade of the Meiji Restoration, mass consumer culture had begun to be surface, made prominent by the establishment of modern, western and capitalistic institutions such as the department store and models of mass advertisement through public display and 39 revolved around the commodifiable “cultural” life and homes , referring to the target 40
(Ibid) 34
(Ibid) 35
(Gordon 2012) 36
(Sand 2003) 37
(Ibid) 38
(Sand, Middle-Classness and the Reform of Everyday Life 2003) 39
(Gordon 2012)
modern middle class. The emergence and articulation of a mass middle class or popularization of middle-class ‘taste’ was vital in involving the attention and efforts of the architectural profession towards the tensions and possibilities of reformation of the Japanese dwelling . By the First World War, the expertise of architects as well as academia from the 41 fields of science and culture began to converge on the home as a recognized national issue , 42 marked by the founding of the Dwelling Reform Society (Jutaku Kairyokai) and a publicized home exhibition organized by the newspaper Kokumin Shinbun
Eventually the presence of consumption-culture from a massive middle class would accelerate government policies on mass housing and house ownership in the 1950s, undisrupted, and perhaps further motivated, by the devastation and loss of the Second World War. The state strategy for post-war housing policies consisted of the three pillars: the Government Loan Corporation Act (1950), the Public Housing Act (1951) and the Japan Housing Corporation (1955) enabled home ownership through legislation of loans and subsidies . However, state policies for housing catered more towards the massive middle 43 class, the main consumers of home ownership.
The emergence and normalization of mass home production and ownership in the Meiji period also presented an unprecedented stability accompanying the owning of property and a home, as well as the transference of authority from local or familial structures to the state –both unforeseen in the preceding Tokugawa period . Established and accelerated in a climate 44 of high economic growth (1950-1960s), the development of post-war Japan into a (Sand, Middle-Classness and the Reform of Everyday Life 2003)
(Hirayama, Reshaping the housing system 2007)
(Sand 2003)
‘homeowner society’ underscored the emergence of (disposable) wealth and a bourgeois 45 consumer culture of (the desire to identify as) the middle-class, on the site and producing the artefact of the modern “cultured” home46
Post-war devastation, urban and social reconstruction, and the emergence of a was vital in establishing a social mainstream, formalizing and perpetuating standardized pathways to adulthood and parenthood, and what constitutes a modern, nuclear family . Through the 47 implementation of mass housing corporations and standardized company hierarchy, the notion of a modern Japanese family and house as nuclear, patriarchal and subsumed to larger systems of capitalism, consumerism and the state was not only visually represented and commodified as a normative mainstream but perpetuated by larger structures of state housing policies and enduring notions of ‘ie’ through the ‘enterprise society’ . 48
While the post-war housing policies may be understood as economic policies intentioned to propagate economic growth and stability through home ownership, assistance in formalizing a ‘social mainstream’ of ‘middle-classness’ is also a critical reflection of a ‘Japanese modernity’ . Condensing traditional principals of self-reliance as well as the 49 modern condition of a united social mainstream, it reflected and bridged indigenous notions of a homogenous society and a modern, consumption-driven one . The resultant ‘housing 50 ladder system’ also crystallized an enduring socio-economic hegemony of idealized lifestyles, pathways and familial aspirations through the representation and acquisition of a home.
(Hirayama, Reshaping the housing system 2007) 45
(Ronald and Hirayama, Home Alone: The Individualization of Young, Urban Japanese Singles 2009) 47
(Ronald and Hirayama, Home Alone: The Individualization of Young, Urban Japanese Singles 2009) 48
(Ronald, The Japanese home in transi4on 2007)
(Ibid)
Conclusion
The family and house in Japan as narrated through Meiji constructions of the ideal ‘ie’ family has gradually been adapted and naturalized in contemporary times, and remains an enduring notion of kinship attached to a built space that is continually approached by various professions and disciplines alike as a medium, allegory and representation of the ideals, aspirations and struggles of the Japanese society and state. However, despite its tendencies to be naturalized and essentialized in influential and contemporary texts, the elusive, romanticized Japanese family as visually and architecturally essentialized in a tidy, elegant Japanese home, the Japanese family and house as a quintessential unit of Japanese society is highly political, and laid claim to by various agents to represent their vested interests, beginning with the artificial construction of the ‘ie’. And perhaps it is through the ethnographic study of the construction of the notion of the Japanese family and house that we may best understand ‘ie’ as constantly in flux and changing.
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