Making the Connection

By Ray Kriz

There are no doubt many reasons for reading fiction, but among them all I feel the most important one is to in some way use a story to improve life for yourself and others.  Often this is difficult to do, because it is not always easy to identify with the characters in the stories that we read.  The stories we have read throughout the semester have presented me with the challenge of trying to identify with certain issues and feelings that I have had little experience with throughout my life.  Some problematic themes that I recognized in many of the stories we have read concern gender inequality and societal pressures within Japan.  There is a lot to be read about these problems, but I felt that it was hard to establish a connection to them as they are not problems I have dealt with before. 

In my quest to gain a deeper understanding of these problems, I would have to in some way make them my own problems as well.  In order to do this, I decided to interview my Japanese friends as I care about them and would thus have an interest in the problems that they have encountered.  So through my friends, I could in a way connect myself to these problems in order to gain not only a better understanding of the issues themselves, but more importantly how my friends feel about them.

A few things

Out of respect to my friends their identities will remain unknown.

Most of the friends I interviewed admit to being very westernized, which I feel means that there are still many different views on the same topics that will not receive attention here.

While this paper focuses on these issues in Japan, Japan is not the only place where these issues are important. Very similar problems and situations can be found elsewhere in the world.

Much of what is stated in this paper is based on observation, reflection, and insight, not formal scientific research, as was meant to be the case.

This project is geared more towards the issues of the present, despite the fact that most of the stories we have read take place before our generation.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to email me at Raymond-kriz@uiowa.edu, or to post on the blog.

Among the numerous themes and problems that have been covered in the stories we have read, one of the most frequent issues we have encountered are problems in lovers’ relationships. It became apparent to me through the interviews that in Japan there is a very big difference between a relationship and marriage. One of the males interviewed said that before marriage couples are in love, but once they get married they do not love each other as much. It seems that this has lots to do with expectations in a relationship versus expectations in a marriage. He told me that marriage seemed like a “goal” and that he felt that while marriage in America seems to be a new beginning, marriage in Japan is “the end.” He also said that once married both a man and woman face pressures to conform to certain roles.

It is important to remember that gender roles are deeply rooted within Japanese tradition. It was tradition for hundreds of years that a woman’s parents would arrange her marriage, and once married, only the woman’s father or husband could break it off, not her. Women were expected to be housewives and this was not questioned, and one interviewee said she thinks things were like this up until about the 1950’s.

There was an overwhelming and predictable similarity in the way that all of my friends described the gender roles, which did not surprise me as it is similar to almost everywhere else. It is quite clear that the stereotypical view society has is that men should be out of the home working to provide for the family, while women are to stay home and take care of the children and housework. An interviewee drew this chart which I thought explained the situation quite well.

{-----work-----} {----home-----}
[-----men------][---women-----]


When I asked the question as to how they felt about men working and women staying at home, the responses differed. One female interviewee thought that the whole concept of being a housewife is boring, while some of the others did not mind it so much as long as they were appreciated and could pursue other things.

One of the male interviewees felt “constrained” because he wants to have a family yet he knows that he will most likely have to work most of the time to support it. He said he was worried that having children will be too expensive and thus his wife will be forced to work to support the family as well. This was mentioned quite a bit throughout the interviews, that children are so expensive and time consuming that in Japan people nowadays opt to have fewer children, and do so later in life. And it seemed that especially for men in Japan, there was no option at all but to work, which leaves little time to spend with the family or help out at home. This leads to some big problems.

On one hand, there is pressure on parents to be good parents, which would require them to spend time with their children. Oh, I forgot to mention that once married women are also expected to have children. Now, women in Japan tend not to be in the higher management positions at companies, nor do they tend to make as much as men. So it makes sense that the man would work because he will on average make more money and have better career opportunities. However, because of the pressure to be great parents, if the man is working then that essentially forces the woman to stay home. Even if she did want to work, her career path would be limited because it was mentioned that companies discriminate against women who are married, especially if they have children. This in turn means that women who are forced to work to help support the household will generally not have satisfying careers, and will still be expected to have all the same duties as if she were a stay at home mom.

Another problem that was talked about was what options are available to couples when a marriage is failing. I got the impression after having completed the interviews that once married, Japanese couples are pressured not to get divorced. One interviewee said she felt that if someone gets divorced “they have really serious problems.” Another interviewee said that she felt couples would put off divorce for the sake of their children, which leads me into another topic.
What is it like growing up in Japan these days? I got the impression that most of my friends were concerned about today’s generation of children. It was stated in several of the interviews that delinquency is increasing, which is recognized as a serious problem. The reasons for this are numerous, and it became apparent to me that some of the things mentioned earlier have an influence on childhood as well.

One of the things that can affect a child is when the parents get divorced. One interviewee said that in her hometown, it was common for people to have a child and get married shortly afterward because of it. She said that when this is the case things almost never work out, and either the couple is unhappy or they get divorced. Both are less than ideal situations for children, as it is most likely that the mother will be left looking after her children with little support. And again, because of discrimination in the workplace she will have difficulty making enough money to make ends meet. It also seemed that many women who have children find out that being a mother is not exactly what they expected, which can lead to the abuse of a child be it intentional or not.

For married couples that do stay together and have children, there are other problems. One of the issues that came up was that because fathers are out working most of the time, the mother is left to see to a child’s education. It was mentioned that often times children are under extreme pressure from their mothers to do well in school. It was also mentioned that this pressure can begin at a very early age, so that a child can get into a good primary school. This is just the beginning. All the way up until college children are often forced to go to cram schools, which take place after school and usually focus on studying and reviewing for exams. This is very common and children often expect to have to go to these schools, and are usually given little choice. It was also said that these cram schools are expensive and that parents can have trouble coming up with the money to send their children to them.

Because there is such an importance placed upon exams, the pressure to do well can be a tremendously stressful feeling. The consequences of this can vary, depending on the child as well as the family.

It was said by a few of the interviewees that social class and status have a significant impact on the future of the child. It was mentioned several times that those from more well to do and financially stable families are more likely to study harder and get into better schools. That is not to say that all of the kids go along with this though, and there is resistance to this pressure which can lead to “delinquency.” In less well to do families, it was said that there was a greater tendency to drop out of high school, get a dead end part time job, gamble, and simply leech off of the parents. One interviewee said that her brother was pressured to do well in school, and that now he usually just stays around the house and does nothing. This leads me to believe that when pressured, youths are becoming passive aggressive as a means of dealing with all of the stress, and try to find ways in which to escape from reality.

It was said in one of the interviews that today children spend lots of time playing video games and are going out less and less. This can lead to depression and a falling out of touch with reality. It doesn’t seem odd to me though, because when given the option to either stress out over exams or sit around and play videogames, the videogames are more enticing. I think this is actually quite illustrative of how receptive kids are to their environments. They seem to have picked up on the fact that all that the reputation and prestige of getting good grades and getting into a good school is not worth the pressure or effort. This is especially true because the motivation to do these things is external, be it from parents or from status that is awarded by society.

And what society thinks is important, is. One interviewee said she noticed that in Japan there is a lot of pressure to look and act in certain ways. For instance, she said that if a certain kind of purse was fashionable, then virtually every girl she saw would have one. She said that the media, for instance, fashion magazines, portray women in a specific way. The real issue I see here is that she also said that the women try to live up these standards of style and femininity, which can be confining. There is also the stress of being acceptable to one’s peers, which is taken very seriously in Japan. It was said that bullying is common and I think that part of that might have to do with people attaching themselves to group mindsets which tend to alienate those who do not conform to the standards of the group.

“ I don’t know why but women are supposed to cook and men are supposed to work.”
“Some women get used to it.”
“Who cares for the children?”
“Fathers work too much.”
“My female friends complained about not getting promoted.”
“Appearance is important.”
“Romance is lost.”
“People want to be at the same level as everyone else.”

I think that over the course of writing this paper, I have found that as much as I learned, there is so much more that I don’t know. The feelings surrounding the problems we have read about are very real and depressing. Every day we bear witness to suffering and injustice that we inflict on each other and ourselves. I think that there is a hope for the future, and that just because things are the way they are that they do not have to stay that way. There is progress being made, and I think that things can change for the better, everywhere. If these problems continue, it is only because we allow them to. And so I would like to end with a quote that resonates with me.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men [and women] do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

Click here for further information about this quotation.