Kimiko Tanaka

Limitations for measuring religion in a different cultural context - the case of Japan

Abstract The article points out the limitations in surveys measuring religiosity and spirituality using the measures developed in Christian or Western contexts. Japanese people think of religion (shūkyō) as revealed religion such as Christianity that has specific doctrinal belief and faith. Through their history of religious regulation, Japanese people came to consider themselves “non-religious” as a way of survival, not to be punished by political authorities and not to be stigmatized in their community. Thus they tend to answer that they consider themselves “non-religious” in surveys, while performing ritual performances for their ancestors in Buddhist temples and Buddhist altars not only to thank ancestors but also to ease the psychological fear people have toward muenbotoke, restless ancestors who have no legitimate offspring to take care of them. To extend the study of spirituality or religiousness in the Japanese context, qualitative studies are necessary not to misinterpret religiousness and spirituality in Japanese context.

The Effect of Divorce Experience on Religious Involvement: Implications for Later Health Lifestyle

The divorce-stress adjustment perspective defines divorce not as a single event, but as a process with effects that linger even after remarriage. Previous studies based on the divorce-stress adjustment perspective looked at divorce as a stressful process and analyzed how divorce can negatively affect health outcomes after the actual divorce has taken place. This perspective is a combination of various elements of stress frameworks that has been dominating the literatures on divorce. However, the popularity of the stress framework resulted in less attention to studying divorce as an active or passive choice that some individuals make in their life course and the life event influences their social behaviors in later life, which could provide another possible explanation why divorce can negatively influence health even after remarriage.

Social Integration and Healthy Aging in Japan: How Gender and Rurality Matter

The current study analyzed the 1999 and 2001 waves of the Nihon University Japanese Longitudinal Study of Aging. Two measures of social integration were associated with lower risks of being physically disabled or depressed at Wave 1 and with a lower risk of progressing into deeper levels of physical disability and depression by Wave 2. Ceteris paribus, compared to elderly urbanites, elderly ruralites had a much higher risk of being physically disabled but much lower odds of being depressed. And compared to elderly men, elderly women had similar risks of being physically disabled but much higher odds of being depressed. Suggestions are made on how future research on longevity in Japan, the world’s most longevous nation, can explore the links among social integration, place, gender, and the postponement of mortality.

Childlessness and Mental Well-Being in a Global Context

Pronatal norms exist in various countries to varying degrees. Depending on the strength of pronatalism, adults who remain childless can experience negative sanctions that could affect their happiness and life satisfaction. We test these ideas on childless respondents from 36 nations in two waves of the World Values Survey (1994-1999 and 1999-2004). Childless adults are unhappier and less satisfied if they live in highly pronatalist nations than in other nations. The negative relationship between childlessness and life satisfaction is stronger for childless people in strongly pronatalist nations that have below-replacement fertility or low-to-medium scores on the Human Development Index than in strongly pronatalist nations with at- or above-replacement fertility or high scores on the Human Development Index. The findings show the importance of taking national-level contextual factors into account in understanding the mental well-being of childless people.

Aging in Rural Japan—Limitations in the Current Social Care Policy

Owing to equal and increased opportunities for education and employment, todays trend in Japanese marriages is characterized by late and less frequent marriage. This paper discusses unavoidable diversity in rural families to point out the anticipated consequences of aging in rural areas and to discuss limitations in current public social care policies. Specifically, the averaged proportion of never-married and single persons at ages 45 to 49 and 50 to 54 in legally recognized depopulated cities, towns, and villages in Japan is calculated to illustrate the expected diversity in families in rural depopulated areas. It also illustrates the need for future studies to develop better social care policies for increasing numbers of single caregivers and single elders.

Mental well-being of mothers with preschool children in Japan: The importance of spousal involvement in childrearing

Abstract Japan’s low fertility rate and rapidly aging population have prompted a series of government policies aimed to minimize disincentives to motherhood. Father’s participation in childcare and housework is one factor thought to minimize the stress and workload of wage-earning motherhood. Using an internet survey of Japanese women designed by the Japanese Institute for Labor Policy and Training (N = 495), this study explores the associations between labor force participation, unmet need for spousal support, and self-reported mental health of Japanese women with preschool-aged children. We find a positive relationship between mothers’ reports of unmet spousal need and perceived challenges to mental well-being. Results suggest that attention to maternal mental health and unmet spousal support need is needed not only for mothers who participate in the labor force but perhaps especially for stay-at-home mothers.

Surnames and Gender in Japan: Women’s Challenges in Seeking Own Identity:

Strongly influenced by the previous Meiji Civil Code that shaped people’s perceptions about the traditional Japanese family, postwar Japanese society has not fully guaranteed gender equality, and whether to legally allow the dual-surname system is one of the major legal and political debates in Japanese society. To understand the tension between the traditional Japanese family emphasized in the previous Meiji Civil Code and gender equality emphasized in the current Japanese law, this study explored the surname system in Japan by reviewing historical trends, recent surveys, political debates, and comparing with other nations. This study illustrated that the surname was not attached to the family lineage and membership as today in the past, and symbolic significance of the surname has changed through the course of Japanese history.

The Shifting Roles of Women in Intergenerational Mutual Caregiving in Japan: The Importance of Peace, Population Growth, and Economic Expansion

This article looks at historical changes in the cultural superstructure defining the proper organization of elder care. Intergenerational mutual care in Japan developed in a context of various factors, including cultural ideals, centralization of the civil state, and the family unit, called the ie. In the Tokugawa period, care was often emphasized as mens morality in public, for the Tokugawa shogunate emphasized the Confucian ideology of filial piety. As Japan moved from the Tokugawa to the Meiji period, it became more feasible for the government to create legal pressures on women to care for children and the dependent elderly in the privatized ie. Although the ethics of care moved from the public to the private sphere, socioeconomic transformation enabled women to gain equal education and enabled the elderly to live longer. Generational differences now bring conflicts and tensions in Japanese society in determining where the morality of care should belong.

Graves and families in Japan: Continuity and change

The population aging in Japan has been accelerated not only by the nations longest life expectancy at birth but also by its falling fertility rate. As the existence of a Japanese familys grave presupposes the continuity of the family line, Japans current low fertility rate has increased families without progeny who now face problems of their family graves becoming “disconnected.” In this study, historical trends of graves in Japan were analyzed — how the idea of traditional family grave was socially constructed and how it has transformed society, culture, and families. In addition, analyzing the Japanese General Social Survey (JGSS) 2001, it addresses the importance of gender on peoples expectations about burial partners in current Japanese society. The analysis of JGSS-2001 data revealed that although the majority of people chose graves with succession across generations, younger generations were more likely to support diversified graves than were older generations, and this difference was greater for women than for men. Finally, understanding problems and limitations of current Japanese graves, future issues of Japanese graves will be addressed.

Stigma and Childlessness in Historical and Contemporary Japan

Abstract Japanese women’s life courses have changed dramatically in recent history. Yet, transformation of the meanings and experiences of childlessness did not follow a linear, one-dimensional path. Childlessness in Japan today – strongly influenced by Western, modern education after the World War II – can indeed be interpreted as a form of liberation from a restrictively gendered life-course. However, in Japan’s pre-modern period, there were in fact alternative paths available for women to remain childless. As Japan became nationalised and the meanings of Japanese womanhood shifted, childlessness became increasingly stigmatised and notably, stigmatised across social classes. This chapter provides concise accounts of the social meanings of marriage and fertility from the Tokugawa period through the Meiji period and continues with analysis of pressures faced by contemporary Japanese women who are childless. Also highlighted are the particular socio-demographic contexts which have brought involuntary childlessness, too, into the realms of public discussion and expected action on the part of the government. Through its account of the Japanese context, this chapter emphasises the larger theoretical, sociological argument that the historically placed social construction of childlessness – and thus, of the experiences and identities of childless women – always occurs through particular intersections of cultural, political-economic and demographic conditions.