Living (alone) together in metropolitan Japan: shifting boundaries of dwelling, relating, and belonging

Abstract

Staying unmarried and not starting a nuclear family is increasingly common around the globe. At the same time, living arrangements are diversifying. Both living alone and sharing housing are growing trends, especially in urban areas. This is also true in Japan, where experts anticipate the emergence of a so-called ‘Hyper-Solo-Society’, despite the norm to get married remaining strong. In this regard, Japan can serve as an excellent case study for investigating the relationship worlds of unmarried adults through and in relation to their living arrangements. My data draw on a qualitative study of unmarried individuals—primarily women—between the ages of 24 and 45 in different living arrangements in Tokyo and Kyoto and point to a diversification of relationship worlds, offering insights into how this development is interwoven with the diversification of living arrangements and revealing the shifting, partly blurring boundaries of dwelling, relating, and belonging. Furthermore, the data indicate that ‘new’ spaces of relating and belonging—spaces of one’s own, spaces of (unfocused) embeddedness, and spaces of togetherness with friends, partners, or one’s family of choice—are emerging and/or actively being created. These spaces, which partly break with conventional gendered configurations, are fluid and comprise ambivalences and ambiguities, but they can play a salient role for shifting notions of what ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ mean. By identifying changing perceptions of home and belonging, this paper contributes a new perspective to current global debates on ‘singles’ and their practices of relating and belonging at the intersection of gender, mobility, and space.