Local Variations of Household Forms and Family Consciousness

Abstract

One of the most significant tasks for the sociology of marriage and the family in Japan is to clarify the relationship between the radical changes of society and family structure after World War II, and their impact on the system and the functions of the traditional Japanese family. During the years 1956 and 1957 a worthwhile project was undertaken by a group of family sociologists in the Tokyo area in an attempt to analyze the dynamics of the post-war Japanese family. This article analyzes the family composition and consciousness in four different types of communities in Tokyo: a mountain village, a suburban farming community, a suburban nonfarming community, and an apartment area. Findings from this study could be categorized into the following three. First, it was confirmed that the rural family tends to be an extended family, whereas the family in the urban area tends to be nuclear. Within each family, however, there exists a dynamic process of historical change in its structure throughout the family life cycle. Secondly, the traditional family consciousness is still rooted deeply among the rural farming families. Thirdly, it was not possible to observe any significant relationship between the form of the household composition and the family consciousness of the people. The result of this study might suggest the significant impact of the revision of the civil code after World War II on individuals' consciousness but not yet on the fundamental structure of the family in Japan. These discoveries. however, should be reevaluated in the light of growing urbanization of the younger generations in Japan.