Making and unmaking of housework in Rural Japan

Abstract

This paper highlights the process where the notion of "housework" was established under the developing market economy in the 1950s and 1960s rural Japan. Analyzing time-use surveys conducted by rural women, this paper asks which tasks rural women designated as housework in their daily work and life, and how housework was experienced to Japanese rural families. Especially in the 1950s, neither the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry or women’s club members had a clear understanding of what housework entailed. The daily activities that are considered housework differed in each survey. The time-use surveys revealed that farmers’ attitude toward housework shifted from considering it as the junior wife’s chores, which should be done in her spare time, to shareable housework, which were worth doing in the working time during work hours to support labor reproduction. Although gendered labor division was conserved, categorizing women’s housework validated junior wives’ work in a rural Japanese context.