The Too-Good Wife: Alcohol, Codependency, and the Politics of Nurturance in Postwar Japan (review)

Abstract

Amy Borovoy, The Too-Good Wife: Alcohol, Codependency, and Politics of Nurturance in Postwar Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, December 2005. 251 pp. Borovoy's book looks at an important cross section in anthropology of japan, intersection of family, business, and state. Long praised for its productive symbiosis between state and business, this book looks at dark side. If one reads latest media reports in and about one is aware that Japan, Inc. has broken down as listless economy drags into its second lost decade. The pillars of society-those social forms so actively studied by earlier generations of anthropologists-are seen to be crumbling, all while trapping average in structures that produced Japanese Miracle. The family is in disarray. Once imagined as a society of perfect marriages and stable families, it is now as Number in divorce (Raymo et. al.) and suicide (over 30,000 a year for past eight years). The schools are also breaking down as some students incite violence in classroom while others never leave their bedrooms at all (hikikomori). Among numerous public and private responses, for example, Ministry of Education (MEXT) has recently shortened acclaimed school week from 5 ½ days to 5 days in an attempt to re-center education around family and community. Meanwhile on business side, anyone who has spent a late night in urban Japan has seen contradictory demands of company. One of more striking fieldwork memories that I have of urban Tokyo is taking very last train of night. Stepping off onto platform at Shinagawa station, I saw a virtual war zone with bodies of drunken and unconscious businessmen strewn throughout station and many more puddles of vomit as evidence of their colleagues. What is amazing is not just that drinking is part of required commensality of work, but it is also fact that company similarly demands these same businessmen will be at their desk, if only physically, next morning, either nursing hangovers or artificially animated by ubiquitous, and sometimes mysterious, energy drinks. This system made world's second largest economy, but what are its costs? Amy Borovoy's book gives reader a look behind this system of success to examine its toll. Borovoy argues that state and corporations have worked together to create not just middle-class white-collar worker, otherwise known as salaryman, but also wife and family to support his productive activities. She analyzes trajectory of a controversial American import, namely concept of codependency that Borovoy defines as the notion that it is possible to care too well for a family member (14) and concurrent pathologization of pre-existing forms of relationships, such as concept of amae (passive dependency), made famous by anthropologist Doi Takeo. Borovoy's feminist analysis looks at society to provide a larger view on ideas of selfhood, individual, and family. While these are well-worn topics within anthropology of her focus on pathologization of codependency as a window into dynamics of family and construction of self allows for a fresh perspective. Thus, while in one sense alcoholism is central to Borovoy's analysis, in another, it is incidental as she does not interview alcoholics and substance abusers themselves, rather she is interested in how their actions and discourse around codependency affect notions of self and family. As such, her book is in conversation with anthropologists of past and present. Her book centers around introduction of Alcoholic Anonymous (Danshukai) and its pair Codependents Anonymous (introduced to Japan in 1976 and in 1982, respectively). The prime difference between two, as Borovoy notes, is that AA focuses on harm done by its members, CoDA focuses on harm done to them (13). …