Tough Choices: Bearing an Illegitimate Child in Japan 9780804772396

Citation preview

Tough Choices

Tough Choices Bearing an Illegitimate Child in Contemporary Japan

e katerina hertog

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2009 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hertog, Ekaterina, 1979Tough choices : bearing an illegitimate child in contemporary Japan / Ekaterina Hertog. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8047-6129-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Unmarried mothers--Japan. I. Title. HQ999.J3H48 2009 306.874'320952--dc22 2009007194 Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10.5/15 Bembo

Contents

Illustrations and Tables   vii Acknowledgments   ix 1 Introduction   1 2 “Naturally I Believed I Would Get Married”: Making the Choice   18 3 Navigating Work and Welfare   49 4 Legal Discrimination against Unwed Mothers   77 5 Are Unwed Mothers “Immoral” or “Impressive”? The Role of Social Stigma and Shame in Upholding Family Norms   96 6 “The Worst Child Abuse Is the Absence of a Parent”: The Role of Guilt   127 Conclusion   151 Appendix   157 Notes   167 Bibliography   207 Index  

223

Illustrations and Tables

Figures 1.1 1.2 2.1 3.1

Illegitimate children per 1,000 children   3 Crude divorce rate   4 Potential choices of a premaritally pregnant woman   25 Percent of women in employment by age   51

Map 1.1 Percent of illegitimate births out of all births by prefecture, 2004   15

Tables 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 4.1 4.2 4.3

Attitudes toward single motherhood in Japan   6 Age variation of unwed mothers in my sample   13 Earnings distribution of unwed mothers in my sample   14 Highest level of education c­ ompleted by unwed mothers in my sample   14 Age characteristics of women who gave up their children for adoption to Wa no Kai in 2002   33 Length of court procedures (Tokyo Family Court)   89 Cost of cases (Tokyo Family Court)   89 Acknowledgment cases per year (Tokyo Family Court)   89

Acknowledgments

a book is a lengthy endeavor full of inspiration but also disheartenment over unexpected setbacks. I believe I would have never been able to carry out this project successfully without the constant support and advice of Anthony Heath and Roger Goodman. Both magically provided insights just at the times when I felt I was at a dead end, helped me to regain confidence after setbacks, and played a major role in enabling me to carry out a year of research in Japan. Many people helped me during the field research in Japan. I owe a debt of gratitude to David Slater of Sophia University, who patiently listened to my fledgling ideas and offered invaluable comments. The monthly gatherings he organized proved to be a great venue for honing ideas, meeting colleagues, sharing difficulties, and finding solutions to various problems. The project was nurtured in lengthy discussions with several specialists on the Japanese family, especially Tetsuo Tsuzaki and Yukio Shinbo, who patiently explained “how things work in Japan,” revealed the mysteries of welfare and taxation, and offered valuable introductions. I learned a lot about the day-to-day life and concerns of Japanese single mothers when attending meetings and talking to members of Single Mothers’ Forum, Konsakai, and Nakusō Koseki to Kongaishi Sabetsu Kōryūkai, lobby groups that aim to change the social, economic, and legal environment of Japanese lone mothers. I would like to thank the members of these groups for allowing me to come to their meetings, spending time with me explaining the details of lone mothers’ situation in Japan, and making available their archives. I am also very grateful to the webmaster of Shinguru Mazā Kaigishitsu, who promoted my research project on her website and helped me to get in touch with many of my interviewees. Of course my greatest debt of gratitude is to my interviewees. Due to concerns for anonymity, I cannot name any of the women I met but I will always be grateful for their kindness and support. Most of them were

x   Acknowledgments

extremely busy juggling both work and childcare but nevertheless found several hours to meet to discuss their lives with me. I would like to thank Marcus Rebick, David Coleman, Ronald Dore, and Heather Hamill for their comments on early drafts of this book. I am especially grateful for funding from the Clarendon and Sasakawa bursaries, and the Japan Foundation. The generosity of the Japan Foundation, in particular, allowed me to stay in Japan for almost a year, and to travel to my interviewees across long distances. I am very grateful to my parents, Nailya and Sergei Korobtsev, for constant support and encouragement, and especially to my husband, Steffen Hertog, who read numerous drafts of this book and was the only person who seemed to be willing to discuss Japanese lone mothers at all times of the day and night. It is impossible to name everyone who helped me through, but this book would have never happened without the support and advice of many people. The mistakes, of course, are all mine. Ekaterina Hertog June 2008

Tough Choices

  r 

Introduction

1

a 14-year-old junior high school student from a middle class family finds herself unmarried and pregnant. It does not take long until her parents, her friends, her classmates, and everyone around her realize what has happened. Her parents, the gynecologist who confirms the pregnancy, and the school authorities all recommend an abortion as she is too young, needs to continue with her education, and would find it exceptionally hard to support herself and her child.Yet the young expectant mother is unwavering in her decision and eventually gives birth to her child outside marriage. This is not a story of another teenage mother in the United States or the UK, where the numbers of such women have increased dramatically in postwar years, and where many people believe a whole host of social ills can be traced to the lapses of judgment of poor unmarried women who bear children they can ill afford.1 The girl in fact is called Miki and she is the protagonist of 14sai no Haha (A 14-Year-Old Mother), one of the most popular,2 as well as most controversial, Japanese television dramas in 2006. In contrast to many Western countries, unwed mothers in Japan are very rare and teenage unwed mothers even more so.Yet, for months after the last episode had aired, the drama continued to attract considerable attention. Part of the audience clearly believed that the drama, if in an exaggerated way, somehow reflected social ills that young people in contemporary Japan are exposed to. In a survey by the National Congress of Parents and Teachers Association of Japan it was ranked as the second program parents were least willing to have their junior high school children watch.3 It also won the highest TV drama award of the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan in 2007 for it was judged to portray well the reality of an ordinary family and what can happen to it, thereby conveying an important social message.4

   Chapter 1 The National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan also recommended the drama for families with children.5 In reality in 2005 only forty-two girls in Japan who were fourteen or younger gave birth, almost an order of magnitude less than in England and Wales when weighted by population size.6 In Japan, 2 percent of all children were born outside wedlock in 2005 compared to 43 percent in the UK (2005) and 43 percent in the United States (2004).7 Given this rarity, it is striking how much attention the phenomenon attracts in the media and popular culture.8

The Puzzle of Unwed Motherhood in Japan In Western countries unwed mothers and their children came into the spotlight only once they constituted a significant proportion of single-parent households. Their grip on public attention is explained by fear that growing up in an alternative family leads to negative outcomes for children that include lower educational attainment, teenage pregnancy, and behavior and physical and mental health problems.9 In Japan, where only one in about fifty children was born outside marital union in 2006,10 extramarital fertility—however evaluated—simply does not qualify as a significant social problem. Figure 1.1 shows how exceptional the cumulative decisions of Japanese women are compared to their Western counterparts when it comes to out-of-wedlock childbearing. What is it that gives Japanese single unwed mothers such a grip on the public imagination in spite of their uncommonness?11 This book will show how unwed motherhood challenges the basic norms associated with childbearing and childrearing, leaving few people indifferent. Given the lively public interest in unwed mothers and the fact that low illegitimacy rates suggest a distinctive pattern of family formation, the dearth of scholarly interest seems puzzling. Although many scholars have mentioned the rarity of out-of-wedlock childbearing and suggested possible explanations,12 few have made Japanese unwed mothers the object of their study.13 Proposed explanations include economic difficulties, legal discrimination, and the easy availability of abortion. I will discuss these in Chapters 2 to 4. In recent years a number of studies on Japanese single mothers were completed in both English and Japanese. Most of them are, however, predominantly interested in the experiences of divorcées and concentrate on the consequences, rather than the causes, of single motherhood.14 A major reason for the neglect of unwed mothers is probably that illegitimacy trends have for a long time been overshadowed by divorce trends. While creeping up slowly from 1963 until the 1990s, the divorce rate in Japan was still lower than in most Western industrialized countries. This made it possible for researchers to assume that low divorce rates and low illegitimacy rates had

Introduction   

figure 1.1.  Illegitimate children per 1,000 children source:  Adapted from data provided by Professor David Coleman, Oxford. All the figures are from Eurostat, Council of Europe, U.S. Census Bureau, and Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (various years).

similar roots in a labor market environment unfavorable to single mothers, low welfare provision, and generally conservative family attitudes. An investigation of more recent survey data, however, reveals significant liberalization of most family-related trends including divorce. Marriages happen later, the association of sex and marriage has sunk into oblivion, the fertility rate is falling, families are getting smaller, and the numbers of cohabiting couples and single-person households are on the rise. If we look at the divorce rate, it is immediately obvious that Japan over the past half century has broadly followed trends of, and has now caught up with, Western industrialized countries (see Figure 1.2).15 One would expect women who consider carrying a premarital pregnancy to term to be under similar economic, social, and cultural pressures as would-be divorced mothers. Indeed, in most Western industrialized countries their numbers are comparable. For example, in the UK in 2006, 727,100 (45 percent) of all single-mother households were headed by unwed mothers and 508,970 (32 percent) by divorced mothers.16 In 2005, out of all U.S. single-mother households, 3,762,000 (42 percent) were headed by divorced mothers and 3,739,000 (42 percent) by never-married mothers.17 In Japan,

   Chapter 1

figure 1.2.  Crude divorce rate sources:  Data from Eurostat, U.S. Census Bureau, and Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (various years).

however, divorced mothers are much more numerous than never-married ones. In 2006, 1,209,000 (79.7 percent) of all single-mother households were headed by divorced mothers compared to 102,000 (6.7 percent) headed by unwed mothers.18 These figures imply that there must be important differences in the decision-making process of potential divorcées and unwed mothers and that explanations lumping together divorce and illegitimacy trends are at the very least outdated. At the same time, the public fascination with unwed motherhood suggests that the choice of having children out of wedlock touches upon key social norms and values. This book will provide an account of what it is to be an unwed mother in contemporary Japan and how women end up in this situation. This will tell us a great deal about the choices open to Japanese women and illuminate the institutional, social, legal, economic, and normative structures that make Japanese women cling to marriage so resolutely. As marriage age and the divorce rate are rising and fertility is plunging, studies documenting problems with as well as widespread skepticism about contemporary Japanese marriage proliferate.Yet in Japan the association of marriage and fertility has remained strong. At a time when other industrialized countries are searching for ways to encourage childbearing within marriage, Japan allows us to probe mechanisms that keep marriage and childbearing closely associated. It also throws the problems that this association can generate into particularly sharp relief.

Introduction   

Analyzing what women have seen as the most difficult obstacles facing unwed mothers is one of the best ways to tell what is believed to be essential for “normal” mothering, and hence opens a new perspective on the experiences of Japanese mothers and their children. The Japanese case is also relevant against the background of the emerging positive association between nonmarital and overall fertility across industrialized countries in recent years.19 Understanding considerations that underlie childbearing decisions of Japanese unmarried women who find themselves pregnant may throw light on why Japan has been doing so well in competing for the title of the least fertile country in the world.

What Affects Marriage and Reproductive Decisions? Although no research has been done specifically to investigate Japan’s very low illegitimacy rate over the past few decades, scholars have developed several theories of the changing patterns of family formation that could be applicable to Japan.The leading explanations cite women’s greater economic power, the increasing generosity of welfare, changing social attitudes, and social contagion. Theories that see economic factors as the heart of the matter apply market logic to family research. This approach is most strongly associated with the name of Gary Becker, a Nobel Prize–­winning economist.20 According to Becker, marital unions are most attractive when spouses specialize: typically the wife in homemaking and the husband in labor market work. Growing labor market participation of women decreases specialization and thus, following Becker’s logic, the benefits of marriage. Hence, more women are encouraged to forego marriage. Another line of theorizing, often called the welfare state hypothesis, suggests that the rise of extramarital fertility is the direct result of the growing state support for single mothers.21 Japanese women are still much more disadvantaged in the labor market than their Western counterparts. When it comes to welfare support for single mothers in OECD countries, Japan is firmly situated among the less­generous countries. As Chapter 3 will amply document, a Japanese single mother is rarely able to secure an income that would rival that of an average male earner; a Japanese woman would need to be severely deluded to imagine leading a welfare-supported life of leisure if she became a single mother. Thus, economic theories predict a low birth rate outside wedlock in Japan since single motherhood is an economically disadvantageous decision. Yet, these theories also suggest that few women with children would divorce their husbands for the very same reason.This, however, has not been the case over the past decade. Since the magnitude of economic disadvantages faced

   Chapter 1 by divorced and unwed mothers is similar, why would their behavior be so different? As is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3, economic theories fail to explain the large difference in the numbers of divorced and nevermarried mothers. An alternative to the economic approach, the ideational theory of fertility, sees values and attitudes as the main explanation for changes in fertility in contemporary industrialized countries.22 The thrust of the ideational theory is that with the disappearance of traditional family values and rising affluence in the Western world, a strong commitment to individualism in everything, including family choices, became acceptable and more common, leading to, among other things, greater variation in family forms.23 Again, in this general form the theory is powerless to explain the difference in divorce and illegitimacy trends in contemporary Japan. One study has argued that “enough [Japanese] women have assimilated messages of freedom and individual choice into their lives that marriage, birth, and divorce trends are being significantly affected.”24 This is very much in line with the ideational theory and offers an explanation for the growing divorce rates and generally greater acceptance of single motherhood (Table 1.1). The ideational theory, however, leaves open the question of why all these new values of freedom and individual choice have not yet changed the fact that almost all births in Japan happen within marriage. The theories mentioned so far have one feature in common. They struggle to make sense of the huge difference in the numbers of divorced and unwed mothers. The advantage of the social contagion theory is that it is capable of accounting for such a difference. The social contagion theory argues, in a nutshell, that the higher the expected level of childbearing outside marriage is in one’s reference group the greater the individual’s probability of having a child outside wedlock.25 It has been applied recently by John Ermisch to explain the growth of illegitimacy in European countries.26 Ermisch argues that the number of chil-

table 1.1  Attitudes toward single motherhood in Japan If a woman wants to have a child as a single parent but she doesn’t want to have a stable relationship with a man, do you approve or disapprove? (%) Year

N

Approve

Disapprove

Depends

1981 2005

1,204 1,044

11.6 21

47 35

33.7 43

source: World Values Survey 2000, www.worldvaluessurvey.org/ (accessed 20.12.2008).

Introduction   

dren born outside wedlock is driven upward by the spread of cohabitation: the more women choose to cohabit in any given society the less formidable the prospect of cohabitation instead of immediate marriage appears to other women who face the decision between cohabitation and marriage. Ermisch supports his argument by demonstrating the strong association between the levels of cohabitation and illegitimacy in sixteen European countries. Cohabiting unions are less stable than marriages, so many of the children who start their lives in cohabiting unions eventually end up growing up with single unwed mothers. The spread of cohabiting unions is likely to make women less willing to compromise and marry someone just to avoid giving birth outside wedlock. In light of these findings, the still relatively low rates of cohabitation and rarity of unwed mothers in contemporary Japan could be the reason why having a child outside marriage is such a difficult decision.Yet, although cohabitation rates have been going up rapidly in the past few years,27 there has been no corresponding boom in out-of-wedlock childbearing. Thus if cohabitation does promote premarital pregnancies, these seem to get absorbed by shotgun marriages or perhaps abortions.28 Given the similarity in the numbers of divorced and unwed mothers in Western industrialized countries, it is also conceivable that the growth of divorce there fueled the growth of illegitimacy. In Japan, however, as we will see in Chapter 5, unwed mothers are viewed and view themselves as very different from divorcées, and the growing divorce rate seems to have had little effect on their numbers. If in Japan only knowing other unwed mothers, but not cohabiting couples or divorcées, increases one’s likelihood of having a child outside marriage, then the social contagion theory suggests a good explanation of why recently many more women have opted for divorce rather than for having a child outside wedlock. Divorce has become so widespread that these days most people personally know at least one divorcée.29 On the other hand, unwed mothers are rare; moreover, as will be discussed in Chapter 5, many such women choose to pass for divorcées. In these circumstances, the social contagion theory would predict that many more women would think it possible for themselves to have a divorce than an illegitimate child. The major generic problem with the social contagion theory is that it cannot elucidate the beginning of any particular trend. It can be reasonably assumed to be at work only after a noticeable proportion of the population starts displaying a certain behavior. There are so few unwed mothers in Japan that it is unlikely to be relevant. In Chapter 5 I investigate whether, then, it is the opposite of social contagion—stigmatization—that prevents Japanese women from having children outside wedlock. As we will see, while stigmatization is still an important factor, its influence has been

   Chapter 1 reduced considerably over the past decades. Thus it can only act as an auxiliary explanatory mechanism. Altogether, the theories developed from Western data are insufficient to explain the very low illegitimacy rates in Japan. This book’s detailed analysis of interviews with sixty-eight unwed mothers offers novel insights into how social norms and economic considerations interact and are played out in reproductive and family formation decisions in a crucial outlier case among industrialized countries. Unwed motherhood is such a potentially costly step that it brings out these considerations most explicitly.30 Rather than relying on any one theory, this book documents the stories unwed mothers tell, what they believed made it easier for them to have children outside wedlock, and what made their decisions more difficult.

Making the Choice As economist Reiner Eichenberger notes, “having a child, instead of remaining childless, binds the time and financial resources of the parents for about 20 years, perhaps even for the rest of their lives.”31 I would also add that the costs of having a child are not only heavy, but also unpredictable, as it is impossible to tell how the child will turn out when the decision whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term has to be made. Thus the decision is a complex one, influenced by many factors. This book tries to do justice to this complexity. The chapters are organized around the clusters of women’s considerations. Chapter 2 documents the pregnancy solutions potentially open to premaritally pregnant women, namely, marriage, abortion, giving up the child, and rearing the child outside wedlock. Women rarely become unwed mothers in Japan by design. Their decision-making process is usually a lengthy and painful one—which opens a unique analytical window for us. The ideal of marriage is often desperately fought for. In a striking reversal of Western norms, both unwed mothers and those around them often feel that few fates—including growing up with unhappily married parents or, when marriage is unavailable, abortion—are worse for a child than illegitimacy. In Chapter 3 we will see how women’s solutions and desires are constrained by the economic environment. This chapter offers the first detailed scholarly account of the ways economic institutions and policies affect single unwed mothers. Throughout the chapter all discussions of policies and institutions are evaluated through my interviewees’ opinions about and experiences with them. Interestingly, many of the women found out the specific entitlements and penalties of their choice only after they had a child.

Introduction   

Chapter 4 analyzes the treatment of unwed mothers in the legal system. Like Chapter 3, the main finding is that few women were aware of the difficulties unwed mothers face in the legal system, with the exception of the discrimination they suffer through the family registry system. Moreover, we will see that the legal treatment of unwed mothers improved substantially over the past decade. Chapter 5 is concerned with the stigmatization and shame associated with unwed motherhood. We will see that while both are important, most unwed mothers were successful in avoiding stigma and shaming by passing for divorcées. Chapter 6 recounts the fears and dreams women have for their children, drastically reflecting the high value that most of my interviewees accorded to marriage. The key ingredient of the insecurity my interviewees felt during pregnancy, insecurity that led them to yearn for marriage and pushed many of them close to abortion, was their concern about the effect illegitimacy would have on their children’s lives.

Methodology definition I define single unwed mothers as mothers who have never been legally married to the father of at least one of their children32 and who have assumed the primary responsibility for the emotional and material well-being of their child(ren) due to the absence of a male partner. In defining single motherhood the trickiest question is after what level of contact with the father of her child(ren) or another man should one presume that a woman is not raising her child(ren) alone. Being reluctant to decide upon this question arbitrarily, I relied on two criteria: women’s selfdefinition, and absence of cohabitation. In the majority of the interviews, defining women as unwed mothers was relatively straightforward. The women lived alone or with their parents, assumed the primary responsibility for the well-being of their children, and were not in any contact with the fathers of their children. Several cases were more complicated, however. Megumi for a long time lived separately from her daughter and only visited her twice a year, during summer and winter vacations.33 She chose to fully rely on her own parents to raise her daughter till the age of eighteen. Kyoko left her daughter in the care of the parents of the daughter’s biological father and only visited her occasionally. Finally, five women were in close contact with the fathers of their children and received extensive financial and childcare support from them. None of these women could be defined as single unwed mothers in the strictest sense, though that is what they were de jure. ­Interviews with them were invaluable for

   Chapter 1 ­ nderstanding to what extent the difficulties in making a choice to become u an unwed mother stem from the expected practical disadvantages and to what extent from the status of an unwed mother itself. research methods I have chosen to rely primarily on qualitative methods for this project for several reasons. To this day little academic research has been done on unwed mothers in contemporary Japan and qualitative research is known to be invaluable in mapping out uncharted areas. The unique contribution of this book is its individual-level analysis, which offers us glimpses of the internalized beliefs that inform decisions. Finally, qualitative research has long proved to be the most suitable for studying sensitive issues.34 In addition to my own primary qualitative research, I also rely on secondary quantitative sources to document the environment in which individual decisions take place in Japan and offer comparisons with other industrialized democracies whenever these are illuminating.35 the sample My fieldwork was carried out within eleven months between the end of June 2004 and early May 2005. I conducted sixty-six in-depth semi-­structured interviews with single unwed mothers and two unmarried women who were both in the last trimester of their pregnancies and expected to become unwed mothers. The interviews lasted between one and five hours. In my interviews I concentrated on the period of pregnancy: what the women were worried about; when and how they made their choice as to how to deal with the pregnancy; was there anyone who had a particular effect on their decision; what they perceived as the biggest obstacle to bearing an illegitimate child before the child was actually born and what helped them most to decide to have an illegitimate child; when and how they told people around them about the child; what reactions they expected, and so on. I also carried out interviews with two small comparison groups: divorcées and unmarried women with no children. I interviewed twelve women who had divorced or separated from their husbands before their child reached 1 year of age. These women were for all practical considerations in a position very similar to that of single unwed mothers. They had to make a living and take care of a baby at the same time. The child was so small at the time the parents separated that he or she would not remember the father. The difference in fathers’ child support payments to ex-wives as compared to ex-lovers is not very large.36 Crucially, analysis of interviews with this control group allowed me to compare the ways unwed-mothers-to-be and divorcées-to-be made decisions to become single mothers. This comparison helped to tease out the differences

Introduction   

between divorce and unwed motherhood in public on the one hand and self-­perceptions on the other. Finally, I interviewed sixteen women who were over 34 years old, not married, and had no children. These women were approaching a situation when there was a serious chance that they might lose their ability to have children and thus remain forever childless. My interviews with them concentrated on whether they ever considered having a child outside wedlock and if yes or no then why. Unwed mothers are women who resolved their pregnancies very atypically. The interviews with this control group allowed me to gauge whether there was any difference in accounts about real and hypothetical resolutions of premarital pregnancies.This comparison was important because I asked unwed mothers about their decisions post-factum, and such an arrangement is potentially fraught with rationalizations. Interviews with childless unmarried women allowed me to hypothesize about the extent to which the sentiments and considerations of unwed mothers were shared by women who did not make such an extreme decision. The sixteen unmarried childless women interviewed are likely to be more representative of Japanese women in general, hence the interviews allow one to test whether unwed mothers’ types of considerations and values are atypical or, in their fundamental outlines, shared by other Japanese women. Sample Recruitment The biggest survey sample of unwed mothers available at the time of the field research was that from the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (JIL) survey and comprised eighty-nine women.37 Lack of a survey based on a bigger random sample of unwed mothers meant that it was impossible even to aim at a representative sample of unwed mothers; there was no benchmark for evaluation.38 Moreover, for exploratory research, variability is more important than the representativeness of the sample. Thus, my main aim when generating the sample was to achieve as much diversity as possible. • Unwed mothers To ensure diversity I used several ways of contacting interviewees. First of all, I got introductions from three lobby groups: Shinguru Mazā Fōramu (Single Mothers’ Forum), hereafter SMF; Konsakai; and Nakusō Koseki to Kongaishi Sabetsu Kōryūkai (Let’s Eliminate Family Registry and Illegitimacy Associated Discrimination Association), herefater Kōryūkai. SMF 39 is a group that provides support and lobbies for the rights and benefits of single mothers in general. In 2004–5 SMF reported to have about six hundred fee-paying members.40 SMF was established in the 1980s and is said to have had as many as eight hundred fee-paying members from all of Japan in its best years. These days getting new members has become more

   Chapter 1 difficult, and this is reflected in the demographic composition of the group. The most active members of the group are in their forties or older.41 At the regular meetings there was a maximum of about thirty members present, and more often there were about ten. All the interviewees I was introduced to at Single Mothers’ Forum were in their mid-thirties or older. In 2004– 2005 the headquarters of SMF were based in Tokyo and there were active subgroups in the Kansai area and Fukuoka city.42 Konsakai43 (based in the Kansai area) and Kōryūkai (based in Tokyo)44 are organizations lobbying for the rights of unmarried mothers and illegitimate children. Cohabiting couples made up a large proportion of the membership of these groups. Konsakai had about two hundred fee-paying members in 2004–2005 and its only regular activity was publishing a monthly newsletter. Like SMF, Konsakai had few young members. Kōryūkai is a very active movement fighting legal discrimination against illegitimate children. Tanaka Sumiko, the head of the group, was the person who started the court trials that eventually led to a change in the way illegitimate children are recorded in the family and residential registries (see Chapter 4).45 Active members of these three organizations introduced me to eleven interviewees. Four more were enlisted through snowballing from these initial contacts. Recognizing the potential bias inherent in contacting interviewees through activist groups, I asked SMF, Kōryūkai, and a then active internet chat room for single mothers (Shinguru Mazā Kaigishitsu)46 to put information about my research with my contact details on their websites. As a result of advertising my research this way, I got to know and was able to interview forty-one unwed mothers. I found twelve more of my interviewees in six Mother and Child Living Support Facilities (Boshi Seikatsu Shien Shisetsu). Mother and Child Living Support Facilities provide free housing and broad care, ranging from childrearing support to psychological care; job-search support (in one place even job introductions); basic life skills training; and so on. Only single mothers with children below 18 years of age are eligible to stay. In 2006 there were 281 such facilities in Japan, containing about four thousand single-mother households. As these figures suggest, only a small minority of a total 1,517,000 single mother households can be housed in the Living Support Facilities. Typically, single mothers who gain entry have problems beyond simply being the sole breadwinners and childcarers of their families: in 2006 about a half ran away from violent partners, a fifth could not find a suitable place to live, 14 percent had financial problems.47 The geographical location of facilities that cooperated with my research was as follows: two in Tokyo, one in Kyoto, two in Tottori, and one in Kurayoshi.48

Introduction    • Divorcées I accumulated my sample of divorcées through Mother and Child Living Support Facilities, introductions from my acquaintances from SMF, and responses to my advertisements on the internet. • Unmarried childless women over thirty-four I got introductions to these women through personal acquaintances, through the Oxford Alumni Society in Tokyo, and through snowballing.

Sample Characteristics • Unwed mothers In my search for interviewees I strove for variation in such categories as age, income, education, employment type, and residence at the time the decision about childbirth was made.49 The age of my interviewees at the time of the interview ranged from 19 to 73 (average age being 38.2, median age 36) (see Table 1.2). Age at childbirth ranged from 16 to 44 (average age at birth being 30.9, median age 32). I strove to get women with as young children as possible since children’s outcomes, their performance in school, their progression to higher education, their own evaluation of their happiness once they can convey it, and the like, may affect women’s evaluations of their choices. While one cannot avoid issues of post hoc rationalization completely, concentrating on women with young children allowed me to limit the amount of rationalization connected with children’s outcomes. This consideration, however, led to a trade-off: women’s age is inevitably loosely correlated with the age of their children because women are fertile only for a limited number of years. Consequently, interviewing older women to fulfill the aim of age diversity inevitably resulted in interviewing some women with older children. I also managed to achieve considerable diversity on the income variable. The lowest income in my sample was 0 (not even receiving any welfare support), and the the highest was 12 million yen (about $109,100) a year (see Table 1.3).50 Average income in my sample was 2.7 million yen (about $24,500) a year, and median income was 2.4 million yen a year (about

table 1.2  Age variation of unwed mothers in my sample Age groups Number of women

19 –24

25 –29

30 –34

35 –39

40 –44

2

6

11

24

10

source:  Author’s interviews.

45 –49 50 and over 8

7

   Chapter 1 table 1.3  Earnings distribution (million yen) of unwed mothers in my sample Yearly earnings per family member Number of women

No earnings (incl. welfare recipients)

0 –0.83*

0.83 –1.62**

Above 1.62

14

12

19

23

source:  Author’s interviews. * 0.83 million yen a year = average income per family member in lone-mother families ** 1.62 million yen a year = average income per family member in a family with at least one child (see MHLW, 2006e).

$22,000) (compared to 2.3 million yen a year in the above-mentioned sample of eighty-nine cases from the Japan Institute for Labour and Policy Training). To compare, in 2004 the income of an average household was 5.804 million yen (about $52,700) a year, and the income of an average household with at least one child was 7.149 million yen (about $64,900) a year.51 Types of employment were also fairly varied among my interviewees. Forty-four percent of the unwed mothers I interviewed were employed full time, 31 percent had various non-full-time working arrangements, 6 percent were self-employed, and 19 percent were unemployed.52 The education characteristics of my interviewees also varied considerably. I interviewed a range of women, from those who only graduated from junior high school (compulsory education in Japan), to those who had doctoral degrees (see Table 1.4).53 My interviewees also came from very diverse family backgrounds. Their fathers’ occupations ranged from farmers and plumbers to a board member of a big TV company and a CEO of a large company.54 In terms of geographical distribution, I interviewed women in the urbanized Kansai55 and Kantō56 areas, as well as the more provincial Fukuoka prefecture and predominantly rural Tottori prefecture. These locations were chosen in order to get views and experiences of single unwed mothers in big cities, towns, and rural areas.57 Generally, the higher the population of the prefecture the more women have children outside wedlock (see Map 1.1).58 table 1.4  Highest level of education completed by unwed mothers in my sample Education

Junior high school

High school

Vocational school

College

University

8

23

9

5

23

Number of women source:  Author’s interviews.

Introduction   

The likelihood of having a child outside wedlock, however, does not depend on how populated the prefecture is, but rather on whether a woman lives in an urban area or in the countryside. Using a recent panel survey, Iwasawa and Mita have shown that out-of-wedlock childbearing is most prevalent in urban areas, particularly in towns, and least common in the countryside, where shotgun marriages prevail.59

map 1.1.  Percent of illegitimate births out of all births by prefecture, 2004 source:  MHLW, 2005a.

   Chapter 1 • Divorcées and unmarried childless women Both divorcées and unmarried, childless women were relatively marginal for my research, but I still strove to achieve variability in the samples so as to be able to compare their views with those of unwed mothers. The age of the divorcées I interviewed ranged from twenty-one to fiftytwo, and their age at childbirth ranged from nineteen to thirty-three. In level of education, the divorcées’ ranged from junior high school graduates to university graduates with advanced degrees. Some of them had only part-time jobs and some were employed full time.Their average income was 2.5 million yen (about $22,700) a year. The age of the unmarried women with no children ranged from thirtyfour to fifty-six. In level of education, they varied from high school graduates to university graduates. The sample included both part-time and full-time employees. Their average income was 6.3 million yen (about $57,300) a year.60 This study is distinctive in two ways. First, it is the first in-depth study based on such a large and diverse sample of unwed mothers in Japan. Second, it also is the first to systematically investigate unwed mothers who were not part of any institutional or activist network.61 As only a minority of unwed mothers have experience of living in institutions, and as membership of all support groups reportedly is falling, this study addresses the crucial issue of looking at the less visible, but more numerous group of unwed mothers without institutional or activist affiliation. I chose to limit this study to women’s experiences. Women’s information about whether they are pregnant or not is much better than their partners’. Moreover, until a certain stage, in most cases it is up to a woman whether to inform her partner about the pregnancy or not. In societies such as Japan where abortion is effectively available on demand, this puts a great deal of power over pregnancy resolution into women’s hands. That is why in my research I decided to concentrate on the way women make choices about whether to carry a premarital pregnancy to term or not, and pay less attention to their partners’ opinions. For information about partners, I primarily relied on women’s accounts. Our understanding of the reproductive decisions of premaritally pregnant women, however, will benefit from a separate detailed study of the attitudes and behavior of the men responsible for the pregnancies.

the conducting and analysis of the inte rviews The interviewer affects the interview in many ways. Many of my respondents solicited information about my age and gender before agreeing to be interviewed, thus suggesting that these categories may have affected their decisions whether to talk to me or not. I was also often asked whether I am

Introduction   

an unwed mother myself. After it transpired I was not, I was asked whether I intend to become one. This repeated questioning suggested that unwed mothers were sensitive to my marital status.Thus the fact that I was a young, unmarried woman probably had some effect on the stories I was told and the selection of women I was able to interview. Of all my personal characteristics, however, my obvious foreignness probably had the most effect. That I am not Japanese seemed to put me outside my interviewees’ frame of reference and often appeared to infuse me with objectivity from their point of view. I believe that my identity as an outsider in Japanese society had a positive effect on the women’s willingness to tell their stories. After I finished the fieldwork, all the interviews were transcribed by me and then analyzed using a grounded theory approach with the help of MaxQDA, qualitative data analysis software that I largely used in its Code-andRetrieve capacity.62

  r 

“Naturally I Believed I Would Get Married”

2

making the choice

junko was thirty-three when she found herself unexpectedly pregnant. At first she was exhilarated: “I never had been pregnant before and although perhaps I should not be saying this, when I realized I was going to have a baby I was so happy!”Yet, even that original response was already tainted with doubts. Realizing that as “the child’s father was married and had a family already, marriage was [out of the question],” Junko could not decide if she should keep her child. To me Junko seemed to be in a position where she could have afforded having a desired if unplanned child without much hesitation. She had a fulltime job as a licensed tax accountant with a stable income of 3.3 million yen ($30,000) a year and was confident she would be able to keep her position after childbirth.1 She had a very close relationship with her parents and was living with them at the time of her pregnancy. Moreover, Junko mentioned that a previous unsuccessful (and childless) marriage made her doubt she was suited for a marriage union, but did not eliminate her desire to have a child one day. In spite of her objectively favorable circumstances and her skeptical attitude toward marriage, Junko agonized over a solution to her situation from the moment the doctor told her she was pregnant. Although her first impulse was to keep the child and raise her alone, she started doubting this decision almost immediately after making it. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell [my parents about it]. But then even if I made up my mind it would be impossible for me to raise the child without my parents’ help. I couldn’t quit my job. To keep the job I needed my parents’ help. Renting an apartment and taking care of the child alone just didn’t seem realistic. As I kept worrying and not being able to tell my parents about [the pregnancy] I started feeling that perhaps I can’t raise this child alone after all. I began thinking about an abortion.

Making the Choice   

Junko spent the first five months of her pregnancy2 unable to come to any decision. Eventually, when her pregnancy “was already almost visible” she told her parents. While not exactly thrilled by the news, they promised their support, and Junko finally knew she was not having an abortion. This decision, however, did not mark the end of her uncertainty. Now doubts about whether marrying the child’s father might not be a good idea after all overwhelmed her. According to Junko, although her child’s father was married, his relationship with his wife was strained. Upon realization that his mistress was going to bear his child, the father started hinting at the possibility of marriage. Junko for her part “didn’t really want this all that much. But then I was very scared of raising a child by myself. Although at first I was sure I could do it all, this talking [of marriage] made me doubt my ability to go through this alone.” Torn between opting for a marriage and being a single mother, Junko did not get peace of mind until her daughter was 2 years old. It was the child’s father’s eventual decision to stay with his wife that put an end to her uncertainty. Junko’s story illustrates the potential alternatives unmarried mothers-tobe face when deciding how to deal with their pregnancy. Among these alternatives unwed motherhood was rarely described as the most preferable. Many of my interviewees went through stages of considering and reconsidering what to do, just like Junko did. This chapter is organized along the nodes of the hierarchy of decisions that first led my interviewees to a premarital pregnancy and then to a birth outside wedlock. I discuss the accessibility and prevalence of all the alternatives as well as my interviewees’ declared preferences. Following my interviewees’ experiences step by step reveals a complex picture in which the prevalence of marriage in society, family laws, accessibility of adoptions and attitudes to them as well as availability of contraception and abortion all affect decisions.

Setting the Scene I began Junko’s story at the point she noticed her pregnancy. To explore all the logically possible reasons behind the very low illegitimacy rate in contemporary Japan we must start earlier than that, however. Most pregnancies, of course, start with sexual intercourse.3 An unmarried woman can choose celibacy until marriage, rendering premarital pregnancy and childbirth impossible. She can also choose to engage in sexual intercourse, in which case pregnancy is possible and the degree of risk depends on the contraception used. Is it possible that the low levels of illegitimacy in Japan are explained by strong social norms that mandate female virginity before marriage, as suggested by Samuel Coleman in 1983? Or could it be that Japanese women are well-educated and well-skilled in contraception use and simply avoid

   Chapter 2 getting pregnant before marriage, as implied by Merry White in 1993? I explore the answers to these questions in the following sections.

Celibacy In 1983 Coleman wrote that a high value conferred on premarital female virginity as well as a lack of contact between young men and women are important factors keeping down premarital pregnancies and childbirths in Japan.4 By the 1990s at the very latest, however, the ideal of female chastity had lost its power.5 Already in 1997, over 80 percent of 18- to 49-year-old unmarried men and women felt that premarital sex was acceptable for an unmarried couple.6 Today sex outside marriage in Japan is the norm rather than an exception.7 Results of surveys on sexual experience before marriage vary, but they all testify to high level of sexual activity before marriage. In 2004, 65 percent of unmarried women reported that they had sexual experience.8 In 2005, 30 percent of female high school students and 26.6 percent of male students reported having had sexual experience. For university students the figures were 62.3 percent and 63 percent, respectively.9 Widespread pre- and extramarital sexual activity supports the booming industry of love hotels in Japan.10 Mark West estimates that about three-fourths of the clients are couples who are not married to each other.11 Finally, the large numbers of diagnosed sexually transmitted diseases (STD) are another indicator of widespread sexual relations.12 Due to the shortcomings of the underlying data, none of these figures can be used to estimate the exact proportion of individuals with premarital sex experience in Japan.13 However, the variety of evidence pointing to widespread sexual activity is likely to convince anyone but the most skeptical reader that premarital abstinence is not widespread enough in contemporary Japan to account for the low numbers of illegitimate births.

Contraception A considerable share of young unmarried women apparently do not hesitate to have sex before marriage. If a woman chooses to engage in sexual intercourse, the likelihood of pregnancy depends on her own and her partner’s knowledge about contraception, the availability of contraception, and consistency of its adoption. how available is contrace ption in japan? Western-type contraception became available in Japan at the turn of the twentieth century.14 All contraceptive devices apart from condoms and diaphragms were prohibited by a Home Ministry ordinance between 1930 and

Making the Choice   

1948 (the year the ordinance expired). In April 1948, the Pharmaceutical Law, which treated contraceptives like any other drugs that could be sold openly, was passed. Immediately after the law went into effect, sales rose.15 Governmental support for contraception was strong in the early postwar years, but proved to be fickle. While all the standard barrier methods made it to the Japanese market without much ado, the more reliable hormonal contraceptives faced numerous obstacles. The pill finally became available in Japan only in 1999.16 Other types of hormonal contraceptives such as injectables, implants, hormonal IUDs, emergency contraception, and so on, available in most industrialized countries today are still not approved for use in Japan.17 Moreover, access to the pill is constrained by the prescription guidelines, which “require pill users to visit a doctor every three months for pelvic examination and undergo tests for sexually transmitted diseases and uterine cancer. In the United States and Europe, in contrast, an annual examination is standard for pill users.”18 These rules are likely to act as a barrier to many women, as both the pill itself and required frequent checkups are not covered by health insurance and so are costly. “A recent survey of gynecologists found that the median monthly cost of contraceptive pills was 2,700 yen (about $25). . . . For examinations required on the first visit, the cost ranges from no charge to more than 10,000 yen (about $90); most first visits were in the range of 3,000–10,000 yen (about $27–90).”19 The checkup requirement also makes the pill appear dangerous. As we will see below, these constraints on availability inevitably result in limited usage of the pill. knowledge about contrace ption Restricted access to the pill of course does not mean that unplanned pregnancies cannot be avoided. Correct and consistent use of barrier methods also prevents unwanted pregnancies in most cases.20 Efficient usage of contraception is, however, impossible unless users are sufficiently informed. Introducing sex education into compulsory school curricula is probably the most efficient long-term method of spreading the necessary knowledge. Using schools to disseminate information also offers the possibility of reaching youth before their first sexual experience.The necessity of sex education in schools has been debated in Japan since the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1992, the Ministry of Education finally allocated time for sex education within the compulsory school curriculum. Though the introduction of sex education was a step forward, its structure as mandated by the Ministry of Education guidelines seems to impede the provision of detailed tangible knowledge. According to Beverly Anne Yamamoto, sex education in Japanese elementary schools amounts to five hours of teaching spread over the last two years. To the extent that sexual intercourse is covered, it is mostly discussed in terms of reproduction.21

   Chapter 2 The provision of sex education does not improve much beyond elementary education. A survey of junior high schools and high schools in Kitakyūshū showed that sex education classes take place regularly in only 13.8 percent of schools.22 Furthermore, the quality and comprehensiveness of teaching materials leave much to be desired. Only a few pages are allotted to sex and reproductive education in physical education textbooks authorized for use in public middle schools.23 None of the books covers family planning and abortion, whereas contraception is covered only in the context of sexually transmitted diseases, and the main method of contraception discussed is the condom.24 Of course, schools may use additional materials besides textbooks and, as Yamamoto finds, the majority do so.25 Most teachers responsible for sex education report discussing abortion and contraception. Still, if we bear in mind how few classes are allocated for sex education in most schools and the range of information that is claimed to be covered,26 none of the topics is likely to be covered extensively. The system allows for wide differences among schools in emphasis and method of sex education, and some schools choose not to teach it at all.27 To make matters worse, some observers are noting a conservative backlash against sex education. The controversy with Love and Body Book,28 is an example of the growing concern that sexual education provides too much information to youngsters.29 As a result, schools are not an efficient vehicle of disseminating knowledge about sex, contraception, abortion, and related topics. According to a survey carried out among Hyogo prefecture high school students, only 11.5 percent of boys and 17.8 percent of girls acquire knowledge on sex-related topics from their teachers.30 Clinics, which could be another medium of formal sex education, do not offer sex education related services. In Japan doctors have little opportunity to advise people on contraception unless individuals specifically turn to them.31 Even in one-to-one interactions with women who are known to have had an unwanted pregnancy, a doctor may choose not to volunteer advice. In a survey of two hundred gynecologists by the former Ministry of Health and Welfare (now the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare), only half said they always gave advice about contraception to women who had abortions.32 Consequently, hardly anyone gains knowledge on sex-related health issues from doctors.33 The documented inefficiency of formal channels in spreading knowledge on sex-related topics, contraception in particular, suggests that that if the low illegitimacy rate in Japan is explained by people’s skill in contraceptive use they must be acquiring the necessary information through informal channels. This hypothesis is supported by the survey of Hyogo prefecture high school students. The majority of young people report they gained knowl-

Making the Choice   

edge about sex from peers and friends: 70.4 percent of boys and 69 percent of girls. If we look at the sources young people turn to to find out about sex, boys report learning mostly from adult videos (47.2 percent), magazines about adult videos (33.3 percent), and Yangu Komikku manga (27.3 percent).34 Girls said they gained most information from manga (45.8 percent), late night variety shows (24.6 percent), and TV dramas (24.4 percent).35 Merry White argues that popular teenage “magazines fill the information gap and regularly feature explicit instruction and upbeat, enthusiastic encouragement of sexual activity.”36 The information offered according to her is much more explicit and clear than that in Western teenage magazines and apart from “how to” sexual advice, there is also advice on abortion and contraception.37 She concludes that “there is no question that the new Japanese teen is sexually sophisticated.”38 This statement, however, is somewhat contradicted by the relative inefficiency of contraceptive use and the high abortion rates in Japan, as we will see later in the chapter. All the existing research indicates that information about sex (including contraception) is most likely to be acquired through informal sources that are not necessarily reliable as their main aim is entertainment rather than providing details on heath and technical issues related to contraception. Thus the acquired knowledge may be distorted, vary in quality, and lack the emphasis on the importance of correct and consistent usage of contraceptive devices. An example of the way sexual relationships get misrepresented in movies and comic books is given by Swee Lin Ho, who recounts the story of a young man who, having applied some of the information he gathered through these channels, was called a “sex maniac” and “mentally sick” by his ex-girlfriends.39 More than half of the unwed mothers in my sample got pregnant either because they did not use contraception consistently or because they did not use it at all. Like Natsumi, a 46-year-old unwed mother with a junior high education, they relied on inner confidence that they “definitely won’t get pregnant” when practicing unprotected sex. Limited understanding of contraception and pregnancy was not restricted to lower-educated women.40 Against this background of incomplete knowledge and limited availability, what are the prevalence and efficiency of contraception use? prevalence and e fficie ncy of contrace ption use The proportion of current contraception users among unmarried women 20 to 49 years old went up from 39.3 percent in 1990 to 57.1 percent in 2000.41 A more detailed 2004 survey showed that only 43 percent of unmarried women with sexual experience use contraception consistently, while 35 percent use it “usually” and 11 percent “sometimes.”42 These figures place Japan well behind most other industrialized countries and even many

   Chapter 2 i­ndustrializing countries.43 To make matters worse, among those who do use contraception, the most effective methods (pill, IUD) are least popular. In 2004 only 1 percent of unmarried women relied on the pill. The most popular methods of contraception were condoms (78 percent), withdrawal (27 percent), the basal body temperature method (5 percent), and the Ogino rhythm method (3 percent).44 These answers suggest that many people alternate condoms with withdrawal, temperature, or the rhythm method for contraception, although the latter three are notoriously unsafe.45 Coleman’s observation that “a country that is ultra modern in so many other respects has a family planning technology that was created in the 1930s” appears to be still largely true.46 Against this background, Japan’s reportedly high rate of unexpected pregnancies comes as no surprise. Christiana Norgren cites the Professional Women’s Coalition for Sexuality and Health, which in 1999 calculated that only 36 percent of pregnancies were wanted or planned and that 40 percent of all births in Japan are mistimed or unwanted.47 Supplementing the National Fertility Survey with data from the 1992 Mainichi Survey on Family Planning, a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute estimates that in Japan 52 percent of pregnancies are unintended.48 For all but fourteen women in my sample, pregnancy came as a complete surprise—although given the patchiness of the precautions they took against getting pregnant, for anyone with a better understanding of contraception, conception should have seemed at the very least a serious possibility. Most of my interviewees relied on condoms alternating them with rhythm and withdrawal.The majority, including quite a few university-educated women, lacked understanding of the importance of using contraception consistently and became pregnant because they “did not use it [contraception] on that day by chance.” Taking a passive attitude to the choice of the contraception method was typical. Mika, a 41-year-old high school graduate, was mildly surprised when asked why she opted for condoms: “I wasn’t choosing; [we used condoms] because that was what he bought.” Kaeko, a 46-year-old unwed mother with a vocational school education, often had unprotected sex because of her boyfriend’s reluctance to use condoms. He even lied to me! For example . . . even when I say “Use a condom, OK?” he’ll say “I don’t have any” or “there are none left.” And when I protest “You’re lying, there must be some,” he’ll produce one from a drawer or something like that. I felt like “What is that?!” This is the way it was.

Many of my interviewees also demonstrated a tendency to get careless once they were in a stable relationship even if it was with a married man. Such carelessness was often explained by their unconscious association of contraception with STD rather than pregnancy prevention.49

Making the Choice   

Unmarried and pregnant women can

Marry or cohabit

Give up the future child

Cooperation of the man needed

Have an abortion

Give birth and raise the child alone

Possibility depends on the timing when pregnancy noticed

figure 2.1.  Potential choices of a premaritally pregnant woman

Most of my interviewees had an unexpected pregnancy, so arguably they are likely to be less knowledgeable, sloppy contraceptors than the general population. They were not unique in their experience, however. Low abstinence rates and bad contraception practices detailed above are probably the main reasons behind the high rate of unplanned pregnancies. What happens to these quite numerous unwanted pregnancies in the few months between conception and childbearing? Was Junko, whom we met at the beginning of this chapter, unique in her indecision and serious consideration of marriage and abortion? What are the choices and the preferences of an unmarried woman faced with an unexpected pregnancy? Theoretically, an unmarried and pregnant woman has a set of four possible choices (see Figure 2.1), which will be the organizing principle for the remainder of the chapter. Throughout the discussion I divide my interviewees into a “conventional majority” (women who strongly believed in the virtues of a two-parent family) and an “unconventional minority” (women who did not accept any specific family form as intrinsically superior).

Marriage the conventional majority When I asked Yoshiko, a professional NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) nurse, about her relationship with the father of her child she explained that “before pregnancy I lived with him; we lived on my earnings. He never had anything more than a part-time job. We talked about this [when the pregnancy was discovered]. [He said] I like my life as it is.You work, care for

   Chapter 2 the child, and do all the housework; I won’t help.” Under these conditions he was willing to consider marriage. Fully aware that taking care of both a husband and a child would be harder than just raising her child alone, ­Yoshiko still jumped at the chance. The marriage eventually did not happen because the groom discovered that Yoshiko had epilepsy and backed off. At the time of the interview Yoshiko was combining work with childcare so successfully her boss encouraged her to do a PhD to hone her qualifications. Nevertheless she still maintained she would marry the father of her child if only she could. Her reaction was a common one among the unwed mothers.50 Only ten out of sixty-eight unwed mothers interviewed actually planned their pregnancy, intending to have a child outside wedlock. Fifty-three out of sixtyeight of my interviewees—whom I call “the conventional majority”—felt marriage would be the best environment in which to raise a child. For a majority of my interviewees, the premarital pregnancy came as a surprise. “I never thought I would become [a single mother]” was the most common sentiment. There was no particular difference in the views by age in my sample: younger women were as likely as the older ones to believe that “having a child means getting married.” Thus even in my outlier group of unwed mothers, most cases conformed with the universal—and largely fulfilled—aspiration for marriage in Japanese society.51 This testifies to the fact that while, as discussed above, sex and marriage in Japan are independent of each other, there is a very strong link between marriage and childbearing. Although the media and the general public often see unwed mothers as women who actively choose non-marriage (as discussed Chapter 5), in my interviews with single unwed mothers I came across very few women of this kind.The majority of my interviewees subscribed to conventional views of the family. Before her unexpected pregnancy, Naoko, a 36-year-old high school graduate, believed that it was “natural that [she] will get married.” Sachiko, a 32-year-old college graduate, also said “before [the pregnancy] I did not imagine anything but ordinarily getting married.” This case is especially interesting because Sachiko grew up in a single mother’s family herself. Conventional women commonly resisted assuming the identity of an unwed mother, associating it with delinquency. Masako, a 45-year-old unwed mother with a 7-year-old daughter, still could not believe this had happened to her, as she was “from a normal family.” Even those mothers, Junko among them, who held a rather critical view of marriage found that considering carrying their pregnancy to term made them forget their objections and desire marriage strongly.When there was some chance of marriage with the biological father in the future, my interviewees often did their best to stick with the man.

Making the Choice   

Mizue, a 40-year-old high school graduate, was living with a violent man. Despite the abuse, the unintended pregnancy that she resolved in childbirth made it difficult for her to decide to run away from him. She also believed that it would have been better for her son if she stayed with the man, but she was so unhappy she eventually could not bear it any more. Natsuko, a 43-year-old high school graduate, told an almost identical story. She was living with her boyfriend and was on the verge of leaving him because he started getting violent when she found herself pregnant. Because of the baby, she persevered with him for a few more years hoping things would get better after the birth of their son. Predictably, they did not and eventually she could not cope any more and left him. I met her three years after she had started living alone. By then she managed to get a decent full-time job that she enjoyed and that allowed her some flexibility in caring for her son. Economically, her quality of life has improved after her separation from the child’s father. During their relationship, she worked for free for his company, which was not doing very well. He helped her with expenses, but she never had any free money of her own. When I met her, Natsuko was preparing to move into a newer, bigger flat. She and her son told me excitedly about their recent trip to Thailand and a skiing holiday they have gone on the winter before. Nevertheless, Natsuko still worried whether she should have stayed with her son’s father for the sake of her son and felt it was egoistic of her to give up trying to live with him. The normative ideal of the two-parent family plays a large role in deterring women in general from having children outside wedlock.52 Conversely, it leads to a very high rate of childbearing within marriage, as almost all married women have children. Just as childbearing outside marriage is not seen as a choice, so too is marriage without children.53 Jun, a 54-year-old unmarried and childless university professor, maintained she never really felt anything special about children and never really thought she wanted them. At the same time she pointed out: “I thought getting married usually equals, how to say, having a child. . . . If I got married, I probably would ordinarily have had a child.” Noriko, a 39-year-old unwed mother with a university education, similarly associated marriage and childbearing. Having accidentally got pregnant by the man she was engaged to, she was incredulous when he asked her to have an abortion: “even though we’re planning to get married, why is he against us having the child?” As will be discussed in Chapter 6, the marriage never happened because Noriko’s fiancé fell in love with another woman. Although nowadays marriages happen later in Japan, most women still marry eventually. By the age of forty-five only about 9 percent of Japanese women have never been married.54 In spite of the growing number of single-parent households, the perception that two parents and a child (children) constitute an ordinary, normal family is still undisputed. And it is

   Chapter 2 hard to ignore it. In most cases a disclosed pregnancy leads to an immediate question about one’s husband, as one is presumed to have got married before bearing a child. Childbearing is so strongly conflated with marriage that considerable confusion can ensue when it happens outside it. Remembering her pregnancy, Makiko, a 34-year-old high school graduate, said “it was strange. . . . I was treated as if I was half-married.” Noriko remembered how shocked everyone was when she had a child outside wedlock. “People around me hoped I would have an ordinary marriage and have children ordinarily.” The word “ordinary” or “normal” (futsū ) was the most common adjective used when two-parent families were discussed. And this word has very positive connotations. Momoe, a 36-year-old high school graduate, explained to me, I think I also thought this way, that being ordinary means being happy [ordinary meaning getting married]. I saw single mothers on TV in TV dramas a long time ago, but I felt it had nothing to do with me. I’m in an ordinary family. Most people think being ordinary is the best. And those who are not ordinary are pitiful. [But] since I ended up in this situation, it became possible for me to think like that [that a single mother can be happy too].

This makes it difficult for any woman to dare bearing a child outside wedlock even if waiting for marriage means risking never being able to have children at all. Unmarried women with no children but a desire to have them kept procrastinating. “Just recently in February I turned thirty-six. So even though I wanted to give birth at thirty-five, now I think if I give birth before forty that will be good,” said Mayumi, who earned 10 million yen (about $91,000) a year and thus could easily support a child alone. In spite of her financial independence and a strong desire to have a child, ultimately like most women Mayumi could not give up hope for a marriage. One of the most commonly given reasons for becoming an unwed mother was the impossibility of gaining the cooperation of the child’s father. For 55 percent of the unwed mothers I interviewed, marriage was out of the question since the father of their child was already married to somebody else. Only three unwed mothers from my sample tried to push the man for a divorce.There were two reasons preventing marriage with an already married man: the factual difficulty of divorce, explained in Chapter 4, and the feeling of guilt toward the wife coupled with the internalized perception that legitimate children take precedence over illegitimate ones (as discussed in Chapter 5). Like unwed mothers who were encouraged to do the right thing and get married (when marriage is possible), most of the unmarried childless women I interviewed reported receiving a lot of pressure to marry. Jun, a 54-year-old linguistics professor, told me there are numerous phrases in

Making the Choice   

Japanese for a woman who has failed to get married. She said she was called urenokori (unsold goods) or mushi ga tsukanai (what [even] insects won’t touch) and these days the proper word is makeinu (loser dog). The sheer vitality and constant evolution of the negative slang for unmarried women show how problematic it is for a woman to fail to get married. None of the unmarried women I interviewed reported being urged to have children although for all of them the biological clock was running out. For an unmarried woman, being childless is seen as a natural outcome of her status. Some unwed mothers in my sample, especially those who had children in their late thirties to early forties, said their parents eventually accepted the pregnancy because it was their last chance to have a child, but even in those cases it was always a grudging concession, never an encouragement. Only a miniscule number of women said they ever seriously thought of having a child outside marriage before they had to face an unexpected pregnancy.55 Most of the unwed mothers in my sample were from a probably quite large pool of women with unplanned pregnancies who failed to have shotgun marriages and could not bring themselves to have an abortion. Only fifteen unwed mothers in my sample of sixty-eight maintained that having a child outside wedlock was their preferred alternative. the unconve ntional minority Sumiko, a 53-year-old unwed mother of two in full-time employment was a fiercely independent woman. She did not expect her first pregnancy, which happened as a result of an accident with a condom, but she took it in stride. She was twenty-six at the time and had a long history of active membership in several feminist groups and has been volunteering in a communal day care center. Her experience with children as well as her extensive contacts with supportive women’s networks meant she was not in the least afraid of the changes the birth of a child would inevitably bring about. “I had a good relationship with the child’s father,” she explained, “but even if it was not as good as I thought, I could always raise a child with the help of my friends. So really I wasn’t worried about anything. I gave birth without ever thinking ‘perhaps I should have an abortion,’ or worrying how I would manage.” To the question of whether she ever considered marrying the father of her children, she said this has never crossed her mind.56 Among her friends “getting married was a strange thing to do. . . . Why would I get married? Not getting married was a natural thing to do for me so I never considered marriage.” Asuka, a 36-year-old unemployed university graduate, came to her decision to have a child outside wedlock quite differently. Hers was a planned pregnancy. Having decided in her thirties she would like to have a child, she looked for a prospective father, taking physical fitness and attractiveness as

   Chapter 2 well as a lack of hereditary diseases in the family as her main criteria. Asuka’s negative experience with her very strict father led her to believe that her child would be better off without one. Asuka’s father was a CEO of a huge Japanese company—a powerful, stubborn man who could get violent with his wife and daughters if they did not obey his orders. He provided a luxurious life for the whole family but never failed to remind them whom they were to thank for the food on the table. Seeing her own mother’s unhappiness and hoping in vain that her mother would finally muster the courage to get a divorce, Asuka resolved that she was not going to follow in her footsteps. Unlike the majority of my interviewees, with their very conservative view of the family, Sumiko, Asuka, and a few other women rejected conventional family norms and in their particular circumstances actively chose to have a child outside marriage. These liberal-minded women constitute the “unconventional minority” of my sample. There was no clear variation by age between women with liberal and conservative views; both types of views were spread across all age categories. Liberal-minded women were a bit more likely to have an income and education somewhat above the average of this sample and belong to the middle class. Their small number, however, does not allow drawing general conclusions. The unconventional women more often than not had planned pregnancies and generally were much better prepared for the lifestyle changes associated with childrearing. A few of them bought their own houses or apartments. Most of them had work and childcare issues negotiated in advance and thus faced fewer difficulties after the child was born. Sumiko and Asuka represent two groups of liberal-minded mothers who had very different underlying reasons for their skepticism about marriage. The first group consisted of only five women. These were feminists who refused to be part of what they perceived as an oppressive family system. One of them even explained she chose the father of her child because she knew marriage with him was out of the question as he was married already and, what was even better, he lived in a different city. Feminists who strongly objected to the family system clearly belonged to the older birth cohort, the youngest of them being in her mid-forties. Many remembered the women’s liberation movement as their inspiration. The gradual reduction of discriminatory family legislation (discussed in Chapter 4) may be one of the reasons why there are fewer ideologically driven women in younger birth cohorts. The other ten mothers in this group based their choice on their life experiences rather than on their ideological views. These were women who themselves grew up in single-parent families, women from particularly poor backgrounds, and finally a few women like Asuka who had been very unhappy in their natal two-parent families and thus could not idealize this family form.

Making the Choice   

In sum, women with an unconventional family outlook are rare, and more often than not their attitudes are a result of personal life history rather than ideological convictions. This suggests that these women are unlikely to reflect the beginning of a broad ideological change in family values. cohabitation Cohabitation rates in Japan are still considerably lower than those in the United States and most European countries, but cohabitation is gradually becoming more common. Raymo, Iwasawa, and Bumpass estimate that 15 percent of women in Japan have cohabitation experience, and the figure rises to 20 percent for women aged 25–34. Unlike European countries, where cohabitation is gaining strength as an alternative to marriage and “births to cohabiting couples comprise the majority of nonmarital births,”57 in Japan cohabiting unions tend to be childless, short-lived, and either result in marriage (58 percent of couples) or dissolve.58 Only an estimated 26 percent of all children born outside wedlock in Japan are born to cohabiting couples.59 While Raymo and his coauthors suggest that the normative barriers to cohabitation may be weakening, they point out that in Japan cohabitation is in most cases a transitional stage in a relationship. Although the economic benefits of marriage relative to cohabitation have declined,60 legal stigmatization of out-of-wedlock childbearing persists, which probably has contributed to making cohabitation unattractive.61 Among my interviewees, thirteen were cohabiting with the father of their child at the time of their pregnancy. Most of these couples broke up because the father of the child insisted on the woman having an abortion; only three couples continued living together for a while after childbirth. For eleven women, childbirth was the reason to move together, but most of these unions were short-lived. At the time of the interviews only four women lived in cohabitation-like relationships where men were committed to their children and spent extensive time with them.62 The partners of three of these women were already married to somebody else, and one man was heavily indebted, so marriage was out of the question for all of them. In sum, none of the unwed mothers I interviewed opted for long-term cohabitation with their children’s fathers; rather, they were forced into it by circumstances. None of the unmarried women with no children I interviewed described cohabitation as a desirable alternative to marriage. In sum, my findings belie the prevalent Japanese clichés about single mothers as renegades opposed to conventional family norms: most of my interviewees saw marriage as a highly attractive choice in case of pregnancy, and preferred it by a wide margin to its alternatives.They were adamant that they did not really want to become single unwed mothers. More than half

   Chapter 2 of the women explained that marriage ultimately did not happen for reasons beyond their control. This, however, does not mean they were powerless to alter their fate. They still had a choice between abortion, giving up the child, and raising it outside wedlock. I will now discuss the two alternatives to having a child outside wedlock and then the choice my interviewees actually made and how they explained it. For the unconventional minority of my interviewees, having their child outside wedlock was the preferred outcome, so they did not consider any alternative solutions to their pregnancy. This group will reemerge in our discussion in the last section of this chapter.

Giving up the Child adoption Only a few decades ago, adoption was the most common way of dealing with illegitimate children in Western industrialized countries,63 so much so that some politicians claimed that “from the child’s and the mother’s point of view [adoption] may have been the best outcome.”64 It is estimated that in the 1960s about 70 percent of white illegitimate children in the United States were placed for adoption.65 What about Japan? The country has a long history of adoptions. Japanese traditionally put a high value on the continuation of the family line, and adoption (usually of a blood relative) was a common way of solving the problem of having no male heir. Preoccupation with the survival of the family line started diminishing when family registers containing more than two generations were outlawed after the Second World War. The spread of nuclear families strengthened this process. Nevertheless, to this day adults and blood-related children are the majority of adoptees in Japan just like in the times when adoptions were primarily used to secure the continuation of households. Adoptions of unrelated children, which could be used by unmarried women who feel unable to support a child, remain rare.66 Two types of legal arrangements are used for adoptions in Japan: ordinary (y-oshi engumi ) and special (tokubetsu y-oshi engumi ). Special adoptions are overwhelmingly used when adoptees are not relatives, while most ordinary adoptions are said to occur within extended families.67 Most children who are given up for adoption by non-relatives are said to be children of unwed mothers.68 During my field research I visited two private adoption agencies, one in Tokyo and the other in Osaka. The head of the Osaka agency said it is easier to find adoptive parents for children of unwed mothers than for other children as the illegitimate children tend to be very young and also are given up for less stigmatizing reasons (as opposed to children of mentally ill people, for example).

Making the Choice   

According to statistics published by the Tokyo agency (Wa no Kai), 73 percent of the adoptees it placed in families in 2002 were children born to unmarried mothers, about 10 percent were children of divorcées, and about 20 percent were children of married women. The spread of the biological mothers’ ages is shown in Table 2.1. At least in this adoption agency, adoptions appear to be largely used to resolve unwanted pregnancies by teenage girls or very young women who probably got pregnant due to a lack of knowledge about contraception and missed the timing when abortion was still possible.69 The ordinary adoption, typically used among relatives, does not terminate completely the connection between the biological mother and her child. The child is defined as an adopted child in the family register of her adoptive parents and the name of the biological mother is noted in her family register along with the names of the adoptive parents.The biological mother also has a record about the child in her family register. The special adoption procedure introduced in 198870 terminates the connection between the child and the biological mother completely and allows adoptive parents to register the child as their biological offspring.71 A note about childbirth, however, is made in the biological mother’s family register both in case of an ordinary and a special adoption (for more details about the family register, see Chapter 4).72 Thus while by giving up her child an unwed mother can avoid the financial burden and the burden of responsibility of raising a child alone, avoiding social stigma remains difficult.73 Special adoption does not reduce potential stigmatization of the biological mother,74 and the introduction of the special adoption system did not bring any drastic changes in the numbers of children adopted.75 In 2004, 22,156 illegitimate children were table 2.1  Age characteristics of women who gave up their children for adoption to Wa no Kai in 2002 Age

Number of women

%

11–14 15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40 and above

7 37 32 16 16 7 4

5.9 31.1 26.9 13.4 13.4 5.9 3.4

Total

119

100

source:  Author’s interviews.

   Chapter 2 born in Japan but only 429 children were adopted through the special adoption system in that year.76 In addition to being of little help in avoiding stigmatization, the choice of adoption is heavily charged in moral terms for the biological mother because of the strong belief in Japan in the child’s need for its biological parents (see Chapter 6). Thus, as I will show below, in the Japanese context it is a solution morally inferior to abortion.In the beginning of my research I asked all my informants whether they gave any consideration to the option of giving the child up for adoption, and only one of them gave some thought to this possibility due to lack of any income and old age at birth.77 After about twenty interviews I dropped the question.78 While adoption was out of the question for almost all women, orphanages appeared somewhat more palatable at least to women in the direst of circumstances.79 orphanage s In 2003, 12 percent of children in infant orphanages (nyūjiin) were there because they were born illegitimate.80 This was the second biggest reason why children ended up in infant orphanages, the first being the mother’s psychological disorder (14.6 percent).81 One reason for this greater acceptability of orphanages is that they imply less of a separation from the child than an adoption and thus present a lesser moral difficulty for the mother.Visitations are much easier even compared with foster care. Mothers know where their children are and can arrive unannounced or on short notice. By comparison, when children are in foster care, the foster parents’ address is typically kept secret, so while meetings with the child are possible they take time and organizing them has to be done through the child consultation center in charge.82 As a result, 75.7 percent of children in foster care are never visited by relatives compared to 16.6 percent of children above 2 years of age in orphanages and 23.4 percent of children in orphanages for infants.83 In case of a special adoption, visitations are impossible. While the child is in institutional care, the biological mother retains parental rights even if she does not visit the child. She also can take her child out of the orphanage if she attains a certain standard of living.84 Another reason favoring orphanages is structural. Adoptions of non­related children are organized through both public and private agencies. Today there are a little less than two hundred child consultation centers (jidōsōdanjo) throughout Japan and about twenty privately run adoption agencies.85 The relative prevalence of the child consultation centers ensures that the bulk of adoptions of non-blood-related children is secured through them.86 They, however, are known for inefficiency and a tendency to place children into orphanages rather than into adoptive care.87

Making the Choice   

Although orphanages may be a more popular solution than adoptions, still only 3,023 children were institutionalized in infant orphanages in 2003. They are used as a solution by a small minority of women, usually women in the most unfortunate circumstances with no support networks to fall back on.The reasons for the unpopularity of orphanages are similar to those that make adoptions unattractive. Here too, the child is noted in the mother’s family register, and institutionalization violates the moral imperative to raise one’s own child. Another very important reason why giving up one’s child is such a rarely used solution for a premarital pregnancy is that in Japan safe and legal abortion on demand has been available for much longer than in Western industrialized countries. Thus while in the West unmarried women had to turn to adoptions if they found themselves pregnant and unwilling to raise the child, in Japan the option of abortion has been open on economic grounds (interpreted quite liberally) since 1949. In addition, abortions are often seen as morally less problematic than giving up one’s child, either for an adoption or to an orphanage, because of the strong belief that a child needs its biological parents.88

Abortion Keiko, a 36-year-old university graduate employed full time, immediately knew what she was going to do when she discovered her pregnancy. “At the time I couldn’t even conceive of having a child outside wedlock. I never saw anyone like that around me. So when I first realized I was pregnant I decided I was not going to give birth. Although my daughter’s father asked me to keep the child, he was not planning to take responsibility, so . . .” Keiko was not the only one for whom the solution to a premarital pregnancy seemed unambiguous. Contemporary Japanese official abortion rates are on par with those of Western industrialized countries.89 Since the official statistics are said to be hugely underestimated,90 the real rates may be considerably higher than those of most Western countries. How can abortions be so widespread in a country where the mother-child bond is said to be the primary bond in any person’s life and children are believed to be the purpose (ikigai) of the mother’s life? Two factors combine to account for this puzzle: the easy accessibility of abortion and the lack of negative connotations associated with it. accessibility of abortion There are several legal restrictions on abortion in Japan, but at a closer look none of them is stringent. Abortions in Japan are still technically illegal, but since the 1949 amendment of the Eugenic Protection Law,91 the Criminal

   Chapter 2 Abortion Law can be superseded if continuation of pregnancy or childbirth poses “a serious threat to health or life of the mother for economic or physical reasons.” This clause came to be interpreted very liberally.92 A 1952 amendment simplified the application procedure, allowing an abortion to be carried out at the sole discretion of the doctor performing it.93 As a result, although after all modifications the law still defines abortion as a crime, safe legal abortions in effect have been available on demand in Japan from 1952.94 According to the law, the spouse’s approval is needed for abortion, but “when the spouse cannot be found, cannot indicate his wishes, or is deceased, the sole consent of the person shall be sufficient.”95 This provision offers a convenient loophole for unmarried women. In an earlier section of this chapter I argued that inadequate use of contraception is one of the main reasons behind the large number of abortions in Japan. It seems counterintuitive that Japanese women, who are among the best-educated women in the world,96 are such poor contraception users. Contraception knowledge, of course, does not always entail correct and diligent practice. One reason for sloppiness in practice may be the acceptability and easy availability of abortion, which does not make the perceived cost of a mistake high enough to encourage diligence. The fact that abortion is legal until the twenty-second week of pregnancy in Japan, one of the longest periods in the world, may be one of the more striking illustrations of this point.97 Carelessness about contraception may also arise from the lack of emphasis on the differences between contraception and abortion. This lack of emphasis has historical roots. In the late 1940s when the introduction of the Eugenic Protection Law was debated, abortion was discussed and defined as a birth control method.98 Throughout the 1950s abortion and contraception were popularly understood to be two different forms of birth control. Today abortion and contraception have come to be defined differently. The general absence of anti-abortion sentiment and deficient education about abortion, however, often mean that little emphasis is put on their differences, especially on the harmful possible consequences of abortion. 99 At the same time, as discussed above, a very negative perception of hormonal contraception has been fostered. As a result, both men and women might still see abortion as just another method of birth control, not more and possibly even less harmful than, for example, the pill. The extent of this cavalier attitude toward abortion is demonstrated by the story of Momoko, a 35-year-old unemployed vocational school graduate. Momoko’s boyfriend was a divorced man who married his ex-wife as a result of a pregnancy. According to Momoko, because his marriage ended badly, at first he was very cautious and diligent with contraception. As time went by, however, he got less careful: “He started saying well, if you get pregnant there’s nothing to be

Making the Choice   

done, [we’ll get married], but when I really got pregnant . . . at first he was surprised: ‘What will we do?!’ and then said he can’t afford the child.” Financially too, abortion and contraception do not seem all too different. Abortions in Japan are not cheap because they are not covered by national health insurance.100 The same is true about the pill, however.101 The price of abortion is far from prohibitive, and even teenagers seem to be able to afford it.102 knowledge about abortion For abortions to be performed successfully and in time, some knowledge about them is necessary. As demonstrated above, information on sexualhealth-related topics is not very well disseminated in Japan. However, as women do not need to carry out abortions themselves, arguably much less information is needed to have an abortion performed reliably than to ensure efficient contraception use.103 According to my interviewees’ experiences, it is hard to avoid being aware that abortion is one possible choice when a woman finds herself unmarried, pregnant, and unable to secure marriage. Almost everyone who realized the women were pregnant with no prospect of marriage in sight suggested an abortion. Kyoko, 42-year-old-college graduate in full-time employment, “went to the hospital straight away [after suspecting pregnancy], took the [pregnancy] test, and because I was unmarried I was immediately told until roughly when I could have an abortion. That’s when I started worrying [what to do].” Hers was a common experience. Medical professionals were not the only ones to encourage abortion. Friends offered to accompany my interviewees to the hospital for an abortion and cautioned against the difficulties of life as a single mother. Almost a third of biological fathers of illegitimate children, including those who were sloppy in using contraception or even refused to use any, pressured their girlfriends to have an abortion as soon as they heard about the pregnancy. The women’s own parents also saw an abortion as by far the less stigmatizing and least complicated choice.104 All but three of my interviewees were aware of abortion as an option when it was still possible, and this eager encouragement from all sides is one reason why making a decision to have a child outside marriage was so difficult. As abortions are affordable, relevant laws are liberal, and the minimum information necessary is readily available, it is no surprise that abortion has been used as a widespread backup for contraception, thus keeping the illegitimacy rate low in postwar Japan.105 In this regard there is an important difference between Japan and countries with a Judeo-Christian tradition, brought to my attention by Miho Iwasawa, a scholar of the Japanese family. She found a strong correlation between negative attitudes toward abortion and illegitimacy in the United

   Chapter 2 States but not in Japan.106 This suggests that a Japanese unmarried pregnant woman who is unwilling to have a child outside wedlock is much less likely to reject abortion as a solution to her problem than an American one. In line with these findings, few of my interviewees saw abortion as inherently immoral. When they refused to have one performed, they much more often did so for personal reasons rather than for general ethical considerations about unborn life.107 Twenty-three of them seriously considered having an abortion, and quite a few even had arranged hospital appointments before wavering. The widespread social consensus that children are born in marriages meant that for many women abortion was the first thought when they realized they were pregnant. Kyoko remembered how “for a while . . . I thought there is nothing I can do but have an abortion. I really didn’t want to, but I certainly didn’t think let’s give birth straight away.” Akiko, a 47-year-old university graduate with a full-time job, also planned to have an abortion because: “Obviously I was unmarried, so I thought socially [having the child] was something that should not be done.” The difference in the moral and ethical considerations behind women’s reproductive choices becomes especially clear when we note that the inability to be full-time mothers made some women consider abortion in the interest of their unborn child. Umeko, a 27-year-old vocational school graduate in full-time employment, wanted a child, but had very clear ideas about ideal childrearing: I myself was raised by two parents but they both worked full time so I don’t remember feeling their love; I can’t say I was lovingly brought up. They worked so I have memories of being left in some day care with extended hours. I don’t feel I was raised by my parents. So I always thought when I have a child I want to be a mother who is home and has prepared a snack when the child comes back from school. A single mother has to work otherwise she can’t manage financially, but I wanted to be by my child’s side.Yet, I could not imagine there being just me and the child together for twenty-four hours; I thought this could be a bit miserable and stressful. Thinking like that, I started feeling that maybe for me having a child alone is impossible.

To conclude, the availability of effective contraception as well as information about contraception are limited in Japan, and unsurprisingly unplanned pregnancies are estimated to be more prevalent in Japan than in Western industrialized countries. At the same time, one can avoid the costs of unwanted childbearing, largely due to easily available abortion. Consequently, childbirth is a matter of personal choice in Japan like it is in Western countries, though this freedom is achieved in a different way.108 The reasons the majority of women use their fertility freedom to avoid childbearing outside marriage are the topic of the rest of this book. To start, I will recount the main reasons that could propel some women toward such an unpopular choice as having a child outside wedlock.

Making the Choice   

Why Have a Child Outside Wedlock? Defending the Choice When we analyze how women who had children outside wedlock explain their choices, we have to contend with the issue of post hoc rationalizations. Such rationalizations, however, can be a strength when it comes to understanding normative considerations. Looking at the ways my inter­viewees legitimized their choices is the best litmus test to establish what they see as problematic with these choices and what they consider to be the best way to make them more palatable for others.109 As we will see below, most of my interviewees used one of a few legitimizing strategies. These very clear emerging patterns are a strong indication that the explanations unwed mothers offer reflect the social pressures under which they find themselves. the conventional majority Tomoko, a 39-year-old unwed mother with a PhD degree, head of her own small but successful business, seemed to be well placed to raise a child on her own. Nevertheless she shared the sentiment of most of my interviewees, maintaining that “if I didn’t get pregnant by chance I don’t think I would have given birth.” Due to the generously long period during which legal abortion is available in Japan, all but five of my interviewees could choose whether to bear the premarital pregnancy to term or not.110 When asked to explain why they carried their pregnancy to term, almost all the conventional women in my sample shaped their story in terms of the dominant family norms. The central expectation for a “normal” woman in Japan is that at some point she will become a wife and a mother. Almost all of my interviewees related the narratives of their choice either to marriage or to women’s destiny to have a child and sometimes to both of these reasons. Although a strong personal desire to have a child undoubtedly played an important role in their decision, it was rarely used as the main justification for having a child outside wedlock. A claim that one had an illegitimate child because of her love for children took one dangerously close to the active choice of single unwed motherhood. This was unthinkable for most women for reasons discussed in detail in Chapters 5 and 6. “At first he said he will marry me” Slightly more than half of the women related their decision to Japanese marriage norms, either positively or negatively. All the women who framed their choice positively belonged to the conventional majority.111 To explain their family situation they invoked some marriage or cohabitation plans with the father of their child and then appealed to circumstances beyond their control that prevented them from getting married at the time. A few women found out rather late during the pregnancy that the man they were planning to

   Chapter 2 marry was already married to somebody else. For example,Yoshie, a 33-yearold high school graduate, “was planning to get married,” but “it turned out that he was not divorced. He was separated, but never went through with the divorce.” Yoshiko, the above-mentioned NICU nurse, convinced her lover to marry her and was preparing for the event when he discovered that she had epilepsy and hastily disappeared. Etsuko, a 37-year-old unemployed university graduate, maintained throughout that she actually was married for some time to the father of her child. The problem was that he was from an Arab country and was already married when they met so she could not get her marriage recognized in Japan. Several women explained that there were financial reasons precluding marriage at the time the pregnancy was discovered, but swiftly added that they had future marriage plans when the decision to bear a child was made. For example, Sachiko, a 32-year-old college graduate who worked full time, told me that at first they decided we would not register officially but would raise the child together. He had a debt. The amount of debt was so huge it was impossible to consider marriage. . . . 112 At some point this [non-married status] started bothering me. If he paid off his debt it was kind of agreed we would get married. In reality this never happened and this is how I got into my current situation.

Aiko, a 35-year-old unemployed junior high school graduate, had huge debts herself, which she inherited from her ex-husband, and was in the middle of a bankruptcy procedure when she found out she was pregnant. Planning to get married later, she opted for cohabitation for a while. Once her partner moved in, however, it turned out that the man was a gambler and a drug addict. He also quarreled with her all the time and soon became violent. Aiko said she “was living like in a slum,” so she eventually ran away while the man was serving time in prison for a criminal offence. Hanako, a 39-year-old college graduate with a full-time job, chose not to marry the father of her children because he could not hold a steady job and did not show any inclination to support her or her children. She believed that “a marriage partner has to take some responsibility.” While refusing to register the marriage legally, she still held a marriage ceremony for the sake of her neighbors and relatives. Hanako maintained that her plan was to register in the future “if it works well.” The man never changed into a hard-working husband Hanako hoped for and eventually disappeared from her life. The problem with the marriage explanation is that while it allows unwed mothers to alleviate or even remove the responsibility for their choice of unwed motherhood it leaves them eternally outside the world of “normal” married couples. The main alternative explanation women gave for their childbearing decision appealed to another major family norm, namely women’s destiny to bear children. This explanation was even more prevalent than

Making the Choice   

that of the marriage appeal, with two-thirds of women invoking it.113 One reason behind the greater popularity of this explanation could be that engagement with the norm of childbearing as women’s destiny had an immediate benefit of making unwed mothers “ordinary” women who want to have children.114 “I thought this was my only chance” More than half of the women explained that while they did not plan their pregnancy, when faced with a choice between having a child outside wedlock and abortion, they feared it was their last chance to have a child, and they could not let it slip through their fingers. The main justifications for this fear were age and health concerns. • Age Previous research has pointed out that life stages and their associated role expectations are strongly compartmentalized in Japan.115 My own interviews with single unwed mothers, divorcées, and unmarried women also found that many women’s decisions were strongly affected by their age.Those who failed to fill appropriate roles at an appropriate age felt excluded. Aya, a 34-year-old unmarried and childless woman, felt left behind as she has not gone through the same life stages as her peers: “since I turned thirty, I really only meet with very few friends.” The age-specific compulsions to marry and bear children are much stronger and also compressed into shorter periods in Japan than in Western industrialized countries. The average age of first childbearing in Japan was 29.1 in 2005.116 Only around 6 percent of unwed mothers in my sample had a child outside wedlock before they turned twenty, around 53 percent had their child when between twenty-five and thirty-four, and 32 percent between thirty-five and forty-four.117 Being close to the prime childbearing years, just when their friends and peers were having children one after another, made it more difficult for many of my interviewees to resist the compulsion to bear a child if they found themselves pregnant. Twenty-five of my interviewees mentioned age as a crucial factor that made them feel it was high time they had a child. Masako, a 45-year-old high school graduate, was almost ecstatic when, at the age of thirty-eight, she realized she was pregnant. “I also can have children, I can do things like other people; strangely I was so happy. . . . Thirty-eight was the last chance. If I were ten years younger I don’t know what I would have done [about the pregnancy].” Yumiko, a 46-year-old-university graduate, also felt it was mainly her age that made her decide against an abortion. For some time she was imagining “a childless life, being a single woman, working” and concluded “I’m not against it, but for myself I wanted a child.” She described her pregnancy as the best possible present for her fortieth birthday.

   Chapter 2 In sum, age was more than a simple post hoc rationalization. Many of the unwed mothers had their children close to what is seen as the appropriate age, actively responding to the dominant childbearing norm. • Health concerns Apart from age, a few women had more serious reasons to believe that the pregnancy they decided to bear to term was their last chance to have children. Seven of the sixty-eight unwed mothers I interviewed had health problems and were told it would be difficult if not impossible for them to conceive.118 Six other women said they suspected themselves of infertility because this was their first pregnancy after years of neglecting to use any contraception while leading sexually active lives. Within the conventional group, these women had the least doubts about their choice.119 Mizuki, a 35-year-old dispatched worker with college education, explained

I had a problem with my hormonal level. I always thought it was not possible for me to get pregnant and I dated him [thinking that]. [When the pregnancy was discovered] I thought of giving birth as my only choice. I didn’t consider an abortion. My decision to give birth was unconditional. I thought I couldn’t have children and was happy I could.

Kimiko, a 31-year-old university graduate with a full-time job, similarly did not think about abortion. “When I checked why I was not feeling well I found that my hormones were out of balance. I thought if I give up now I may regret it in the future.” Some women were waiting to have a child so long and desiring it so much that no amount of unfavorable circumstances seemed to be able to stop them. Kaori, a 31-year-old high school graduate, had recently undergone cancer treatment and finally returned to doing some part-time jobs. She also had no doubts. “I didn’t consider anything but giving birth. I once had cancer and was told that even if I could bear a child this time would be my only chance. And I really wanted a child.” These were also women who got at least some encouragement for their decision. The doctor in the hospital where Kazuko, a 35-year-old self­employed high school drop-out, confirmed her pregnancy, for example, was understanding of her situation and told her it is a miracle she was pregnant, which helped her to make up her mind. She added “the father of the child had a family already.Though this bothered me a lot, I thought I would never be able to have a child and I felt I want to give birth.” These women had the most credible excuse for not being able to wait for marriage, and this at least partially absolved them from a sense of guilt for their decision. As we will see in Chapter 6, it was this sense of guilt before their unborn child that made having a child outside wedlock so difficult.

Making the Choice   

Absent Narratives “Love” explanations are strikingly absent from the discourse. Few of my interviewees referred to great love for the father of their child to explain why they decided to have a child.120 While surveys show that “love” is considered a good justification for starting a sexual relationship, it was clearly not enough to excuse a child outside marriage. Previous research has shown that once a Japanese woman becomes a mother, the associated role expectations change dramatically. Mothers are seen as somewhat asexual beings whose main goal in life is nurturing their children and creating the best possible environment for them. Motherly responsibilities start in Japan at the time of pregnancy, and mothers are supposed to know better than to take a step with possible negative consequences for a prospective child to satisfy their passions.121 “Love” may be a good enough explanation for actions of nonmothers, but not for women who were trying to resolve a pregnancy. This idea is probably best summed up by the words of Noriko, a 39-year-old university graduate with a full-time job, who insisted that “I was not playing love or something. I dated seriously with marriage plans.” Another explanation conspicuous by its absence is having a child outside wedlock as a last resort in order to provide an heir for a family. None of the unwed mothers I interviewed ever mentioned considerations of family lineage to have any effect on their decision making. This absence is indicative of the low prominence of stem-family considerations for the majority of Japanese. The shame associated with having an illegitimate child may also outweigh the benefits of obtaining an heir. Desire for (a preferably male) heir did not seem to make the choice of unwed motherhood easier for either the women or their parents.The fact that the illegitimate child could be the only grandchild they would ever have did not prevent the future grandparents from advising their daughter to have an abortion. However, if the illegitimate child born was the only grandchild or the only male grandchild, this often made it easier for the grandparents to accept the child after birth. Altogether, the conventional women in my sample seemed close to unanimity when it came to legitimizing explanations of their situation. Most of the women used a variation of one of two main explanations, both of which related to the key social norms of women’s role in the Japanese family. The first explanation has marriage as the main point of reference. This reference was typically positive: aspired to marriage but due to reasons outside one’s control failed to fulfill the aspiration. The second explanation appealed to a woman’s “destiny” to bear children. It can be seen as another way of approaching the norm. A “normal” Japanese woman is supposed to marry and have children (and in that order). Single unwed mothers who used the second type of explanation justified

   Chapter 2 having a child outside wedlock by claiming it was their only or last chance to be able to have a child, and they did not have any time left to wait for marriage. It is as if they were pointing out that even though they did not fulfill the expectation concerning marriage, they were actually subscribing to the other important norm, that a woman has to be a mother. An important distinction has to be made between subscribing to a norm to get approval from society and following one’s own innate urge to have children, an urge that happens to coincide with the general norm. While it is more than probable that a large proportion of my interviewees chose to have children to a large extent because of their deep affection for children, love for a future child rarely was brought forward as the main explanation for carrying the pregnancy to term.122 Their appeal to social norms rather than to their personal desires to explain their decisions arguably reflects conventional unwed mothers’ longing to be seen as normal. the unconventional minority Surprisingly, the majority of unwed mothers in the unconventional minority group also related their explanations to the dominant family norms, though rather in a negative than a positive way. Ten of the fifteen unconventional women used marriage as a reference, though in their case as a negative one, combining it with an argument for women’s destiny to have children. Rather than talking about marriage plans, the unconventional women referred to an extreme marriage or two-family experience (their own or that of their parents) that made it impossible for them to ever wish to repeat it. While the conventional women stressed that they considered marriage but it did not work out through no fault of their own, this second group stressed the point that they could not consider marriage through no fault of their own. Some of these women believed they were traumatized by their parents’ divorce. Mayu, a 30-year-old junior high school graduate, was probably most explicit about it. Her own parents got divorced when she was five and she recounted that she only had very scary memories of her father, who hit her and got angry at her all of the time. So she herself never wanted to have a father even as a child. Getting pregnant unexpectedly she planned marriage with her boyfriend, but could not bring herself to go through with it and had an abortion. She then regretted this abortion so much that she planned a second pregnancy and this time had a child outside wedlock. There were even more women who argued they hated the idea of marriage because of the very unhappy marriage of their parents that did not break up.123 Momoe, a 36-year-old high school graduate, remembered my parents were always quarrelling. My younger brother is married. He got married because he got himself into a situation where he had to get married.Yet, he himself

Making the Choice    does not really perceive his family as his own family, I think, even now.The girl who became his wife is having a hard time. My youngest brother is still not married. I think this too is because we didn’t grow up in a proper family, in a family that functioned like one; we all cannot think about marriage in a positive way.

Similarly, Tomoko, the PhD-holding entrepreneur, explained “I felt my mother’s dissatisfaction with life with my whole body, I experienced it. Though my mother does not say it [I felt] ‘I should not become like my mother.’” These women insisted that their life experiences do not allow them to idealize marriage, so once they felt a desire to have a child, it was relatively easy for them to take action. Having escaped her unhappy natal family with an alcoholic father and a constantly frustrated mother, Mieko got married and lived for ten years satisfied with her family life. In her mid-thirties she, however, felt she would like to have a child only to come against her husband’s vehement opposition. So she got a divorce, found a lover, agreed with him that she would raise the child alone and he helped her to get pregnant. Five women were radical feminists and like Mariko, a 52-year-old university graduate, made their choice to have a child outside wedlock part of their ideological struggle against the family system supported and promoted by the state. “We believed registering a marriage makes the discrimination even worse, so we never had any desire to register our marriage.” Most of these women actually could have chosen marriage but rejected it in order to raise numbers of illegitimate children and thus contribute to the anti-discrimination struggle. Apart from their discontent with the discrimination against illegitimate children, many openly denounced the Japanese family system in general as discriminatory against women. Although the postwar constitution made all members of the family equal, married people are still obliged to assume one (most often the husband’s) surname. The feminists found this stifling and unfair. They also found the association of husbands with breadwinners and wives with homemakers outrageous and believed that by avoiding marriage they would avoid acceding to these presumptions. unmarried wome n with no childre n: hypothetical choice s The concepts used to justify the real choices of single unwed mothers also loomed large in the explanations I got from unmarried women with no children when I asked them whether they would consider having a child outside wedlock in the future.124 Only two women out of sixteen I interviewed said they might. A few more women said they might keep a child if they “would happen to become pregnant.” However, they were not willing to take active steps toward getting pregnant and having a child by themselves, an option that was simply not on their mental map. As Jun, an unmarried

   Chapter 2 childless woman of fifty-four who had a long stable relationship with a married man, told me, “It was not that I specifically made a decision not to have a child, but I just didn’t get pregnant” and so she never really thought about it. When I asked her later what she thought would happen if the man was not already married, she said “Umm. . . . If he was single, certainly we would have got married. It just didn’t happen that way.” She later continued, saying that if they were married she “of course would have had one [a child] I think, as is usual.” This immediate reply from a woman who reached the position of full professor in one of the best Japanese universities gives a good idea of how strong is the association of marriage and childbearing even for the most progressive and successful career women. Echoing unwed mothers, the majority of unmarried childless women stated that a child should be born within marriage, and if marriage was possible that would always be their first choice. Midori, a 35-year-old college graduate, maintained that a father is really necessary for a child. I feel that with one parent a child somehow will become abnormal. In Japan having both parents is ordinary so if one dies in an accident nothing can be done about it, but when it is only because the couple does not get along, if the parents break up simply because of that, I think it has a bad effect on the child.

All very strongly associated childbearing and marriage.125 For example, when asked why she wants to get married in the future, Midori immediately replied it is because she “obviously likes children.” Only two women maintained they did not believe in the superiority of two-parent families and said that fear of their biological clock running out made them seriously consider having a child alone. Both, however, were very busy with their careers and confided that they found it hard to have boyfriends. Research as well as popular essays on unmarried women in their thirties suggests that many of these women value their own personal freedom above everything else and so are unwilling to take adult responsibilities, marry, or have children in order to protect this freedom.126 My interviews with unmarried and childless women above 34 years of age showed that such women represent not the only and possibly not the dominant pattern. Most women I interviewed stated they strongly desired children. The existing value structures, however, encouraged them not to have these children outside marriage and they preferred to hold out for marriage even at the risk of becoming infertile before they find a suitable partner. This analysis of legitimizing strategies unexpectedly showed that single unwed mothers, a small minority in Japanese society, frequently evaluated their choices by referring to values and preferences similar to those of

Making the Choice   

women who led much more typical lives and never made such an extreme choice as having a child outside wedlock. The principal difference between the two groups seemed to be whether they had an experience of accidental pregnancy or not and possibly in the strength of the desire to have a child.

Concluding Remarks Women’s reactions to premarital pregnancies and their feelings about child­rearing and family alternatives tell us much about why although unplanned pregnancies are common in Japan few of them lead to nonmarital childbearing. Women who become unwed mothers in Japan can be very generally divided into two groups: “the conventional majority” and “the unconventional minority.”127 The majority of women who, objectively speaking, created the most unusual family structures in contemporary Japan had nevertheless very conventional views about the family. They thought unwed motherhood is something that is best avoided, while marriage is the best environment for children under almost any circumstances. Cohabiting unions were rarely seen as a viable, long-term alternative to marriage. This, rather unsurprisingly, shows that Japan is still far off even from the starting point of the social contagion process that led to a rapid growth in the acceptability, and incidence, of unwed motherhood in the West. While social contagion can explain social change, to understand the reasons for the persisting status quo it may be more useful to look at stigmatization and shame—as some of my examples have already indicated. I will look at both factors in more detail in Chapter 5. Only a few women believed single unwed motherhood was not a particularly bad arrangement and even fewer found it preferable to marriage. The beliefs of this unconventional minority were more often based on their life experiences rather than ideological convictions. If a woman’s desire to marry was sufficient to make a man cooperate, illegitimate children in Japan would arguably all but disappear. Just like everywhere else, however, in Japan marriage is not always possible and many premaritally pregnant women are stuck with choosing between abortion, adoption, and having an illegitimate child. The alternatives were evaluated in Japan very differently than in Western industrialized countries. In Japan an abortion is an easy, guilt-free choice and adoption or having a child outside marriage are seen as vastly inferior choices. Research on family formation in the West over the past several decades documents the individualization of choices about marriage, conception, and childbearing.128 Recent research on Japan echoes these findings.129 This chapter, however, has demonstrated that at least when it comes to the

   Chapter 2 evaluation of different family forms the dominance of a two-parent-family norm is rarely questioned. The analysis of women’s preferences offers a good idea why so few children end up being born outside wedlock, but this is only as far as this chapter can take us. In the end we are left with a crucial question: why is the desire for childbearing within marriage so strong in Japan? It is often suggested that this compulsion can be explained by the economic and legal discrimination against unwed mothers that is specific to Japan. In the next two chapters I evaluate these claims.

  r 

Navigating Work and Welfare

3

when pondering how to solve their premarital pregnancy, women sooner or later had to consider the practical side of things, namely how they would be able to afford having a child. Statistics show that most Japanese single mothers, including unwed mothers, earn their living. Studies of single mothers’ employment argue that due to “gender inequality in the labor market, single mothers have a disproportionately low income, and the reproduction of poverty among their children is high.”1 Perhaps then we need to look no further in our quest to understand what makes single unwed motherhood such an unpopular choice in contemporary Japan? There are two problems with taking labor market disadvantages as the sole explanation for women’s avoidance of premarital childbearing. First, the majority of women who divorce their husbands do so when their children are young and so end up in a position very similar to that of single unwed mothers.2 Why then is the divorce rate growing so rapidly while the change in illegitimacy rate has been glacial? Second, changes in the women’s labor market environment over the past few decades are undeniable, but they seem to have had at most a very limited effect on the numbers of illegitimate births. If one wants to argue for the work environment as the primary explanation, this would require evidence of particular job discrimination against single unwed mothers. This chapter will therefore analyze the work environment of single unwed mothers with a view to such discrimination. It is also possible that while all single mothers face similar disadvantages in the labor market these disadvantages are offset for divorcées and widows by welfare support programs for which unwed mothers are ineligible. Single mothers’ potential for supporting their families cannot be analyzed without a discussion of the Japanese welfare system and the way it ­conceptualizes

   Chapter 3 different types of single mothers. This chapter will investigate the welfare system with special attention to unwed and divorced mothers and the changes occurring for these groups over the past few decades.3

Women and Work women in the labor market Much has been written on discrimination against women in the Japanese labor market.4 The main conclusion of these studies is neatly summarized by Ogasawara: “In terms of wages, employment status, occupational roles, and any other way in which we choose to measure gender stratification, Japanese women are more disadvantaged than their compatriots in other industrial countries.”5 To give just one example, an international comparison of gender wage gaps makes it clear that Japan is significantly behind most Western industrialized countries when it comes to labor market gender equality. According to a recent study of twenty-two industrialized countries, female full-time earnings in Japan amount to 62 percent of male full-time earnings. In that particular study only two other countries sported a larger gender wage gap: Israel, where women earn only 61 percent of what men do, and Austria, where women earn 60 percent. In all the other countries the ratio was between 72 percent (Canada) and 90 percent (Norway).6 This snapshot evidence of considerable gender inequality in the labor market may help us understand why the illegitimacy ratio is so much lower in Japan than it is in the industrialized West. It, however, offers little help in explaining the virtual stagnation of the illegitimacy rate over time against the rapid growth of the divorce rate noted in Chapter 1. If we relate the illegitimacy and divorce trends to the history of recent labor market changes in Japan, a complex picture emerges, and one that raises as many new questions as it answers. Most notably, by several measures the disadvantages working women face in contemporary Japan have decreased. Figure 3.1 shows that although we are still observing the famous M-curve of female employment, it has flattened and there has been a general increase in female labor market participation in almost all age categories over the past decades.7 This tendency has continued throughout the recent period of economic downturn. Rebick notes that by 2004 women’s employmentto-population ratio between the ages of sixteen and sixty-four has reached 57 percent, which is above the average for the European Union.8 In today’s Japan it is slightly easier for recent female graduates to find employment than for male graduates. In 2006, 68.1 percent of female university graduates, 69.8 percent of female college graduates, and 63.3 percent female professional school graduates found jobs straight after graduation compared to 60.5 percent, 52.1 percent, and 51.8 percent of male graduates, respectively.9

Navigating Work and Welfare    80 1970 1980 1990 1995 2000 2005

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0 15 ~ 19

20 ~ 24

25 ~ 29

30 ~ 34

35 ~ 39

40 ~ 44

45 ~ 49

50 ~ 54

55 ~ 59

60 ~ 64

65 ~ 19

figure 3.1.  Percent of women in employment by age source:  Data from Statistics Bureau, Annual Report on the Labor Force Survey 2005 (Tokyo: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 2005).

In addition to the general growth of female employment over the past few decades, the number of women working as employees soared largely at the expense of the number of women working in family businesses. Thus arguably these days many more women are economically independent from their natal families. Consequently, natal families should have less leverage to affect their daughters’ decisions about whether to opt for single motherhood or not. Not only do more women work as employees, but women in full-time employment earn more. The gender gap in earnings has been closing across the labor market, mostly due to women’s improved educational attainment and ageing (that is, greater potential experience).10 Finally, there is a gradual, albeit admittedly from a low base, growth in the number of women with high earning power in Japan. Although “there is a dearth of women in management positions in private Japanese firms . . . there has been some change since 1982, with the proportion of women at each level tripling between 1982 and 2003.”11 Of course, not all the recent labor market trends have been positive for women. The above discussion of averages masks the fact that different segments of the labor force fare very differently. The earnings gap between parttime and full-time employees has been widening just as the number of women working part time has been growing.12 The emphasis on firm-specific skills

   Chapter 3 helps to maintain gender segregation in the labor market.13 Still, 67.7 percent of divorced mothers separate from their husbands at a time when they do not have a full-time job.14 Thus not being in full-time employment and having few if any valuable firm-specific skills does not preclude women from choosing to raise their children alone.15 The positive labor market trends discussed above are often interpreted as a sign of women’s growing independence, which allows them to defer marriage, remain unmarried, or opt out of an unsatisfactory marriage and raise their child(ren) alone.16 The increase in the number of women who may have the earning power to raise children alone, however, has not so far translated into a significantly greater number of women choosing to have children outside marriage. One reason why the documented positive changes in women’s labor market environment have had little effect on women’s reproductive decisions is that they have benefited childless women to a greater extent than women with children.17 Any mother’s primary allegiance is believed to be to her child(ren) and family, and this leads to a common perception that mothers of young children are unsuitable for full-time, regular employment.18 The ­gender-role assumptions embedded in the Japanese labor market diffuse the beneficial labor market changes and exacerbated disadvantages for women with small children. The current labor market situation still encourages women to retire upon childbearing and discourages them from working at least during the child’s early years. Statistics on women’s participation in the labor market (see Figure 3.1) show that many women still withdraw from the market around the average age of first childbearing (29.1 years in 2005).19 Whether more women quit because they are forced to or because they believe it is necessary for the benefit of their child(ren) is arguable. In either case, there is a strong expectation that a woman will quit upon childbirth and then return to work only part time. It has been amply shown in existing research that many companies do not provide full-time jobs that take into account the needs of women with small children.20 This is obviously disadvantageous for single mothers, the majority of whom have to work to support themselves.21 Women are well aware of this, and thus many may eschew having a child outside wedlock as they fear losing their jobs during pregnancy and not being able to find decently paid full-time new ones after birth. Sachiko, a 32-year-old unwed mother in full-time employment, was one of many women who kept worrying during pregnancy that “[finding a job] will probably be hard.” She was very much surprised when she managed to secure a job before her child turned one. Sachiko was not alone in her success. Most of the single mothers manage to secure jobs. The majority (70.5 percent) of them are employed when their child is between 0 and 2 years old, and as their children grow older single mothers’ probability of

Navigating Work and Welfare   

being employed increases.22 Yet, as will be discussed in detail below, most of these jobs tend to be low-paid and insecure. Quite a few of my interviewees were asked about their family situation during job interviews and had to say that they were single mothers.23 This information became a hindrance when one was considered for a job.24 However, both single mothers themselves and social workers I talked to stressed that it was not a specific prejudice against single unwed mothers that made employers unwilling to hire them. Rather it was a common fear that a mother will be heavily distracted from work by her family duties, will not be able to put in overtime hours when needed, and so on. This fear, of course, applies equally to all mothers with children and puts divorcées at a disadvantage similar to that of single unwed mothers.25 That the number of women with children choosing to divorce has been growing rapidly over the past years suggests that economic pressures either have decreased or are not the only explanatory factor—or both. It bears repeating that I am not trying to argue that there is no longer any no discrimination against women in the labor market. My more modest point rather is that while women’s position in the labor market is not equal to that of men and it is especially hard for mothers to find and keep jobs, over the past few decades it has become easier for women to earn a living independently. As I pointed out in Chapter 1, the illegitimacy rate in Japan has changed little since 1955.Yet the labor market environment has changed dramatically over the same period. Japanese women (including single unwed mothers) these days are more likely to be in the paid labor market rather than in family employment and to return to the paid labor market after they quit it in order to give birth. Many more career options opened to women after 1980s so if they manage to secure a full-time job they may also earn more than they used to. Another undeniable positive trend affecting women’s labor market access is a proliferation of policies to support working mothers. family-friendly policie s The majority of these policies were not originally designed with single mothers in mind. Rather they were spurred by bureaucrats promoting equal employment opportunities, supported by companies that faced labor shortages in the 1980s, and then gained strength as a potential way to boost the falling birth rate.26 Nevertheless, since motherhood is at the core of the labor market disadvantages facing single mothers, they benefit greatly from these policies. Maternity Leave and Childcare Leave Maternity leave was first instituted through the Labor Standards Act (1947), which required employers to provide women with eight weeks of paid

   Chapter 3 p­ ostpartum maternity leave. In the early years compliance was extremely low: in 1949, only 21 percent of labor contracts permitted prenatal and postpartum leave, and only 2 percent gave time off for nursing.27 Things have improved since. Today virtually all companies offer maternity leave (fourteen weeks), at least on paper. In addition, the Childcare Leave Law (Ikuji Kyūgyō Hō ),28 which became effective in 1992, allows a one-year childcare leave after childbirth for either the mother or the father or shared leave.29 In 2004, 70.6 percent of all full-time employed women who gave birth took childcare leave.30 The leave is unpaid. Women can, however, recover 40 percent of their salary for a maximum of one year through employment insurance, provided they had their job for at least two years before taking the leave, return to it, and continue working for at least ten months after taking the leave.31 A frequently mentioned shortcoming of both maternity leave and childcare leave is that they offer hardly any protection for part-time working women. But this is also changing for the better: in December 2004 the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) passed a decree, effective from April 2005, that under certain circumstances contract workers may also be eligible for a maternity leave.32 Maternity leave and childcare leave made a significant difference for a number of my interviewees (including one contract worker), enabling them to have a child and keep their job.33 The childcare leave by itself, however, only helps a single mother to balance work and childcare until her child turns 1 year old. For women to be willing to consider having and raising children alone, childcare support that extends well beyond the first twelve months is essential. This support is largely provided through day care centers.34 Day Care Publicly funded day care centers were established in Japan through the Child Welfare Law (1947).35 Already in 1991 “Japan had the largest number of day-care facilities of any industrialized nation.”36 After the enactment of the “Angel Plan” (1994), the “New Angel Plan” (1999),37 the “Strategy for Reducing the Number of Children Waiting for Places in Day Care to Zero” (Taiki Jidō Zero Sakusen) (2001), and the “Plus One Plan” (2002), Japan has got some of the best and least expensive day care provision in the OECD.38 In 2001 the Japanese government spent $3.4 billion on childcare. By comparison, in the United States, the population of which is more than twice that of Japan, total federal spending on childcare was $4.36 billion in the same year.39 About 70 percent of all day care centers in Japan are licensed and are under strict quality control from the government in exchange for financial support. In licensed day care, fees are tied to the amount of taxes one is paying, so low-income families pay only a token amount or have the

Navigating Work and Welfare   

fee waived altogether. Few of my interviewees who looked for a place in day care for a child who was 12 months or older had any difficulties. Not only are day care centers relatively plentiful, single mothers are also prioritized during placement. Placing children below 1 year of age was more complicated as there are fewer places available.40 Still the number of 0- to 1-yearolds in day care grew from 37,090 in 1998 to 45,330 in 2006, suggesting that place availability is improving.41 The majority of women in my sample were from urban areas so it is difficult to compare single mothers’ experiences in urban and rural areas. The very limited comparisons possible suggest that placing a child into day care in a rural area was generally easier.42 Women were less likely to be told about queues, or have to settle for a day care center that was not their first choice.43 On the other hand, cities seem to offer more flexible non-licensed forms of childcare support such as babysitters, home helpers, private agencies specialized in picking up the child after day care and delivering him or her to the grandparents, and so on. In addition, big cities have more day care centers with long opening hours,44 and there seem to be more opportunities to find day care for a sick child or a child recovering from an infection.45 Care leave for sick children is not legally mandated but only encouraged, thus having care facilities in place makes a big difference for mothers. Irrespective of regional differences, there has been a considerable improvement in day care provision for preschool children since the mid-1990s. The number of after-school clubs (gakudō kurabu, mostly for children below 10 years old) also has grown.46 One would expect all these improvements to enable more unmarried women to carry their pregnancy to term if they wish to do so. Yet the scale of change has hardly been dramatic. In 2006, 98 percent of all Japanese children were born within marriage, down from 98.9 percent in 1993, a year before the first “Angel Plan” was introduced. In 2006 the proportion of illegitimate children born out of all children was still lower than in 1950.47 Some research on day care has suggested that, apart from the reality of existing provisions, guilt and shame associated with putting a child into day care prevent mothers from taking advantage of objective improvements of the system.48 Few of the unwed mothers I interviewed, however, mentioned feeling particularly uneasy or marginalized because they put their children into day care and worked full time.49 This finding is well supported by the macro-level evidence. The number of children in day care has been growing, reaching 2,118,352 in 2006.50 In 2006, 29 percent of all preschool children in Japan were attending day care centers, so it can hardly be called a rare experience.51 Often rather than being concerned, the women I interviewed talked about the positive effects of the mother’s employment on a

   Chapter 3 child.52 Emiko, a 34-year-old self-employed university graduate, for example, explained, I’m sorry that maybe I make her [the daughter] think sad thoughts because of that. But I think working is good. Balance is important.When I play with her, I play with all my heart. Though it may be short time, I make it full. It’s not the length of time that matters; it’s how full it is.

For some unwed mothers day care was even a source of greater confidence in their ability to combine work and childrearing successfully. Noriko, a 39-year-old university graduate employed full time, for example, at first felt guilty leaving her daughter in day care. Soon, however, her perception changed: “The day care teacher takes very detailed notes [on what the child was doing]. Looking [at these and] also at photographs [of children taken at the day care center every day] I saw that she seems to be enjoying herself and I was relieved. I was also told that my daughter is rather proud of the fact that her mother is working.” To summarize, while women in the Japanese labor market face various disadvantages, many of these disadvantages have been reduced in the past few decades. The development of family-friendly policies has made it easier for single mothers to work. So far these changes, however, have not had much of an effect on out-of-wedlock childbearing trends. Could it be that single mothers face some special disadvantages that prevent them from benefiting from the general improvements in the labor market? employment disadvantage s of single mothe r s and policie s to counte r them Japan has one of the highest rates of single mothers in employment in the world: 87.3 percent.53 The average yearly income of a single-mother household, however, is only 2.13 million yen (about $19,300), while that of an average household with at least one child is 7.18 million yen (about $65,000).54 Only 42.5 percent of all working single mothers are in full-time jobs.55 To alleviate the economic insecurity that many single-mother families face,56 in 2003 the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) broadened the existing employment support initiatives for single mothers and added several new ones. Since the proposed deadline for full implementation was 2008, at the time of my field research the adoption of these initiatives was patchy. Local governments are obliged to bear half of the costs for new benefits (the other half is paid for by the national government), and many have been unable or unwilling to spare the money.57 Although their existence testifies to a certain improvement in the labor market support available to single mothers, so far these policies have been rather ineffective. My interviewees’ experiences suggest that in their present form these policies are unlikely to affect

Navigating Work and Welfare   

women’s reproductive decisions, so I believe for the purposes of this book a cursory overview of them will suffice.58 Support policies for single mothers can be divided into three broad clusters. Advice Under the guidance of the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare in 2003 local governments started establishing Single-Mother Employment and Independence Support Centers (Boshi Katei nado Shūgyō Jiritsu Shien Sentā) and by 2005 all prefectures, 93 percent of big cities, and 62 percent of midsized cities had such a center in place. There were no such centers in towns and villages. There single mothers had to rely on the local single-mother independence supporters (boshi jiritsu shien’in).59 Although the main goal of the independence centers and independence supporters is to help single mothers secure reasonable, full-time permanent jobs, this has proved difficult to achieve. In 2005, 46,442 single mothers received job-related advice in the eighty-three Single-Mother Employment and Independence Support Centers scattered throughout the country, and as a result 4,372 of these women (9.4 percent) got jobs. Out of these, only 1,652 women (3.5 percent of all women advised) got full-time jobs.60 Other advice initiatives were even less successful. For example, 4.2 percent of the 40,333 single mothers who attended lectures aimed at helping them find jobs secured a job as a result; fewer than a third of these jobs were full time. Of 29,097 single mothers who got job introductions through an employment information service, 9.5 percent secured a job, and again fewer than half of these jobs were full-time. Training Support Local governments provide short-term professional training for free to single mothers in an attempt to counter the difficulties facing single mothers, who lack the skills necessary to compete successfully with people who have fewer family obligations.61 The short-term training courses tend to be very popular; some have sizeable waiting lists. These courses, however, do not offer corresponding job placement support and also do not change the education level of the students considerably, and thus are unlikely to improve substantially the employability of the participants.62 Apart from free training, local governments offer financial support for expenses associated with training. The Education and Training Independence Support Benefit (Jiritsu Shien Kyouiku Kunren Kyūfukin) allows single mothers who attend training courses and are not subsidized by unemployment insurance to claim 40 percent of their expenses, up to a maximum of

   Chapter 3 20,000 yen (about $180) after the completion of the course. By 2005 this scheme was implemented by all the prefectural and big-city municipalities. Implementation rates in mid-sized cities and smaller municipalities lagged behind: 86 percent of the former and 44 percent of the latter had the Independence Support Benefit on offer. In 2005 only 3,389 single mothers across Japan benefited from this scheme. Bursaries Promoting Professional Skills Training (Kōtō Ginō Kunren Sokushinhi ) cover some of the expenses associated with training courses in several designated professions that take more than two years to complete. The potential benefits of this scheme are offset by two serious drawbacks. First, the scheme covers only a limited number of professions (nurses, home helpers, and so on) deemed appropriate for single mothers.63 Second, it pays up to 13,000 yen (about $120) per month for one-third of a course length (up to a maximum of twelve months), forcing single mothers to bear the rest of the expenses themselves. These limitations mean this scheme is of little help to single mothers who want professional training but cannot afford it. Finally, while 85 percent of prefectures and close to 80 percent of big and mid-sized cities offered this scheme in 2005, only 33.9 percent of smaller municipalities had it in place. Predictably, its uptake rate is low. In 2005 only 863 single mothers nationwide completed a course with the help of this scheme. Employment Support Finally, there are several schemes encouraging companies to employ single mothers. The change to a so-called Full-time Employment Award (Jōyō Koyō Tenkan Shōgakukin) pays 300,000 yen (about $2,700) to a company after it converts a temporary employed single mother into a permanent full-time member of its staff and employs her in this capacity for at least six months. In 2005 a local government official from a medium-sized city in northern Honshu and a Hello Work (Harō Wāku)64 employee from a town in Osaka prefecture in charge of job-search assistance to single mothers told me that this scheme was not at all popular with companies. Employers found the compensation offered to be insufficient to offset the perceived costs of employing a single mother. Moreover, small municipalities were dragging their feet, and in 2005 this policy was implemented in only 22.3 percent of all the local governments, and only fifty-six such awards were given nationwide. Single mothers are also one of the target groups of a Trial Employment Incentive Scheme (Toraiaru Koyō Shōreikin) and a Wage Subsidy to Advance Employment of Special Applicants (Tokutei Kyūshokusha Koyō Kaihatsu ­Joseikin). The Trial Employment Incentive Scheme contributes 50,000 yen (about $450) a month for up to three months to the salary of a person

Navigating Work and Welfare   

newly employed on a trial contract. In 2005, 323 people benefited from this scheme.The Wage Subsidy pays one-fourth (one-third to small and mid-size companies) of the wages of a special applicant (these include single mothers, disabled people, and elderly employees) for the first year of employment. In 2005, 22,171 people used this scheme. There are a few other smaller initiatives, such as special treatment of single mothers applying for a license to open a small tobacco-selling shop (forty-seven people applied in 2005). These, however, have a rather limited reach. None of my interviewees mentioned even considering making use of them. Thus I think it is safe to argue that they do not have a significant effect on women’s decision whether to have a child or not, even if they help some women to make ends meet afterward. Therefore, I will not discuss them in detail here. To summarize, although policies supporting single working mothers exist, much still has to be done until they will really be able to offset the limited demand for full-time female employees with children. The average income of a single-mother household increased only slightly, from 2.12 million yen a year in 2002 before the new policies were introduced to 2.13 million yen a year in 2005, when the implementation was well under way. More often than not the unwed mothers I interviewed found the employment advice they received impractical for their circumstances. Few women mentioned even considering any of the training and employment schemes. The specific difficulties single mothers face in the labor market are not well addressed by the state, and the labor market disincentives for single motherhood are undeniable. In spite of these objectively unfavorable circumstances, many women divorce unsuitable partners while caring for small children, but only very few have children outside wedlock. Is there, perhaps, some specific discrimination against single unwed mothers in Japan, not detectable in general labor market trends due to their rarity and not alleviated through either family-friendly policies or single-mother work support policies? Is it perhaps this discrimination that makes a decision to become an unwed mother considerably less appealing than the decision to divorce one’s husband when caring for a child? is there particular discrimination against single unwe d mothe r s? Although never-married mothers are much more likely to have been employed than widows and divorcées before becoming single mothers, they are also the group of single mothers that finds it most difficult to hold on to their jobs. Of this group, 21.3 percent became unemployed upon turning into single mothers (compared with 5.9 percent for divorcées and 6.3 percent for widows).65 The most frequently mentioned reasons for job loss were “working in a place where it was impossible to take childcare leave,” “working

   Chapter 3 in non-regular employment,” and “a change of atmosphere at work for the worse” after becoming a single mother. In addition, although unwed mothers were more likely than any other type of single mothers to have been employed full time before they had their children (55.4 percent of unwed mothers versus 32.3 of divorcées),66 they were least likely to have a full-time job afterward (30.4 percent of unwed mothers versus 44 percent of divorcées).67 Unwed mothers’ inability to secure regular full-time jobs after childbirth indicates a serious comparative disadvantage. Losing one’s position as a full-time employee means losing job security and entitlement to maternity and childcare leaves as well as a huge decrease in earnings.68 Single mothers in full-time regular employment earn on average 3.4 million yen (about $31,000) a year, whereas those in nonregular jobs earn only 1.7 million (about $15,000).69 Unmarried women may be reluctant to bear illegitimate children because of the job instability they expect to ensue. On the other hand, Japanese prefectures with higher unemployment rates and thus presumably higher job instability also have higher illegitimacy rates, suggesting that job insecurity by itself may not be enough to discourage illegitimacy.70 Also, if we look at income differences, the average income of a divorced single mother is 2.45 million yen (about $22,000) per year and that of an unwed mother is 2.33 million yen (about $21,000).71 These figures suggest that although working unwed mothers are financially penalized more than divorced mothers, the difference is marginal. There is also a possibility that this difference will become smaller if we had the data to control for the age of the child. Many of the labor market disadvantages confronting unwed mothers may be a consequence of the greater difficulties they face balancing work and childcare because they have to care for their children from infancy.72 If that is the case, then these disadvantages may be temporary. Using data from the Longitudinal Survey of Children Born in the Twenty-first Century (21 Seki Shusseiji Jūdan Chōsa), Iwasawa and Mita suggest that unwed mothers appear particularly disadvantaged in the labor market because there are disproportionately many women among them who have children in their late teens and early twenties.73 The labor market disadvantages that are related to women’s demographic characteristics, rather than to their status as unwed mothers, provide little insight as to why older unmarried women with better job prospects avoid having children outside wedlock. The finding that outside-marriage childbearing is particularly prevalent among young women who find it especially difficult to secure and keep full-time jobs also supports my point that labor market disadvantages are powerless to fully explain childbearing-related decisions. When it comes to family-friendly policies, the only particular way in which unwed mothers are penalized is price-related. Divorcées are eligible

Navigating Work and Welfare   

for a 350,000 yen (about $3,200) deduction from their annual taxable income and unwed mothers are not. As the price of many public services, ­including day care, is based on the amount of taxes one pays, an unwed mother has to pay more for day care than a divorcée with the same income. On the formal level there is no discrimination by the type of single mother when it comes to policies aimed at improving working conditions for them. The only possible disadvantage may stem from the organizations and people in charge of implementing these policies. Policies to support working single mothers are administered by state­employed bureaucrats through municipalities and a public job-search assistance agency (Hello Work). The officials in charge of the implementation of policies often are not trained as social workers, and many are generalists rotated between different posts every three years. Some of the bureaucrats I interviewed were well informed about the difficulties single mothers face in the Japanese labor market and also respectful of women’s choice to raise their children alone. Others were less so. My interviewees’ experiences suggest that lack of knowledge about available support by the bureaucrat in charge was a problem much more often than deliberate discrimination. A well-informed unwed mother would in most cases be able to benefit from a policy for which she is eligible. Both divorcées and unwed mothers, on the other hand, told stories of missing opportunities after being misinformed by bureaucrats.74 Finally, some policies to support working single mothers are entrusted to officially recognized interest groups, particularly to the National Association for Single Mothers’ and Widows’ Welfare (Zenkoku Boshi Kafu Fukushi Dantai Kyōgikai, hereafter the Association). In some municipalities the Association manages job-search centers and the provision of training courses for single mothers. Passing welfare functions to the Association is problematic besause, as I was told, executives of the Association are mainly elected from widows, particularly war widows whenever possible. In 2005 the two latest presidents of the Association were about 90 years old. Due to their age and background, most of these executives are very conservative. They also do not have any training in welfare. I heard from several informants that in the Association there is an informal hierarchy of single mothers. Widows, especially war widows, are seen as aristocrats among single mothers, divorcées as second class, and unwed mothers as the least acceptable group. These strong hierarchical perceptions may affect the extent to which the Association is committed to supporting different types of single mothers. It is, however, hard to identify unwed mothers as such unless they choose to disclose their identity.75 None of my interviewees mentioned being discriminated against by members of the Association because of their never-married status. On the other hand, the head of the Association in Niigata prefecture told me

   Chapter 3 there were no unwed mothers in the prefecture according the Association’s sources. This suggests that unwed mothers in Niigata may be choosing to hide their status when interacting with the Association. How does the labor market environment described so far relate to unwed mothers’ experiences? Unwed Mothers’ Experiences with the Labor Market Family-friendly policies made a big difference in helping my interviewees to balance work and childcare. The majority of women who were entitled to maternity leave and childcare leave, that is, those who stayed in the same full-time job, were able to claim them. Few women had difficulty putting their children into day care. None of my interviewees complained of restricted access to benefits from policies supporting working single mothers. These policies, however, were clearly insufficient to counter the labor market disadvantages. Forty percent of unwed mothers in my sample became unemployed upon childbirth.76 Many of these women resigned from their jobs at some point during pregnancy, fearing discrimination. Among those who stayed, about half had to face colleagues’ intolerance.With a few exceptions, the pressure was largely socio-ideological (gossiping, a cold attitude, unpleasant remarks) coupled with strong internal stress and high expectation of discrimination, rather than direct material pressure such as getting fired, demoted, or the like. As Yoshiko’s case shows, often as long as a woman was strong enough to ignore the pressure no further damage was done. Although “people gossiped about [Yoshiko] a lot” during her pregnancy, the “gossiping does not happen in front of one’s eyes so I didn’t really care; I could just ignore it.”77 After about a year the gossip lost all its novelty, and these days Yoshiko said she did not feel any pressure at work. Women with professional78 or managerial jobs, civil servants, and trade union employees were the ones most confident about their job security and felt that their pregnancy and childbirth outside wedlock would not change anything in their job situation. Mieko, a 40-year-old university-educated woman who worked as a system engineer and a project manager for a large company, was almost amused when I asked her whether she was afraid of losing her job when she decided to have a child outside wedlock. “The company can’t sack me. If they sack me, the company will go bankrupt. But I have to work hard. My daughter is always in day care. A few times I worked throughout the night, taking my daughter along with me to the office and having her sleep there.” Hitomi, a 37-year-old nurse, quit her job in the last month of her pregnancy because she wanted to work in a hospital closer to her parents now that she would be caring for a child. It never crossed her mind that having a child might make gaining employment more difficult. Just as she expected, she secured a job as soon as she decided to

Navigating Work and Welfare   

start working. Japanese women were well aware of the freedom associated with valuable human capital easily transferable from job place to job place. Hitomi’s sisters, for example, themselves thirty-four and thirty-one at the time of our interview and still single, longed for children, but believed that for ordinary company employees like them marriage was the only option. They told Hitomi, “You only could do that [have a child outside wedlock] because you’re a qualified nurse.You’re lucky.” Women in professional and managerial jobs, civil servants, and trade union employees were also the least likely to suffer prejudice from their colleagues or to be afraid of prejudice and to hide their situation.79 Cases where they got considerable support from colleagues and bosses were not uncommon. Kumiko, a 50-year-old university graduate, worked for a trade union in her company, and when she told her bosses that she was going to have a child outside wedlock they were rather supportive if incredulous. She was even told that now that she would have to take care of the child, they would look after her, and that she would be the last person to lose her job under any circumstances. Some jobs, especially those like nursing, which offer employees financial independence and extra childcare support, reportedly attract many single mothers. Lack of prejudice in a workplace in these cases is to an extent an unintended consequence of having many singleparent colleagues. Yumiko, a 36-year-old civil servant, was very grateful to her manager. She was “a woman who got divorced when her child was small and she protected me. She told me I do not need to explain any details to anyone. I should just keep doing my best at work. She gave me strength.” Hitomi, mentioned above, remembered, “Everyone really supported me. There are many divorcées among nurses.There were no unmarried mothers, but people kept saying: ‘To do something like that is just like you!’ Everyone was very supportive.There were many single mothers around so they helped a lot.” Better-employed women also tended to be keenly aware of their rights and more prepared to fight for them. I asked Chizuko, a 34-year-old childless unmarried woman working as a TV journalist at NHK, about a hypothetical pregnancy. Would she fear for her job? Her immediate reaction was “as a company they can’t do that!” Of course, not everything went smoothly for all the professional women. Some were penalized for becoming mothers. This, however, appeared not to have had anything to do with them having a child outside wedlock. Rather, it reflected the belief that mothers are not such committed and productive workers, a belief that creates employment difficulties for all single mothers alike. The story of Nobuko, a 38-year-old full-time employed college graduate, is among the most telling ones. She worked as a financial manager, earning about 12 million yen ($109,000) a year. When she decided to have a child, she knew she could use maternity and childcare leave and,

   Chapter 3 she assumed, she could return to work with the same salary and similar responsibilities. Having given birth outside wedlock, she was a bit wary of possible discrimination from her colleagues, but this turned out to be no problem at all—nothing changed about the way she was treated. However, upon returning to work after childcare leave, she was stripped of her managerial status (although her income remained unchanged) and was made to work as a subordinate under her former inferior. It was explained to her that a woman with a child just cannot be a good manager. The fact that it was childbearing per se and not the unmarried mother status that led to demotions meant that sometimes they could be countered. Yoshiko, an NICU unit nurse, told me that her career was not affected much but only because she made a point of not allowing her childcare responsibilities to affect her work in any way. “I now pay 35,000 yen [about $320] a month for day care, and [some months] when it is really bad I pay 80,000 yen [about $730]. Paying this 80,000, I build my career. In my job you can’t use a child as an explanation for working less.” Unwed mothers who were not pursuing such high-flying professional careers more often than not resigned upon pregnancy, fearing notoriety and sometimes more tangible repercussions. There were a few cases when women were forced to quit because of their childbearing decisions, but this was less common. Akiko, a 37-year-old full-time employed university graduate, was one of a few women who went through such an experience: This is a Japanese company. Somehow there was a custom that a woman gives up a job upon marriage. In this environment the courage [needed for] giving birth outside wedlock is huge. Rather than worrying about myself, I worried about what people around me are thinking. Little by little everybody got used to it, and these days I don’t feel rejection, but . . . [at first] I was told that because I gave birth I can’t continue working.80

Women who had children fathered by married colleagues had to face the strongest intolerance from coworkers and the greatest pressure to quit from employers.81 Having worked in her company for several years and having built a good reputation as an employee, Akemi, a 36-year-old high school graduate, believed that if she “had a child after getting married probably I still could work, but as it was this kind of relationship [adultery with a colleague] . . . they didn’t say it but there was an attack without words on me; they wanted me to quit.” Four of the seven women who had children with married coworkers quit their jobs, often well before their colleagues or employers could notice. Akiko was almost fired after it transpired she got pregnant by her boss, but her child’s father held an important position in the company and managed to save her job.

Navigating Work and Welfare   

In many cases my interviewees’ job losses resulted from their choice to resign before anyone found out and thus before it was possible to know whether they would actually be discriminated against for their choice. Quitting one’s job was a commonly used tactic to keep one’s situation secret from everyone but the closest family and friends. None of the unwed mothers who resigned before pregnancy and found a new job after having given birth had to face any specific discrimination because they gave birth outside wedlock. As Keiko, a 36-year-old full-time employed university graduate, explained to me, “I looked around for jobs, but there was no need to explain [my situation] in detail. I just said I am raising [a child] alone.” Unwed mothers were invariably taken to be divorcées by their new acquaintances, and as it was convenient for them they usually did not disabuse others of this assumption.82 As they were believed to be divorcées, they did not have to face any discrimination related to their status as unwed mothers. Naomi, a 45-year-old contract worker, told me that when she gets a new job, I don’t tell what is unnecessary. I’m alone and I have a child. OK.Then you probably had a divorce with your husband, right? OK. Then here is a form for tax reduction. There is tax reduction for divorcées with children, but there is none for women who were never married. Nevertheless, at the end of the year I’m put on the list [of people who receive the tax reduction]. I don’t say anything but naturally [people think] it was a divorce.

In most cases this disguise was easy to maintain for as long as one wished. This, as we will see in Chapter 5, is one of the reasons why so few unwed mothers have had an experience of face-to-face discrimination. Unwed mothers’ experiences suggest that rather than real normative sanctions it is the fear of potential sanctions coupled with the desire to keep one’s situation secret and the difficulty of combining infant care with a job that are at the core of unwed mothers’ difficulties in the labor market. Children grow, so having an infant is a temporary problem. Even with very young children, unwed mothers managed to get employment either by accepting a non-full-time job or by finding a childcare solution that convinced prospective employers that child-minding will not affect their work commitment. Support from one’s parents was the most typical solution to difficulties with childcare. Parents helped out about a half of my interviewees.83 Sachiko, a 32-year-old full-time employed college graduate, to her own great surprise managed to get a job a few months after her baby was born and never had to face a long spell of unemployment after that. I think these days when one is looking for employment the [employers’] condition [for hiring] is that there should be someone looking after the child if anything happens. I feel I was employed in the first place because there was someone [her mother]

   Chapter 3 to look after the child. Even if I cannot go [home], there is someone instead of me there. I was always asked [about it]. Everywhere I went for job interviews I was always asked and because I could clear this point I was successful in getting jobs.

Those who could not rely on their parents for support came up with sophisticated combinations of day care arrangements. Yoshiko, the NICU nurse, for example, devised an elaborate combination of several childcare providers to cover her unpredictable work schedule.84 I’m using four day care places. A public city day care center during the day, prefectural public day care when I have to work late in the evenings, and when I have overtime work there is an evening place especially for parents who work overtime that looks after a child until 8 pm. I also use a childrearing support center when I need some time to refresh, and finally I use babysitters. It is expensive!

Women who were living in Mother and Child Living Support Facilities (which are discussed below) could promise reliably that they will have twenty-four-hour day care support and care for sick children. Most of the women who gain places in these facilities have too many problems to be able to work full-time. However, for those who were working, a readily available childcare solution was a huge advantage. While one often had to strategize to get a full-time job, part-time jobs did not present any particular difficulty. Few women saw working in a nonfull-time job as a sensible long-term strategy because of the low pay, instability, and very limited social security coverage. There were, however, several women, like Emiko, a freelancing professional living in Tokyo, who chose to have non-full-time jobs while their children were young. Once Emiko had a child, she explained, I thought I wouldn’t be able to work as much as I used to. This job is related to television so it’s inevitable that sometimes I have to work late, have to work all day. . . . But as I’m not employed full-time there is no particular fuss about how much I should be working. I myself know I can’t work so much, so I cut down.

Kaori, a 31-year-old high school graduate from rural Tottori prefecture, had a lifestyle and aspirations very different from those of Emiko. Her motivation for choosing to work part-time, however, was very similar. “Now I am registered with a company for dispatched workers, and they send me to different places. If the job place is far from home, I can ask to change; that’s why I decided to have this type of job.” This strategy of opting for non-fulltime work was particularly attractive to women who lived in rural areas. Living expenses there were lower than in cities, and the Child Rearing Allowance85 covered a considerable share of them. Of course, more often than not unwed mothers worked part-time for lack of an alternative. Having left their old jobs to give birth, many women

Navigating Work and Welfare   

found it impossible to find a full-time job while caring for an infant. Such a situation gave rise to a profound sense of insecurity and led to continuous efforts to find a full-time job. Most of the women I interviewed were able to secure a full-time job after two or three years of determined efforts. Quite a few of these women anticipated this period of insecurity and decided to carry on with their pregnancy because they believed they had some kind of support to rely on during the first, most difficult year. The most popular “safety nets” were one’s own savings, unemployment benefits, and parental support. Only three unwed mothers also relied on support from their children’s fathers. Financial considerations often came up when I asked women what they were worried about during their pregnancy. However, they were rarely the first mentioned when I asked women to explain how they made their decisions between the different solutions open to them as premaritally pregnant women. My interviews suggest that single mothers are not always as powerless in the labor market as they are often assumed to be. Some women I interviewed deliberately chose non-full-time employment to have control over their time, or used time while they were living on welfare to improve their job qualifications (one woman was even studying toward her license as a certified public accountant). Professional women often exercised a considerable amount of leverage over their employers, which allowed them to reorganize their working lives to make them more suitable for mothering, including negotiating greater job flexibility. The evidence thus far seems to suggest that the job market by itself cannot sufficiently explain the low number of illegitimate children. It is true that unwed mothers fare worse than other single mothers in the job market: They are more likely to lose their jobs upon becoming single mothers, and they face more difficulties with finding and keeping employment. Available statistics, however, also suggest that the differences in the labor market environment of divorced and unwed mothers are not large enough to account for the more than ten-fold difference in the number of households headed by them. Moreover, the development of policies supporting working mothers, especially the improvement of the day care system, has given women new alternatives for combining work and motherhood. While the cost of single motherhood in Japan in terms of job opportunities may be high compared to other industrialized countries, if one looks into labor market trends within Japan, it is undeniable that the situation has been improving, which may explain why fewer mothers today are prepared to stay in marriages whatever the cost, thus fueling the divorce rate. Nonetheless, so far a similar increase in the numbers of women having children outside wedlock has not taken place. Is it that perhaps most people are

   Chapter 3 simply not aware of the improvements? And the life of an unwed mother is seen as exceptionally hopeless, determining subjective choices at the time of pregnancy? Perceptions about Single Mothers’ Economic Realities Researchers, activist groups, and the media often portray single mothers enduring severe economic hardship. As shown above, this description is far from being ungrounded, but it would be a mistake to presume that all single mothers live in borderline poverty. Statistics show that 7.1 percent of unwed mothers as well as 5.6 percent of widows and 4.8 percent of divorcées earn above 6 million yen (about $54,500) a year.86 The income of twenty-three of my interviewees when weighted per family member was similar to or higher than that of an average two-parent family. Six of these women earned considerably more in absolute figures. Women like that, however, are rarely touted as role models.87 In fact they are all but invisible even in single-mother activist groups. The single mothers with a high income tend to see the main objectives of these groups—keeping the level of welfare provision stable, suing biological fathers for acknowledgment and child maintenance—as too far from their needs and also are usually too busy combining careers with childrearing to get involved. One of the consequences of this invisibility is strong and exclusive association of single motherhood with poverty. Unmarried women with no children, like Mayumi, a 36-year-old full-time TV journalist, generally imagined single mothers’ lives as “tough economically and extremely busy.” Quite a few unwed mothers who had incomes above 5 million yen (about $45,000) a year commented that being an unwed mother turned out to be not as difficult as they feared before they had children.These women, however, almost invariably believed that their situation was special because, for example, of their job, which allows freedom and flexibility, or their parents’ support, or the fact that they had understanding and supportive employers and coworkers, and so on. Even lack of personal difficulties rarely led women to suggest that there may be subgroups of women in Japanese society for whom childrearing outside wedlock will not be an onerous choice at least from a financial perspective.They often concluded that for everybody else life must be very hard. This universal perception of hardship is all the more striking if we consider that my respondents came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and from a wide range of income groups. The media are to a significant extent responsible for this dismal image.88 Takako, a 34-year-old full-time employed university graduate, for example, told me that before she had a child herself she imagined single mothers’ lives very much like in TV dramas. “The image was very dark. I thought they lead very hard lives, living in dirty apartments.”

Navigating Work and Welfare   

The media’s portrayal is at least partially fed by the messages they get from the organizations supporting single mothers. For these organizations sustaining the level of available welfare and possibly increasing it is an important goal, and thus they tend to stress single mothers’ poverty. As a result, perceptions of single mothers are formed and reinforced in a way that omits well-to-do and successful single mothers, who, though a minority, are not nonexistent.89 Such negative perceptions are bound to make a woman think hard before becoming a single mother. Important for this study, however, the gloomy perceptions of life as a single mother are indiscriminate of the type of the single mother in question and, nevertheless, the perceptions of hardship do not seem to preclude ever more women from choosing to divorce and raise their children alone.90 Being a single unwed mother in contemporary Japan is hard. Single mothers are treated first of all as workers and only then as mothers, while at the same time the labor market is dominated by the male breadwinner model. As a result, although single mothers manage to get a higher income on average than their married counterparts they still earn substantially less than an average man.91 Single mothers’ financial situation is likely to be considerably more difficult than that of their peers in most Western industrialized countries.92 At the same time, as we have seen, some of the disadvantageous features of the job market have been mitigated over the past decades. In addition, labor market disadvantages are virtually identical for unwed mothers and divorced mothers, so it is puzzling that so many more women opt to become divorced than unwed mothers. In a modern welfare state, the labor market does not present us with the whole story. Welfare provisions can be as or more important for the material prospects of lower-income single mothers. The following section will analyze welfare provisions for single mothers, paying special attention to the eligibility differences between divorced and unwed mothers.

Welfare Provision for Single Mothers The Japanese welfare system is still to a large extent based on the assumption that direct state support for individuals is the measure of last resort to be turned to in exceptional cases.93 This interpretation of welfare was conceived in the early 1970s as the “Japanese-style welfare society” in deliberate juxtaposition to the welfare states in the West. The main idea behind it as summarized by Goodman is that instead of “the state taking the major burden in social welfare, it expected this role to be played by the three social institutions of the family, community and company, and for government

   Chapter 3 expenditure on social security to be maintained at a lower level than in a Western ‘welfare state.’”94 Much research in both English and Japanese has been done on welfare in Japan,95 so here I will only elaborate on welfare provision specifically for single mothers. Understanding of direct-income transfers to individuals as an exceptional measure, rather than a safety net, was an important reason for the crucial change in welfare provision in 1984. At the time the numbers of single mothers were growing rapidly following a considerable increase in the divorce rate.96 The rising demand for support was pushing up welfare spending and in 1984 a special committee was set up to reevaluate single mothers’ need for the Child Rearing Allowance (Jidō Fuyō Teate). In the committee’s decision single mothers were conceptualized primarily as workers and only then as mothers, and the Child Rearing Allowance as a source of extra income rather than the means to maintain a certain standard of living. This idea was extended in 2003 when the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare redefined the Child Rearing Allowance as a measure of temporary support for single mothers in particularly difficult circumstances. This understanding of the Child Rearing Allowance encouraged a general view that single mothers are to be self-supporting and as a rule should not rely on welfare. This view is one of the reasons why it is difficult for single mothers to qualify for Livelihood Protection (Seikatsu Hogo ),97 or why the numbers of Mother and Child Living Support Facilities are falling in spite of the growing numbers of single mothers. Given the well-documented labor market disadvantages that confront single mothers, these efforts to limit their access to welfare have raised serious concerns. The literature on single mothers in Japan concentrates heavily on welfare provision and suggests that the limitations of welfare support make the option of single motherhood a very unappealing one.98 While limited welfare provision undoubtedly affects single mothers’ living conditions, a more cautious approach to the explanatory power of welfare schemes when it comes to reproductive choices is in order. Evidence from other countries of the direct effect of welfare on women’s reproductive choices is mixed. Many researchers even argue that there is no direct link between the two and note in particular that there is little correlation between welfare payments and out-of-wedlock childbearing.99 Countries with low welfare provision can have low numbers of births outside wedlock, as in Italy or Japan, or high numbers of illegitimate births, as in the United States. Moreover, for the provision of welfare to explain the unpopularity of premarital childbearing in Japan, we should see a significant difference in provisions for unwed mothers and divorcées. Yet, apart from a few minor differences, which I will discuss in more detail below, unwed and divorced mothers are treated the same throughout the welfare system. This makes

Navigating Work and Welfare   

welfare an unlikely main explanation for the extremely low numbers of illegitimate children. Since the welfare system is unlikely to provide an answer to the question posed in this book, I will only give a brief overview of the main schemes. Slightly more detailed characteristics of the points where unwed mothers are treated differently will allow the reader to compare the magnitude of disparity in provisions with the differences in numbers of divorced and unwed mothers. The basic welfare provisions available to single mothers anywhere in Japan include Livelihood Protection, the Child Rearing Allowance, the Mother and Child Welfare Loan Fund, Mother and Child Living Support Facilities, preferential treatment in applying for public housing, free medical insurance for children, and tax exemption. livelihood protection scheme (seikatsu hogo) The most comprehensive welfare scheme open to single mothers is the Livelihood Protection Scheme. According to the Japanese postwar constitution, “All people shall have the right to maintain minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living. In all spheres of life, the State shall use its endeavors for the promotion and extension of social welfare and security, and of public health” (Article 25). The Livelihood Protection Scheme is intended to guarantee this minimum living standard. The monthly allowance for single-mother households on the Livelihood Protection Scheme in 2005 ranged between 122,960 yen and 158,650 yen (between $1,100 and $1,400).100 While the Livelihood Protection Scheme allows women a choice of not working,101 it is not easily accessible, and it is the main source of income only for a small minority of single mothers.102 The main reasons behind the limited accessibility are inflexible rules, extreme loss of privacy, and the strongly associated stigma. In accordance with the Japanese-style welfare society idea, all able-bodied citizens are presumed to be self-supporting. If they cannot provide for themselves, then the responsibility for their support falls onto their families, and only if these refuse to or cannot provide help will the state step in.103 Based on these strict qualification rules, the bureaucrats processing applications routinely phone an applicant’s relatives and inquire whether they could offer financial support.These measures ensure that considerably fewer single mothers rely on welfare for their livelihood than a strict income test would suggest.104 Concentrating on mothering is rarely a realistic choice for Japanese single mothers, and this may encourage some women to avoid single motherhood. Nevertheless, there is no reason why it should discourage potential unwed mothers more than potential divorced mothers, who are subject to the same inflexible rules and stigmatization.

   Chapter 3 child rearing allowance (jido- fuyo- teate) Livelihood Protection is the only major scheme that allows its recipients not to work. Most other welfare schemes do not substitute for work but rather provide support to working single mothers. The Child Rearing Allowance is one of the most important of these and, unlike Livelihood Protection, is not stigmatized.105 A majority of single mothers apply.106 The scheme was created in 1961 as an equivalent of widows’ pensions for divorcées and unwed mothers. In 2005 the full amount of the Child Rearing Allowance for one child (defined as one below 18 years of age) was 41,880 yen (about $380) a month. Partial support could be anywhere between 9,880 yen (about $90) and 41,870 yen (about $380) a month depending on one’s income.107 Subjective evaluation of the support varied greatly depending on the area. For city-dwellers, like Keiko, a 36-year-old Tokyoite in a full-time job, “the sum is really small; it does not even cover the rent.” On the other hand, Mayu, a 30-year-old single unwed mother from rural Kansai working part-time, was happy with the level of payments. “You can get almost 500,000 yen [about $4,500] a year! If you do not squander the money and work a little bit you can manage.” The Child Rearing Allowance is the most frequently received financial benefit for single mothers (60.8 percent of all single mothers received it in 2003).108 Changes in eligibility for the Child Rearing Allowance offer a good idea of the state’s categorization of single mothers. Between 1970 and 1984 the Child Rearing Allowance equal in amount to widows’ pensions was paid to both divorcées and unwed mothers. In 1984 the eligibility criteria were revised. “Instead of the previous objective to promote the welfare of children in general, the new objective established the aims of the allowance as to ‘provide stability and smooth the instabilities associated with divorce.’”109 The full amount of support paid has been falling ever since and is now considerably lower than widows’ pensions. From 1985 unwed mothers whose children’s fathers acknowledged their paternity became ineligible for the Child Rearing Allowance. These women were deemed undeserving for they have never suffered through the disruptive experience of divorce, and could be living with common law husbands. To avoid paying the Child Rearing Allowance to women living in unregistered civil partnerships, from 1986 all unwed mothers had to prove they were not in cohabiting relationships to qualify. To do so an unwed mother had to fill in a very detailed form about the child’s father and get it signed by their local community volunteer (minsei iin)110 to certify her lack of contact with the man.The requirement to discuss one’s family situation with a community volunteer reportedly discouraged many unwed mothers from applying for the allowance. The undercurrent of suspicion that unmarried mothers were not really raising their children alone made it more difficult for them to qualify for support. There were never any comparable requirements for divorcées. As was explained to me in a welfare

Navigating Work and Welfare   

department in one local authority, evidence of legal divorce is seen as a sufficient proof of a lack of a supportive relationship. The special constraints on unwed mothers’ access to the allowance were eventually abolished in 1998 when application rules for them once again became the same as those for divorcées. At the same time, the incomerelated eligibility criteria were made stricter in an attempt to curb the proliferation of single-mother households.111 The restrictions on eligibility for the Child Rearing Allowance, however, did not halt the growth of the total number of single-mother households, and the abolition of the discrimination against unwed mothers did not result in an upsurge in their numbers. This evidence corroborates my general argument that welfare schemes for single mothers do not play a leading role in the reproductive decisions of unwed mothers-to-be. Among the other direct support schemes available for single mothers, three stand out because of their potential to make the life of any singlemother recipient considerably easier. These are the Mother and Child Welfare Loan Fund (Boshi Fukushi Shikin), public housing, and Mother and Child Living Support Facilities (Boshi Seikatsu Shien Shisetsu).112 There is no evidence that any of the schemes systematically discriminates between divorcées and unwed mothers. Also any effects on reproductive decision making these schemes could have had are mitigated by their unpredictability. The limited number of places available in public housing and Mother and Child Living Support Facilities means that getting into them can take time and depends not only on one’s objective need, but also on luck. To qualify for the Mother and Child Welfare Loan Fund is also difficult. Combined with the limited availability is the problem that all these schemes can only be applied for by a single mother, not a premaritally pregnant woman with no prospect of marriage (or a married mother considering divorce). This means that basing one’s reproductive decision on the presumption that one would qualify for one of these schemes would be risky. None of the single mothers I interviewed did this. single mothe r s’ income tax exemption The last important welfare scheme mandated by the state and available throughout Japan is different in two ways from the policies discussed above. First, it is a tax benefit and thus less stigmatized than direct handouts. 113 Second, it currently incorporates the only officially existing discrimination in welfare provision between unwed mothers and other single mothers. It therefore deserves a more detailed description. Divorced and widowed single mothers can deduct up to 350,000 yen (about $3,200) from their annual taxable income, a significant sum given that the annual average income for a single mother family was 2,130,000 yen

   Chapter 3 (about $19,300) in 2005.114 This saves them money in two ways: directly, as less tax has to be paid, and indirectly, as prices of certain public goods (for example, day care) are calculated on the basis of income tax paid, rather than income. The tax exemption was first introduced for widows and became available to divorcées in 1989. Unwed mothers are still not eligible for it. Most of the unwed mothers I interviewed thought this differentiation was unfair, but few of them were aware of this difference when they made a decision about their pregnancy. No one suggested that the income tax discrimination significantly affected the deliberations of the possible ways to resolve a pregnancy. In addition to the programs outlined thus far, there are further assistance schemes for single mothers such as shelters, home helping service, kimonos for rent for a child’s coming-of-age date, and so on. These schemes, however, are only provided in certain locations and do not differentiate between unwed and divorced mothers. None of the mothers I interviewed indicated that they had an important effect on the decision to have a child, so I will not discuss them here. The overview of existing policies shows that virtually all the support available is aimed at women who are already mothers. There is hardly any support for women in the last months of pregnancy.115 This omission probably has an effect on premaritally pregnant women. At the same time, Japan is not unique in this respect, rather it is typical.116 Few countries provide benefits to support unmarried and pregnant women during pregnancy and childbirth, so again this is unlikely to be an explanation for Japan’s uniquely low illegitimacy rate. I was struck by how little my interviewees, both unwed mothers and divorcées, knew about welfare provision, indicating that it likely played a peripheral role in their decision making. Information about various schemes can be obtained relatively easily but only by people actively looking for it. Each local authority I visited produced special pamphlets on welfare for single mothers, but I never saw these lying around freely in the welfare department. They had to be asked for. The pamphlets, moreover, mostly provide very general information on what might be available and encourage relying on bureaucrats who work in welfare departments for clarification. Bureaucrats, however, frequently switch posts, which prevents them from building up experience and knowledge in a particular area like this. This means that unwed mothers in search of information about the welfare system often came across inexperienced bureaucrats who were not very knowledgeable about the details of the welfare schemes available and even provided wrong information. Noriko, a 39-year-old university graduate, for example, did not receive the Child Rearing Allowance until her child turned one. As she explained, I really didn’t know anything, what the difference is between the Child Rearing Allowance and Child Allowance—nothing at all.When I first went to the municipality,

Navigating Work and Welfare    the person in charge didn’t really explain things well. He said if I’m receiving child support payments [from the child’s father] I’m not eligible for the Child Rearing Allowance. So I thought, well, I’m not eligible. Only later I checked this and realized that I should be eligible for it after all and applied.

Support groups for single mothers seek to educate their members, and I was told that with the spread of the internet, welfare information has become much easier to obtain through support groups’ websites, chat rooms for single mothers, and the like. However, this requires a single mother to actively seek information, which puts women with higher education and higher awareness of their rights at considerable advantage. For such women among my interviewees welfare support often represented only a small proportion of their income, or they were above the eligibility threshold altogether. Thus welfare provision was unlikely to affect their decision whether to bear a child or not. Many of these women started looking for the details of available welfare rather late. Takako, a 34-year-old university graduate, remembered how after she gave birth she “had a bit of time so [she] went to ask about allowances.” Among my interviewees, women who in the end relied heavily on welfare were also the ones who knew least about the system. These were usually low-income, low-education women, and they found out about welfare availability and their own entitlements well past the time abortion was possible and most often after their child was already born. Thus decisions of women for whom relying on welfare was the only way to make ends meet also were hardly ever affected by the specificities of available welfare. To a large extent, the women did not put much effort and enterprise into finding out the details about welfare because they did not expect to get significant support from the state.These low expectations were similar for unwed and divorced mothers. As I will show in Chapter 5, the media present the economic prospects of unwed and divorced mothers as equally gloomy and dwell little on available welfare support. As discussed above, information about welfare support is not easily accessible. Therefore, unwed mothers-to-be tend to make their choice against the background of a general expectation of limited support rather than based on a specific calculation of individual benefits. Not a single woman in my sample of divorced and unwed mothers expected welfare support to be substantial enough to encourage the choice of single motherhood, and many agreed with Kazuko, a 35-year-old self-employed high school drop-out, who felt that “the environment is not good for having children; the welfare system is just not very helpful.” Consequently, few unwed mothers bothered to find out what support they may have been eligible for before making up their minds about their pregnancy.This expectation of low support is likely to discourage single motherhood, but once again is powerless to explain the huge difference in the numbers of unwed and divorced mothers.

   Chapter 3 Despite all the criticisms of welfare provision for single mothers in contemporary Japan it is often forgotten that in one respect at least it is easy to be a welfare recipient in Japan. With the exception of Livelihood Protection recipients, single mothers are rarely vilified as welfare cheats. Although as in other industrialized countries single mothers have been categorized as “worthy” (widows) and “less worthy” (divorcées and unwed mothers) by experts and the media, this labeling is not related to welfare abuse. Mothers are not denigrated as cheats because the welfare available for “unworthy” (divorced and unwed) mothers is usually only a supplement to the main income, and it is well known that majority of single mothers work to support their families. In sum, the Japanese welfare system is not designed to provide a readily available safety net for everyone in need. In accordance with the “Japanesestyle welfare society” concept, welfare provisions for single mothers are far from generous, and they are expected to work. At the same time we cannot construe the Japanese welfare system as uniquely disadvantageous for single mothers. Japan is not the only state that expects its single mothers to work.117 Moreover, whatever the failings of the Japanese welfare system, they do not seem to have stopped the growing divorce rate.

Concluding Remarks As noted in previous research, the economic environment is disadvantageous for Japanese women and especially so for single mothers.The available welfare schemes do not offer an alternative to work, and single mothers find themselves in a rather precarious position in the labor market. On the other hand, the additional disadvantages of unwed mothers relative to divorcées are small and do not seem to provide an adequate explanation for the huge difference in their numbers. In addition, the labor market situation of women has improved somewhat over the past few decades, while welfare provision for unwed mothers at first worsened in the mid-1980s and then improved after 1999.Yet, over the same period the proportion of illegitimate births out of all births in Japan has changed little.This suggests that a decision to have a child outside wedlock may not be as sensitive to the economic environment as is often implied. We have not yet exhausted the gamut of government policies that could influence unmarried pregnant women in their choices: some researchers argue that it is the legal discrimination that, to a large extent, accounts for the low number of children born outside wedlock in Japan.118 In the next chapter I will present the aspects of the legal system that concern single unwed mothers and as before complement this description with an analysis of how women subjectively account for the effect of this discrimination on their choices.

  r 

Legal Discrimination against Unwed Mothers

4

miki, a 56-year-old high school graduate, did not know about the legal differences in the treatment of illegitimate and legitimate children until she came to the local government to register her child. Realization came as a huge shock. “Naturally I started crying at the registration desk. ‘He’s not a child of a dog or a cat; please write him down as the ‘oldest son!’ In a loud voice the employee there just said he can’t do that in the case of illegitimate children.”1 On the economic level, unwed mothers are not discriminated against to an extent that would explain their ten-fold difference in numbers from divorced mothers. Single unwed mothers are singled out by the Japanese legal system, however, in a way other single mothers are not. The legal disadvantages unwed mothers face in Japan are more extensive than in any Western industrialized country. These disadvantages manifest themselves throughout the legal system. A family register—the main legal document used for personal identification in Japan—makes unwed mothers and their children easily identifiable. It also classifies the legal relationship of illegitimate children with their fathers as much weaker than that of legitimate children. Moreover, negotiations of child acknowledgment and child support in family courts are full of specific obstacles for unwed mothers. If most women feel as strongly about the legal differences between illegitimate and legitimate children as Miki did, this may explain the very high regard for marriage and widespread willingness to avoid illegitimacy even at the price of abortion. This chapter details unwed mothers’ position in the legal system and their thoughts and feelings about it.

Family Registry (Koseki) and Household Registry ( Jūminhyō) The ways Japanese illegitimate children and their mothers have been recorded in the Japanese family and household registries have played the key

   Chapter 4 role in the prevalence of discrimination against them. A modern family register—“register” denoting here the specific document for an individual family—consists of a maximum of two generations of family members.2 For all of them it records information on the ancestral home address of the household; their relationships to each other (for example, parents and children); their names, dates of birth, names of parents’ parents; and such family changes as marriages, divorces, and children born within or outside marriage.3 The family register also defines the head of the household (usually the husband). If such events as births, marriages, divorces, and deaths are not recorded in the family registry—I will use “registry” to define the system of registers—they are not officially acknowledged by the Japanese state. The most crucial feature of the Japanese family registry for this study is that it “makes the identities of parents and children interdependent.”4 It is possible to infer a great deal of information from a family register due to the strict rules that apply to the registration procedures and the detail in which personal information is recorded. The register allows one to see whether the parents of a certain child are or have ever been married, as well as what happened first, marriage or childbirth. If the mother is not married to her child’s father, they do not have a joint family register with the details of both parents and their children. If the father has not acknowledged his paternity, the space for the child’s father’s details is blank. If a child has been acknowledged, an acknowledgment note is made, and the father’s details are provided in the mother and child’s family register. The details of the acknowledgment are also noted in the father’s family register. The acknowledgment establishes a legally binding relationship between the child and the father, which means the father has a responsibility to pay child support, and the child has a right to inherit from the father.5 In addition to being recorded in a family register, every Japanese citizen residing in Japan is also recorded in a household registry, which lists the names and current addresses of members of all Japanese households. It also gives very basic information on the relationships between household members (for instance, parent, child). Unlike a family register, a contemporary household register does not provide enough information to single out unwed mothers. If one sees a household register that contains a mother and a child, it is as likely to be a divorced or a widowed as an unwed singlemother household. Making unwed mothers and illegitimate children identifiable, the family registry opens the possibility to treating them differently and thus may discourage women from opting for unwed motherhood. In order to establish its role, however, two issues have to be addressed: the ease of unwed mothers’ identification through the legal system over time and knowledge about the ways the legal system differentiates unwed mothers.

Legal Discrimination against Unwed Mothers   

family and house hold reg istrie s over time The historical origin and development of the family registry is well documented.6 The Family Registry Law (Koseki Hō ), promulgated in 1871, established the family registry and made it universal and all-encompassing.7 At the time, the family registry documented relations within a stem family system (ie seido).8 The stem family system traced the family’s patrilineal lineage, linking numerous generations into one great family and ultimately prescribed loyalty to the emperor as the head of the national family. Patrilineal descent became the cornerstone of the family registry, and to this day women are typically part of their father’s register before marriage and of their husband’s afterward. Along with the establishment of the registry, a formal requirement to notify the authorities of all marriages was issued, and in the 1898 Civil Code (Article 775), marriage was defined exclusively in terms of registration. At first the requirement to register all marriages was commonly ignored. In the beginning of the twentieth century compliance was still anything but universal. “According to the first modern census in 1920, the proportion of common-law marriages (naienkon) was estimated at around 16 percent.”9 Despite the state-proclaimed exclusive legitimacy of registered marriages, achieving strict adherence to this law took time even on the state and bureaucratic levels. The 1882 Criminal Code still accepted common-law unions as marriages; likewise, women who lost their cohabiting partners in factory accidents succeeded in getting insurance payments for them. Ambiguity in the definition of illegitimate children persisted till the end of the nineteenth century, 10 and legitimate and illegitimate children often were not distinguished properly even in official records. As the militarization of Japan progressed and universal registration became a matter of paramount administrative importance, the government went as far as offering cash incentives for marriage registration.11 With the increase of the incentives for compliance and disadvantages related to noncompliance, more and more people registered their unions. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, the U.S.-inspired 1947 constitution established fundamental legal principles reordering relationships in the family. The stem family system was legally abolished, and in the new constitution the family was anchored around a nuclear married couple. All family members were given equal rights. The Civil Code was revised in line with this philosophy and the modifications became effective on January 1, 1948. The family registry lost its role in connecting the nation-family and could now contain a maximum of two generations. However, the basic family registry system, although limited to the nuclear family, remained intact. In the postwar years the proper registration of family changes was maintained as an essential

   Chapter 4 prerequisite for legally binding family relationships. In 1950 only 2.5 percent of all children were born outside wedlock.12 In postwar years social incentives for people to marry officially before having children and stay married multiplied. Most of these incentives were rooted in the labor market.The labor market that evolved in the postwar period relied on men as a full-time, highly skilled core labor force and women as primarily homemakers who participate in the labor force in an auxiliary capacity. Japan’s economic success led to the rapid increase of the middle class, and by the mid-1960s for the first time in history large numbers of Japanese women could afford to become full-time housewives. The differentiation of male and female roles in the family came to be seen as a crucial economic advantage, and both the state and businesses employed a number of social and economic strategies to ensure its continuity. These included wage and employment track differences between men and women, a welfare system based on the presumption of a sexual division of labor, and “family wages” paid to full-time employed men, as well as numerous family-oriented employee benefits (family health care, subsidized mortgages, benefits for dependents). The pension and taxation systems rewarded women for being dependent wives, and the virtual absence of non-family care provision for the elderly and children left them little alternative but to provide this care.13 The social contract implicit in the postwar nuclear family is further underlined in the legal system that allows a wife to sue her husband’s mistress for adultery and, until 1987, made divorce against the objections of a non-guilty party virtually impossible.14 In a 1987 landmark case the Supreme Court granted a divorce to a husband who had deserted his wife, thus making divorce at the request of a guilty party possible. However, the grounds of this type of divorce are still limited and controversial.15 This was probably one reason why, as mentioned in Chapter 2, unwed mothers shunned efforts to convince married fathers of their children to divorce their wives. Even for the few women who continued to be romantically involved with the child’s father for years after the child’s birth, marriage was out of the question because the legal wife was against it.16 Nobuko, a 38-year-old college graduate, practically lived with her boyfriend. “The child’s father is at my place every day. He goes back to his place about once a week but otherwise he comes virtually every day.” But the man could not get a divorce “because his wife says she won’t do it.” Rika, a 41-year-old high school graduate, also could not marry her boyfriend because “his wife does not agree to a divorce even though they have been living separately for about twelve years now. But they are still registered as married.” One of the specific conditions mentioned in the court cases where a

Legal Discrimination against Unwed Mothers   

favorable ruling for no-fault divorce was achieved is that the divorce does not cause excessive pain and suffering to the innocent wife and her children. Thus when legitimate children are involved, it can be exceptionally difficult for a guilty husband to obtain a divorce even if he wishes to do so. In a recent legal self-help book for women who had children by married men the possibility that a man may divorce his wife and marry his mistress is not discussed at all.17 The legal rights of legitimate children generally take precedence over the rights of illegitimate children in Japan. This difference has deeply penetrated the public consciousness. Even though my interviewees were women who themselves were mothers of illegitimate children and most of them claimed they did not think that being born illegitimate should be a basis of discrimination, when they talked about their own children and children born within marriage, they often used the words “proper” or “real” to describe legitimate children as opposed to their own. As numerous benefits ensured the virtual universality of marriage in the postwar years, the state-inspired promotion of the two-parent family ideal bore fruit.18 Two-parent families became a deeply entrenched social norm and unwed mothers and their children a marginal and undesirable family form. Such families were now believed to adversely affect the children’s personalities, turning them lazy and dishonest.19 As the norms prohibiting unmarried unions grew stronger, the power of the family registry, which allows strangers to identify unwed mothers and their children, to cause discrimination also increased. Though it was not seen as such at the time, the first fundamental change to the family registry in postwar years that would eventually reduce discrimination against illegitimate children happened in the mid-1970s. At the time the family register was used for identification purposes at such crucial points in one’s life as getting admitted to school and finding employment. The reason for the change was a growing awareness of discrimination against burakumin, which was made possible largely through the family registry.20 As the burakumin liberation movement gained strength, it succeeded in initiating some changes in the system.21 For our purposes one of the most important change is the 1976 amendment that made accessing a person’s family register without permission illegal. Exception is made for immediate family members, their legal representatives, and officials whose job requires it (for example, the police).22 This change banned employers, people in charge of school enrolment, and so on from requiring applicants to produce their family registers.23 Gradually, in most walks of life the household registry became the more commonly used instrument of self-identification. This change by itself did not lead to any immediate improvement for illegitimate children,

   Chapter 4 as at the time the household registry made illegitimate children and their mothers easily identifiable in a way similar to the family registry.24 The major legal changes that would improve the situation of illegitimate children in particular started in the late 1980s. In 1988 Tanaka Sumiko and her partner went to court arguing that betraying the illegitimacy of children through the household registry is unconstitutional and promotes discrimination.25 After a long legal battle, differences in recording children in the household registry were abolished in 1995. Both legitimate and illegitimate children are now entered into the household registry with only their gender identified. It is not possible to infer much about the type of household by looking at the household registry. Among other things this meant that single unwed mothers could now relatively easily maintain their privacy and avoid the stigma attached to having a child outside wedlock. In 1995, once these changes became effective, Tanaka Sumiko appealed to the Tokyo court again, championing the abolition of differences in recording legitimate and illegitimate children in the family registry.26 In March 2004 the Tokyo Regional Court ruled that the way children are recorded in the family registry is indeed not in accordance with the Japanese constitution and amounts to an invasion of privacy.27 In October 2004 the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (Sōmushō) announced that henceforth all children regardless of their legitimacy were to be registered according to their birth order and gender.28 This change became effective from April 1, 2005. It substantially reduced legal discrimination against illegitimate children though it did not fully obliterate it: it is still possible to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate children if one has access to the full version of the family register (koseki tōhon).29 Moreover, the difference in inheritance entitlements as stipulated in Article 900(4) of the Civil Code remained unchanged, leaving illegitimate children eligible for only half of what legitimate children receive.30 This historical overview of the family and household registry systems shows that, as emphasized in previous research, the family registry is still a source of differentiation that leads to discrimination.31 On the other hand, discrimination based on the family and household registries has been reduced significantly over the past decade. Since 1995 it has become easy for any unwed mother who wishes to do so to pass herself as a divorcée. the family reg istry and wome n’s choice s Apart from the objective improvement in the legal treatment of single unwed mothers, the important question in a study of women’s decision making is how aware women actually are of the differences in the treatment of legitimate and illegitimate children in Japan’s legal system.32 I asked all my interviewees whether they had a clear idea about the way their children

Legal Discrimination against Unwed Mothers   

would be recorded in the family registry and how much they generally knew about legal discrimination against illegitimate children before they gave birth. As outlined in the methodology section in the Introduction, my sample of unwed mothers is biased toward higher educated, higher income women living in urban areas, women who tend to be more aware of problems related to illegitimate children. Nonetheless, many of them, like Junko, a 42-year-old college graduate, “did not know much about the family registry system before the child was born” and claimed they first found out how the family registry of an illegitimate child looks when they saw that of their own child. Junko thought that “nobody realizes [the difference in registration] . . . among people who do not have illegitimate children.” In the preceding chapter we saw that even when they did not know the details about, for example, the labor market or welfare provisions, unwed mothers-to-be had negative expectations about them that may have affected their decisions. This was different in the case of legal discrimination.To many women, especially younger ones, it came as a surprise. The first instance at which information on the child’s legitimacy is recorded is with the birth registration form.Young mothers have to give information on their relationship with the child’s father (if the child is not acknowledged, the father’s column in the form has to remain empty) and to tick their child as legitimate or illegitimate. A significant number of women I interviewed realized that their child will be recorded differently only when they filled in the application for the birth certificate. Similarly, in my control group of sixteen unmarried childless women, only one knew the details of how an illegitimate child is recorded in the family registry, because she had a history of involvement in feminist organizations and movements.This shows that many unmarried mothers-to-be may not factor in legal discrimination when they make their childbearing choice because they are simply not aware of it. The importance ascribed to the family registry differed significantly by age. Most of my interviewees were in their thirties or early forties and many of them were rather dispassionate about the issue. Sachiko, a 32-year-old college graduate, found out about the legal discrimination associated with the family registry after she gave birth to her first child outside marriage, and as she explained, “to tell the truth it didn’t much touch me. I just thought ‘Oh, this is the way it is!’ and that was it.” Quite a few other unwed mothers of a similar age told me that while they found the difference in the way their children were registered unfair and believed it would be better if the situation was changed, at the same time it is a paperwork issue and has few real implications as one’s family register is rarely used. The older generation (women who were forty-five or older at the time of the interview) took the family registry much more seriously and on average tended to be better informed. The story of 28-year-old Michiko of her interaction with an

   Chapter 4 older woman working in a local registration office highlights the difference in perceptions between generations. In the beginning I maintained I do not need acknowledgment; his parents were rather . . . they didn’t think well [of me]. When I came to submit the birth registration I said I don’t need [the father’s] name to be registered. I was told if I do something like that the effect on the child will be bad. I wondered why, but the municipality employee didn’t explain anything; she just told me to get the child acknowledged. I was told it is because acknowledgment is not what parents can decide; it is an obligation toward the child. She gave me all kinds of papers and I got the child acknowledged, sending the forms [to the father] through a lawyer. I was quite worried: if the child is acknowledged, I may be told to allow meetings. He is not raising the child; I would hate it if I was told to allow him to meet my daughter. I don’t need the trouble. But because I was told to do things for the child properly, I got my daughter acknowledged.

Unlike Michiko, Megumi, who was 73 years old at the time of the interview, did not need to be persuaded to take the family registry seriously. She arranged for her child to be registered as a legitimate daughter of her own parents. The girl was even sent to live with them, far away into the countryside, and until she reached age eighteen she saw her mother only during winter and summer vacations. In another example of family register manipulation, Miwa, a 56-year-old high school graduate, told me how her father, who lived in a common-law marriage with her mother and had five children with her, arranged for all of them to be registered as children of his legal wife. The two instances above are extreme examples of the combination of fluidity and rigidity in the family registry institution. On the one hand, the family registry is an inflexible institution that has been extremely hard to change even when it comes to the features, such as documenting birth order, that lost their practical purpose after the postwar Civil Code modification. The time and effort it took to carry out rather limited changes in the way illegitimate children are recorded exemplifies this. On the other hand, the family registry allows all family changes to happen with minimum involvement of any third parties, including courts. As Harald Fuess points out, “neither for marriage nor for divorce is there a need for attendance in person. It is common for spouses simply to send the registration documents by mail, with their seals impressed on them. Spouses continue to be free to set their own criteria for dissolving their marriages and settle all related issues.”33 This may have been one reason for the relative ease in tampering with the records in the past. There is ample anecdotal evidence both in the media and academic studies of persons adjusting the family registry in old and not so old days.34 Marriage and divorce procedures in Japan are so easy that if a woman manages to reach agreement with the biological father of the child, she can opt to avoid illegitimacy by having a paper marriage. It is hard to get statis-

Legal Discrimination against Unwed Mothers   

tics on this issue, but at least one woman, Ai, a 39-year-old university graduate, among my control group of divorcées had a paper marriage in order for her child not to be born outside wedlock.When Ai found herself unmarried and pregnant, her boyfriend showed no inclination to marry her. Moreover, he married somebody else shortly after she disclosed her pregnancy to him. Not knowing what to do Ai turned to her parents for help. The rest of the story is quite dramatic and is best told in her own words: My mother, remembering that talk [she heard as a student about legal discrimination against illegitimate children and that to safeguard against it one should at least have a paper marriage before childbirth], thought probably in our case [a paper marriage] is also the only way. She sought a lawyer’s advice, but he said we could sue for a certain amount of compensation only if the wife [of Ai’s former boyfriend] got married knowing about me. But the more we heard about the case the more obvious it became that she didn’t know and in that case the law is not broken [said the lawyer]. “It is impossible to press them to divorce from this side. On the contrary, they can sue us and as it will be disadvantageous, nothing can be done.” My mother got terribly angry and said the following to [the child’s father]: “If you at least talked to your parents or somebody else we could first have a paper marriage with my daughter and then the child would not be discriminated against as illegitimate. But because you got married, what will you do for us? Now there is nothing you can do apart from paying compensation!”

After the admonishment, the hapless father of Ai’s child negotiated a divorce with his wife, married his pregnant ex-girlfriend, waited until the child was born, and then divorced her and married his wife back. While not every premaritally pregnant woman has such an exceptionally powerful mother, some might be able to convince the man to marry them for a short time themselves. Ai’s example shows that as long as a woman can reach an agreement with the father of her child, both getting married and dissolving one’s marriage is extremely easy.35 Six out of twelve divorcées I interviewed told me they got married when they found out about their pregnancy even though at the time they suspected the marriage would probably not work out. While these were not strictly speaking “paper marriages,” they seemed to be relatively similar to them. Both the fluidity and rigidity of the family registry probably contribute to the small number of children being born outside wedlock, for as long as both the man and the woman are unmarried and manage to reach an agreement, the child can be legitimized through marriage. As we have seen in Chapter 2, the high levels of shotgun marriages in Japan suggest that this is what many couples do. Yet legal discrimination does not seem to be the main concern for this drive toward legitimization, as the legal situation of illegitimate children has improved, while awareness and concern about the issue among women have decreased.

   Chapter 4

Acknowledgment The reduced discrimination in the family registry is not the only example of improving legal treatment of unwed mothers and illegitimate children. The case of acknowledgment is even clearer. Illegitimate children are registered in their mother’s family register. Any child born to a married woman is registered in the couple’s joint family register, and such registration gives rise to paternal obligations.36 An unmarried mother, on the other hand, needs the father to acknowledge the child for a legally binding relationship between the father and the child to be established and to have the father’s details recorded in her and the child’s register. In addition to establishing the fatherchild relationship, having the child acknowledged has two direct benefits: the father is obliged to pay child support to his acknowledged children, and a child becomes entitled to inheritance from the father (half the amount of a legitimate child’s share). Historically, acknowledgment was largely at the father’s discretion. From 1898 and until the Civil Code was revised in 1948, government statistics used two special legal categories for illegitimate children: shoshi, a child who was acknowledged by the father, and shiseishi, a child who was not acknowledged and thus had no legal relationship to the biological father’s family.37 Today, when the biological father of a child is compliant, the acknowledgment procedure is easy, as he merely has to fill in a relevant form and deliver it to the local authority.38 For those unwed mothers who wish to have their child acknowledged against the will of the child’s father, the first step is mediation. mediation Evidence of “prior attempted mediation” is required in most family-related disputes, including litigation of paternity issues, before the parties involved can file a suit in court.39 Analyzing the role of mediators in family court rulings is crucial for understanding the difficulties all single mothers face when trying to make the reluctant fathers of their children accept their responsibility. The institution of mediation was created together with family courts in 1947.40 The procedure survives to this day. This chapter complements previous research of mediators based on family courts observations41 with the comments and experiences of my interviewees. As Tamie L. Bryant notes, a mediation committee formally consists of two mediators: a male and a female, supervised by a judge.The judge, however, usually only gets involved in the concluding mediation meeting, so most of the process is completely mediator-managed.This set-up is fraught with potential problems since me-

Legal Discrimination against Unwed Mothers   

diators are essentially volunteers with no training in law, welfare, or psychology. They are appointed by the Supreme Court on the basis of letters of reference and an interview.42 According to the Supreme Court website, the qualifications for becoming a mediator include being between 40 and 70 years old, being knowledgeable in the ways of society, and also either having some specialist knowledge or having extensive experience in neighborhood activities.43 The same website mentions lawyers, university professors, doctors, architects, and so on as examples. In my interviews with lawyers and unwed mothers going through court procedures, I was told that mediators are always chosen from people who are believed to be upright citizens, “pillars of society,” and have a certain standing in the local community, such as former school principals in the case of men. Female mediators tend to be wives of prominent men, often full-time housewives. Each locality has a certain number of men and women who are regularly asked to serve as mediators. Mediators are always chosen from stably married families. As one might have already supposed from this list of characteristics, mediators tend to differ substantially from their clients in terms of age and class. When it comes specifically to cases involving unwed mothers, mediators are unlikely to be able to empathize with them, and neither are they trained to give advice outside their “common sense,” which is of course heavily informed by life experiences very different from those of many single mothers. As a result, mediators tend to have conservative views and give conservative advice. I heard of cases where an unwed mother was urged to give up suing the biological father for child support payments in order not to alienate him, or not to spoil her family register, by insisting, in order to reach more favorable terms, on judicial resolution of the conflict.44 Some mediators are sympathetic to single mothers. I also heard from my interviewees of several cases where mediators did their best to convince the father of the child to stop avoiding his responsibility.These seem to be in the minority, however.45 In addition, according to Bryant the system encourages mediators to recommend an agreement as soon as possible rather than try to achieve the best possible settlement for both parties.46 These characteristics of mediation may have jeopardized unwed mothers’ attempts to establish a legal relationship between their child and the child’s father, making unwed motherhood especially unattractive. The introduction of DNA paternity testing in the 1990s, however, drastically curtailed the mediators’ ability to affect the outcome of child acknowledgment cases and biological fathers’ ability to avoid acknowledging their children. dna testing Until the early 1990s in establishing paternity the courts depended on indirect evidence such as contact between the mother and father around the

   Chapter 4 time of conception, and so on.47 This made the whole procedure lengthy, and a positive outcome was by no means assured. Since the introduction of DNA paternity testing (fushi kankei kakutei kensa) in the early 1990s into family court procedures,48 making a father acknowledge his child when he disputes his paternity has become easy.49 DNA test results are often obtained during mediation, and if the results confirm the mother’s claim, mediators inform the man that he has no choice but to acknowledge. If he refuses, he will be forced to acknowledge by court ruling—which occurs rarely. According to a former Tokyo family court judge interviewed in 2005, since the introduction of DNA paternity testing, there have been almost no illegitimate children who remain unacknowledged if their mothers are prepared to bring their cases to court. DNA testing has led to a significant reduction in the time it takes to establish paternity. The average time that hearing such a case took in 1995 was about 2.5 times less than in 1991 (see Table 4.1). The average cost of an acknowledgment case has also fallen, though the price is still considerable and it has to be borne by single mothers (see Table 4.2).50 In the opinion of the former Tokyo Family Court judge mentioned above, there are so few cases where acknowledgment is fought for in court (see Table 4.3) because in most cases women are able to get acknowledgment by agreement with the biological fathers of their children.51 My interviews suggest a few additional reasons. In my sample of sixty-six unwed mothers (two more women were pregnant at the time of the interviews), thirty-nine women did not have their children acknowledged, sixteen of them in spite of their wishes to have their children acknowledged.52 Five of these women did not press the fathers to acknowledge their children because they did not want to antagonize them.53 For example, when Naomi, a 45-yearold high school graduate, asked her lover to acknowledge their daughter he said he would but if he had actually wanted to then he should have done it straight away. To any request [to acknowledge the child immediately] he always says “no.” If he acknowledges our daughter he’ll be in a difficult situation [as he is already married and the acknowledgment note will be made in the joint family register his wife could see at any time].

Having thought it over for a while, Naomi decided in favor of keeping a good relationship with the child’s father. “At the time my daughter was still not in school and the family register was not a big problem. Even though I felt strongly about [the acknowledgment], instead of forcing him I want my child to have a good relationship with her father here and now.” Reflecting the general respect for the institution of marriage discussed above, some women in this group also saw helping their married lovers to preserve peace

Legal Discrimination against Unwed Mothers    table 4.1  Length of court procedures (Tokyo Family Court)(days) Shortest case Longest case Average

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

31 365 170.55

42 536 159.69

53 198 83.87

41 175 79.19

38 104 69.89

source: Kajimura, 1997.

table 4.2  Cost of cases (Tokyo Family Court), yen/($U.S. )(approx.) 1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

Lowest

133,000 / (1,200)

158,500 / (1,400)

158,500 / (1,400)

206,000 / (1,900)

257,500 / (2,300)

Highest

1,200,000 / (10,900)

750,000 / (6,800)

426,420 / (3,900)

457,320 / (4,200)

291,654 / (2,700)

Average

423,952 / (3,900)

336,723 / (3,100)

237,059 / (2,200)

268,937 / (2,400)

264,162 / (2,400)

source: Kajimura, 1997.

table 4.3  Acknowledgment cases per year (Tokyo Family Court)

Number of cases

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

52

42

58

45

38

source: Kajimura, 1997.

in their marriages as their duty. In sum, some women choose not to turn to law in spite of wishing to have their children acknowledged because of their deference to the dominant family norms.54 Seven women, rather than choosing to have their children unacknowledged, just accepted the fathers’ refusal to acknowledge paternity. A few of them were unaware of the possibility of defending their rights in court; others, largely from the younger generation, did not think acknowledgment was important enough to go through the effort and expense of forcing it through court. Four women could not convince the non-Japanese fathers of their children to cooperate and saw no obvious legal way of forcing them. The sixteen women described here who wished their children to be acknowledged but failed to overcome the fathers’ objections suggest an

   Chapter 4 explanation of why, as we will see in the next chapter, the fathers of illegitimate children tend to be uninvolved in the pregnancy resolution process. Quite often these fathers are able to avoid all the responsibility for siring children, thus they leave pregnancy resolution to their mistresses. Eighteen more women whose children were not acknowledged preferred it this way either because they did not want to have anything to do with their children’s fathers or because they actively defied the family registry system, and in one case because she had her child registered as a child of her parents. Two older women in this group had their children before 1998, when having a child acknowledged meant foregoing the Child Rearing Allowance, as discussed in Chapter 3. Forced to choose between the two, these women decided in favor of financial support. Three women were fighting in courts to get their children acknowledged at the time of the interview. Finally, two women did not know who the fathers of their children were. Twenty-seven unwed mothers had their children acknowledged. In seven cases, the women got professional legal advice. Based on this advice, four of them secured their children’s acknowledgment by threatening to turn to court, one woman actually fought and won a paternity acknowledgment for her child in court, and two women negotiated acknowledgment with the help of lawyers. For the other twenty women, the fathers acknowledged their children voluntary. In sum, not all women who wish to have their children acknowledged are able to fulfill this desire. Still, there are fewer disincentives for women to ensure paternity recognition as now they do not have to choose between eligibility for the Child Rearing Allowance and acknowledgment. Acknowledgment also has become much easier to obtain with the introduction of DNA testing. For a knowledgeable woman simply suggesting that she will sue the father was sometimes enough to make him acknowledge the child. As a consequence, nowadays it is technically easier to establish a child’s entitlement to financial support from the father. The following section will look at the legal background and reality of child support payments in Japan in recent years.

Child Support Payments While it is true that an illegitimate child has no right to child support payments until he or she is acknowledged, few women reported fighting for the acknowledgment expecting to automatically receive child support payments. The majority were well aware that only about a fifth of single mothers receive child support payments, and this convinced them that it is almost impossible to coerce the father to contribute to his child’s upbringing against his will.

Legal Discrimination against Unwed Mothers   

Child support payment levels in Japan are low. Unlike in many Western countries, in Japan the responsibility of securing child support is largely relegated to the single mothers and there are few mechanisms to compel recalcitrant fathers to help with the support.55 Only 34 percent of single mothers ever arrive at any child support payment agreement with the father of the child, and then many of these agreements are broken.56 In 2003, 21.6 percent of single mothers57 were receiving child support. Among unwed mothers, the proportion was 15.7 percent according to the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training survey.58 Among divorcées who receive a fixed amount of child support payments (81.1 percent of all those receiving child support), the average monthly amount was about 42,000 yen (about $380) per household (not per child).59 Only twenty-two women in my sample were receiving child support payments. Few of them were paid more than 20,000 yen (about $180) a month. Twenty women did not seek child support from the fathers of their children because they believed they did not need it or because they wanted to sever the relationship completely. The rest of the unwed mothers I interviewed wished but were not able to obtain financial support from their children’s fathers. One reason may be that at least for low-income mothers, it makes little sense to struggle to secure child support payments. From 2002, 80 percent of child support contributions are counted toward single mothers’ income, reducing their eligibility for means-tested benefits.60 Thus child support payments would add little to the real income of a low-income mother unless she receives an amount considerably higher than the benefits. Illustrating this situation, fourteen unwed mothers in my sample raised the issue of support payments with the fathers of their children and then without much protest accepted their refusal to make any financial contribution. The main reasons for the low incidence and low amount of payments, however, most likely are the inefficiency and insufficiency of the legal structure supporting mothers’ claims. In my sample, five mothers who were not receiving child support payments made the fathers comply with their child support obligations by threatening to turn to court, and three women were fighting for the payments in court. Two more women won their cases through court, but only one of them was receiving child support payments. A common problem for unwed mothers wishing to enforce payments is related to the fact that a ruling on the amount of child support has to be based on the man’s earnings. Self-employed men or men with no stable earnings reportedly often understate their income and pay only a minimum amount. Until recently it was also possible for the fathers to refuse to provide information about their income, thus making it difficult to estimate their child support payment liability. This was a particular problem for unwed mothers, for whom it was virtually impossible to access any information about the

   Chapter 4 man’s earnings.61 In April 2005, however, this was changed, and now there is an official scale for minimum amounts of child support obligations based on the age and general social position of a given father. If there is no reliable information on the father’s income, this scale can be used for court rulings. The limitations of payment enforcement orders have been another persistent obstacle to enforcing support payments. Until 2004 a woman could go through court and obtain a ruling that obliged the father to pay child support, after which the father could pay once and then stop paying again. In order to make him pay more she needed to obtain a new court order. As suing a father takes time and resources, many of my interviewees thought it not worth their effort: even if the courts ruled in their favor, there was no guarantee that that they would receive child support payments. In April 2004, a major law change was implemented aimed at alleviating this problem. Now only one ruling is needed for the father to be obliged to comply at least until his employment situation changes. In case of noncompliance with a court ruling, the company he works for can be ordered to make deductions from his salary and pass them on directly to the mother. Previously, up to a quarter of his salary could be deducted; in 2004 this level was raised to half of the salary. Finally, it is now also possible to obtain a court ruling obliging the father to make past and future child support payments at once. Thus unwed mothers’ ability to force full-time stably employed men to shoulder their responsibilities has improved.62 It remains to be seen whether the changes will lead to a significant increase in child support payments. One obvious remaining gap is the difficulty of forcing self-employed or not regularly employed men to pay child support. Sakura, a 35-year-old vocational school graduate, had a child by a married man who refused to either acknowledge their son or make any financial contribution to his upbringing. Sakura turned to court and got the child acknowledged. The ruling concerning child support payments also “went smoothly. But in spite of the court ruling, getting the man to pay is very hard.” Sakura was very disappointed: “I have not received a single payment. I only got into debt because of the lawyer’s fees. As there was no money coming to me, they keep sending the man orders to pay, but he just replies that he can’t work and he can’t pay.” Umeko, a 27-year-old vocational school graduate, did not seriously consider claiming child support. When I checked the details, the child support payment responsibility is adjusted to the man’s earning power. So I wouldn’t get more than a couple of thousand yen [about $20]. His father has died recently, and his mother has cancer and is mostly in the hospital.The medicine is expensive and she doesn’t have much time left they say. He’s got a graduate degree, but he financed his studies with a loan and now has to repay it. He says this costs quite a lot and he has little money to spare. So I thought I

Legal Discrimination against Unwed Mothers    won’t ask for child support payments. Maybe I could get them through court, but I don’t think it will be much. Hiring a lawyer and going to court is complicated and costly and will spoil our relationship. So I decided not to do it. It’s better, I thought, to have him by my side and using that ask him to buy things for the child according to the child’s needs. That way maybe he’ll start feeling a bit like he is a father. Thinking that, I decided not to press for a forced acknowledgment. I myself don’t mind the family register but he minds it a lot. He doesn’t want it to be recorded that he has a child; he doesn’t want any record that he is a father.

Sakura’s and Umeko’s stories illustrate another important difficulty single mothers negotiating the legal system face: heavy legal expenses. About 80 percent of the legal costs typically consist of lawyers’ fees. Japan is notorious for having few lawyers—the numbers have been kept artificially low by the training requirements.63 The artificial scarcity is likely to have made lawyers’ fees particularly high and access to lawyers difficult, especially in outlying rural areas as the overwhelming majority of lawyers are in Tokyo and Osaka. Until recently lawyers’ fees could not be awarded as legal costs to the victor. This has meant that “even if the case is won, the burden of legal fees may offset any benefits gained.”64 Finally, a large proportion of unwed mothers in Japan (52 percent in my sample) have had their children fathered by married men.65 Some of these women may decide against suing the biological father of their child for acknowledgment or child support because of the non-negligible possibility that his wife may then sue them in return for adultery.66 While I was told that these days the court usually splits the payment between the erring husband and his lover, the lover may still be liable to pay a significant amount of money to the wronged wife and thus may be eager to avoid establishing a legal relationship with the father and demanding child support payments. Yoko, a 32-year-old divorced mother with a university education, sued a woman her husband had an affair with and who was the main reason for their divorce for 2.5 million yen (about $22,700) and was awarded 2 million yen in damages (about $18,200). While the legal system that mandates fathers pay child support still leaves a lot to be desired, child support payments are low and hard to get for all single mothers. Unwed mothers are least likely to receive child support payments from the fathers of their children, but the differences between them and divorcées are hardly dramatic. The legal system does not explicitly differentiate between them in this regard. Like unwed mothers, divorcées do not find it easy to win in court cases against their children’s fathers. It has been shown in previous research that their situation is complicated by the damaging prejudices of mediators and judges.67 The difference between unwed mothers and divorcées in this case seems too small to explain the difference in their numbers.

   Chapter 4

Knowledge about the Legal System Few of my interviewees had an idea of the way unwed mothers are treated when they actively engage with the legal system, fight for acknowledgment and child support, and deal with mediators. Indeed most of my interviewees at the time of pregnancy planned to resolve the acknowledgment and child support issues privately with the child’s father and thus did not anticipate the necessity of turning to the law. As suing the father is still a minority experience, the details of the associated difficulties and potential discrimination were not common knowledge. Making use of the legal system was, however, generally expected to be arduous. Noriko, a 39-year-old university graduate, “first thought we should have a mediation to decide on child support, but when the time came I was so exhausted both physically and psychologically, I was really at the end of my strength. [I could not bring myself to turn to the court].” None of my interviewees said that any type of legal discrimination apart from that directly related to the family registry system had any effect on them when they were considering how to resolve their pregnancies. Similarly, none of the unmarried childless women asked about hypothetical pregnancies mentioned difficulties in asserting the illegitimate child’s rights through the Japanese legal system as important at the time of pregnancy resolution.

Concluding Remarks Existing research has rightly pointed out that legal discrimination against illegitimate children is more serious in Japan than in any contemporary Western industrialized country. However, if we look into the evolution of the legal system over the past decades, it is obvious that there have been many positive changes that have reduced discrimination. The reduction of legal discrimination puts into question assumptions about the long-term effects of the legal system on pregnancy resolution. The level of concern with legal practices and discrimination against illegitimate children, especially those related to the family registry, was rather high among women in their late forties and older.Younger women, conversely, tended to be much less informed and less concerned, at least at the time of pregnancy resolution. The greater ability of women to conceal theirs and their children’s status has reduced their exposure to potential discrimination. Since the introduction of DNA paternity testing in the mid-1990s, women’s ability to ensure their children’s acknowledgment has improved drastically. On a more practical level, lack of marital history does not seem to make a great difference in child support payments, which are rarely paid by noncustodial fathers.

Legal Discrimination against Unwed Mothers   

One is once again forced to conclude that if legal discrimination was the only or most salient factor precluding women from giving birth to children outside wedlock, we should have observed a growing number of births in the past decades. Something else must be at play. In the next two chapters I will go beyond oft-cited material and institutional explanations and analyze the normative, moral, and emotional considerations related to childbearing choices. I will offer a more nuanced cultural and psychological explanation as to what makes the social norm about childrearing within marriage so pervasive in Japan.

  r 

Are Unwed Mothers “Immoral” or “Impressive”?

5

the role of social stigma and shame in upholding family norms

in chapter 2 we have seen that unwed motherhood is hardly ever described as the desired outcome even by women who actually have borne illegitimate children. What is it that makes it so strongly and uniformly undesirable? The literature almost uniformly points to economic and legal circumstances to explain why unwed motherhood is so particularly unattractive in Japan. As discussed in Chapter 3, taking the economic environment as the main explanation misses an important point: although the economic circumstances of unwed mothers and divorcées are similar,1 the divorce and illegitimacy trends have been very different in postwar Japan. Something else must explain why being a divorced single mother seems to be an easier choice than having a child outside wedlock. Chapter 4 showed that although legal discrimination against unwed mothers and illegitimate children exists, the legal environment has been steadily improving since the 1990s. With economic and legal explanations found wanting, I will now look into social norms and models of social behavior for possible explanations. The “consensus model” dominated studies of Japanese society for decades.2 It presumes that “compared with people in other similarly industrialized societies, the Japanese are more group oriented and are more influenced by cultural norms placing a value on consensus and loyalty to the group.”3 Arguing for the importance of the group, the consensus model sees social pressure, namely such mechanisms as stigmatization and shame, real as well as anticipated, as the crucial mechanisms upholding existing social norms, values, and beliefs.4 This model leaves little space for guilt, which potentially is another mechanism to explain conforming behavior, because guilt is a mechanism that can operate relatively independently of the audience.5 The shame-vs.-guilt debate in Japanese studies is most closely associated with the work of Ruth Benedict, who argued for the “primacy of shame in Japanese

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

life” and believed that, as opposed to Western countries, especially the United States, guilt plays only a secondary role in norm maintenance in Japan.6 According to Benedict, “shame has the same place of authority in Japanese ethics that a ‘clear conscience,’ ‘being right with God,’ and the avoidance of sin have in Western ethics.”7 Since Benedict’s study, alternative explanations for norm conformity in Japan have not been able to compete with shame, which benefited from its fit with the consensus model. The consensus model as a universal explanation for various social phenomena in Japan was criticized and to a large extent discredited in the mid1980s. The main grounds for the criticism were the doubtful “usefulness of referring to Japanese as though all Japanese are uniform in size, shape, behavior and thought,” and the model’s lack of attention to the role of authority, especially the nation state, as well as its inability to explain conflict.8 Despite its general shortcomings, could the consensus model have been right about the role of shame in the maintenance of some social norms in Japan?9 After all, shame coupled with emotions of contempt or disgust and actions of shaming by significant others has been generally and persuasively argued to be “the support” for social norms across societies, including in research based largely on examples from the Western world.10 Is it possible that a desire to conform to majority behavior in one’s reference group is the main reason for the uniform avoidance of illegitimate childbearing in Japan? At first glance, stigmatization and shame as more deeply situated, culturally based mechanisms would seem to account for the persistently low rate of illegitimate births in contemporary Japan better than other contextual factors.The consensus model may appear to offer a good explanation for the conformity in marriage and childbearing choices amply documented in statistics. Statistics, however, only give a very general account of the outcomes of women’s decisions, and are powerless to tell us anything about the process of decision making. In this chapter I will investigate public perceptions of unwed mothers, how women located themselves within these perceptions, the desire for conformity, the reported importance of pressure from significant others, and how all these factors bore on the childbearing decisions of my interviewees. For theory, I will be drawing on Jon Elster’s work on shame and Erving Goffman’s analysis of stigma as important vehicles that ensure maintenance of social norms. My qualitative data allow me to subject the shame and conformity hypotheses to a nuanced micro-level scrutiny.

Becoming a Single Unwed Mother Becoming an unwed mother is an experience very different from becoming a mother in contemporary Japan. Any society prescribes sets of behavior for certain defining events in one’s life. Birth is one of these important

   Chapter 5 situations laden with a shared knowledge of appropriate behaviors. In Japan a young mother will usually spend a few weeks after childbirth with her natal family receiving presents and congratulations from relatives and friends. Birth, it is accepted by everyone, is a happy event. However, when the young mother is unmarried and there is no real prospect for her to get married in the near future, the situation completely loses its positive associations. Giving birth to an illegitimate child is seen as a terrible misfortune, so instead of rejoicing because of the impending childbirth, people close to the expectant mother pity her and her future child. Haruko, a 39-year-old university graduate working on a contract basis, did not tell anyone but her parents about the impending birth. When she contacted her friends after childbirth, she recalled how “a friend cried: ‘It must have been tough for you! Why didn’t you tell us?’ My friend cried [pitying me].” Even the most liberal parents of my interviewees who eagerly offered support to their pregnant and unmarried daughters did not express happiness about the expected birth of a grandchild. Tomoko, a 39-year-old university graduate, came from a very wealthy family, had her own business, which brought her a stable income of about 300,000–400,000 yen (about $2,700 to $3,600) a month, and lived in a huge house with her parents, who were always ready to look after her child. She said that her parents were not against her decision to have a child alone and were ready to support her, but of course did not go as far as congratulating her. This is a far cry from the festivities and rounds of congratulations that ensue once a married woman discloses a pregnancy. All friends and relatives are notified, and they send their presents and best wishes. When the mother is unmarried, however, the pregnancy and then the child are more often than not hidden for as long as possible. Forty-six percent of my interviewees told their parents only once abortion was impossible, and relatives and friends were mostly told only after the child was born. In not a single case in my sample were the parents really positive about their daughters’ decision to bear a child outside marriage. The way unwed mothers chose to notify others about the birth is also notable. Many women left it to their parents to inform relatives, and it sometimes took them years to do so. Those mothers who informed friends and relatives themselves often did this casually, for example by mentioning it as a secondary issue when contacting them about something else. Quite a few women chose the way described by Kyoko, a 42-year-old college graduate: “You know at the time one sends New Year greetings, it is not right to ignore [my uncles]. I contacted them [and told them about the child] with New Year greetings.” Women also expected negative reactions from their nearest and dearest. Even in the absence of any visible reaction from their parents when they told them about the pregnancy, they thought “it was a

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

great shock.” This downplaying of the notification as much as possible, and the expectation of negative reactions, brings up an interesting point: not only were mothers not treated as “ordinary” pregnant women, but they also did not behave as “ordinary” pregnant women and clearly did not expect to be treated “ordinarily.” I will discuss the way unwed mothers were treated in this chapter and then suggest some of the reasons for their very negative self-perceptions in Chapter 6. When people assess their situation, they usually refer to the way they are treated by others, compare their situation to that of others, and evaluate it in the context of the society they belong to, rather than use some objective criteria.11 Everyone, both unmarried mothers themselves and most people they met, believed that expectant mothers are happy and spend a lot of time being cared for by their husbands and families. The discrepancy between how expectant unwed mothers were treated in comparison to “ordinary” mothers-to-be led to strong feelings of deprivation and uncertainty about one’s future. “As my belly was getting bigger, there was the feeling that the topic should not be touched upon. My job involves meeting clients outside of the office. When I would go to these meetings I was treated very differently from ordinary pregnant women” complained Junko, a 42-year-old full-time employed unwed mother with a college education. This feeling of deprivation was regularly reinforced in women’s day-today encounters. Quite a few felt like Masako, a 45-year-old full-time employed high school graduate, who recalled: “When I went out I did my best not to meet anyone. . . . I really hated it before birth. It was because people were asking: Oh, you’re pregnant, did you get married? Because this is ordinary. When I started explaining that I had a child by myself, there were people who asked why I didn’t marry.” One of Masako’s worst experiences as a single unwed mother was the day when her daughter was still small and an old lady smiled at her in a train and said “the father must be smitten by her prettiness.” She was depressed all day after that meeting. Regular medical checkups, necessary for pregnant women, had a similar effect. Noriko, a 39-year-old university graduate, commented about her time in the hospital: “Around me were happy pregnant women, happy gynecologists. Maybe I felt the most acutely that I was really alone at the time when I gave birth.” Unwed mothers strongly feel their difference and are very careful when it comes to telling others about their status. In my interviews, when I asked questions like “what is it like to be a single unwed mother in contemporary Japan?” the majority of the women took pains to explain that they themselves are not typical unwed mothers at all and so one should not generalize from their case. What is then the popular image of an unwed mother they made such an effort to distance themselves from and were so afraid to be associated with?

   Chapter 5

Public Perceptions of Unwed Mothers Single mothers in Japan are rarely discussed as a homogeneous group of women with similar problems and characteristics. In most situations, unless single mothers are touched upon only in a cursory way, they are differentiated according to their relationship to marriage. This differentiation is laden with moral evaluations. Widows are seen as the most and unwed mothers as the least worthy group of single mothers. Far from being a construction of purely discursive interest, the hierarchy of single mothers is reflected in many aspects of their environment. An example is welfare provision, which gives widows the most and unwed mothers the least support.12 In my interviews, unwed motherhood came through as a label clearly associated with particular character traits. Often it was talked about as a sort of delinquency, even by the unwed mothers themselves. Noriko, a 39-year-old university graduate, for example, told me that she grew up in an ordinary family with two brothers and sisters: “We had relatively good relationships with each other. It was an ordinary family. Nothing suggested I would become an unwed mother like that.” The differentiation of single mothers also plays a role in organizations supporting them. In the National Association for Single Mothers’ and Widows’ Welfare (Zenkoku Boshi Kafu Fukushi Dantai Kyōgikai), when a woman joins she has to fill out a form to provide basic information about herself. This form compels single mothers to specify whether they are widows (­shibetsu) or separated from their living partners (seibetsu), suggesting that this differentiation is meaningful for the organization. Other organizations supporting single mothers are less rigid, strive to provide an informal environment,13 and do not have such membership forms. In these organizations, however, when a new single mother attends a meeting an opportunity is always created for everyone to make a short introductory statement where all single mothers present almost invariably make a reference to their type. As I observed on numerous occasions, the newcomers then tend to approach and seek advice from “their” group. Organizations supporting single mothers tend to loosely “specialize” in types of mothers. Most of the organizations keep in touch with each other, and active members tend to be well aware of what the mix of types of single mothers in different organizations is. Some of this differentiation has probably evolved as a response to the distinctions in the way they are treated by the state: different types of single mothers tend to champion different causes. Moreover, a single mother in Japan is a marginalized category. Given that, like unwed mothers, other single mothers also subscribe to family standards that do not apply to them,14 they are bound to feel some ambivalence about themselves.15 It has been shown that one of the common ways of dealing with such ambivalence is creating a

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

hierarchy within a broad group of the similarly unfortunate and separating oneself from those more stigmatized.16 In sum, the differentiation of single mothers by type is perpetuated in various ways. In almost all cases17 unwed mothers are assumed to be the least worthy type of single mothers. This low valuation, of course, has parallels in Western industrialized countries. In the West the negative evaluation of single unwed mothers has been historically connected with the high value placed on the virginity of unmarried women. The liberalization of sexual norms led to a significant relaxation of these negative evaluations. As we saw in Chapter 2, in Japan the conflation of sex and marriage was at most temporary, and these days premarital sex is widespread and commonly accepted. In the absence of such perceptions of sin, why are unwed mothers seen as less worthy than divorcées? To answer this question I combined an analysis of my interviews with a survey of media representations of single mothers. Single unwed mothers are a marginalized social group with an interest in avoiding detection. They are a tiny minority in society. Most divorced mothers and unmarried women I interviewed did not know a single unwed mother personally. Most unwed mothers did not know any other unwed mothers until they started looking for them and joining single-mother support groups, usually after their children were born. Thus a personal acquaintance with an unwed mother is a rare experience. This means that the role of the media in constructing the image of single unwed mothers is virtually uncontested. Newspaper and magazine articles as well as TV dramas about single mothers usually provide information on the type of single mother as part of their story, thus implying that the differentiation is significant. My interviewees themselves persistently brought my attention to the role of the media.When I asked women how they imagined single mothers, references to the media were common. Michiko, a 28-yearold high school graduate, for example, elaborated: They often appear in TV dramas, don’t they? Like women doing night-work [a euphemism for prostitution] and so on. I really imagined unwed mothers were like that. They also feature in childrearing magazines. Looking at them I thought they are not at all ordinary, not ordinary people like me. But after I became a single mother, my life is not different from that of ordinary people.

In a similar vein, Mayumi, a 36-year-old unmarried childless woman with a university education, said that until she met single mothers herself she imagined their lives as harsh. When asked why, she explained “probably it is [the image I got] from TV dramas, when I was little.” The analysis of media representations here is largely based on a study of articles on unwed mothers and divorced mothers published in Japanese popular

   Chapter 5 magazines in 2003–4. I chose to rely predominantly on these because magazine articles offer more in-depth considerations and moral evaluations as well as justifications for these evaluations, and thus are likely to be more important in affecting beliefs and perceptions.18 The Ōya Library collection was ideal to sample from because of its size and the accessibility of information.19 A search through the Ōya Library catalogue for articles with mikon no haha (never-married mother) or rikon no haha (divorced mother) in the title for 2003 and 2004 yielded eighty-four relevant articles. Forty-four of them were about divorcees and forty about never-married mothers.20 In the following I use a qualitative analysis of these articles together with my interviewees’ ideas about perceptions of unwed mothers to answer the question why single unwed mothers are at the very bottom of the hierarchy. media descriptions of unwe d mothe rs There may be good grounds to construe widows as a category of their own due to their generally greater age, better financial situation, and the fact that they were separated from their husbands by death. The objective difference between divorcées and unwed mothers is much less tangible. And indeed, an overview of sampled magazine articles suggests little difference in the ways unwed mothers and divorced mothers are presented. The majority of articles portray single motherhood grimly, predicting negative consequences for single mothers and their children. Out of eighty-four articles analyzed, thirty mentioned the negative consequences of parental separation on the child, and a further four described really disastrous outcomes, including child murder. Only two articles asserted positive or at least no negative effects of parental separation on children. The difficulty of being a single mother was also repeatedly pointed out.Twenty-eight articles concentrated on it, with eleven talking about economic difficulties and the rest featuring an array of problems including various psychological difficulties and pressure from friends and relatives as well as legal complications. Few articles offered practical information for women considering having a child outside wedlock or for divorcées who are raising their children alone.21 Only eight gave such practical information: one on welfare and tax exemptions, three on legal issues related to single motherhood, one on day care, and three on employment. This dearth of practical information could have a significant effect on women’s perceptions about single motherhood. Makiko, a 34-year-old part-time employed unwed mother with a high school education, is a telling example. When asked what her biggest worry during pregnancy was, she explained that she just could not imagine how to raise the child. For example, when one looks at magazines about babies, the basic premise is that it is two people caring for the child.

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame    That’s the only way baby care is described. So I was getting ever more insecure. Of course, I should probably have just not looked, but since I ended up looking, I was thinking, “What is going to happen to me?”

The widespread description of single motherhood as hard for the mother and detrimental for children together with the scarcity of practical advice is likely to make the choice of single motherhood less attractive for many women. But again, this negative picture does not explain the huge discrepancy between the numbers of unwed mothers and divorcées since at the first glance the media make both options seem equally unappealing. Women’s aggregate choices (as seen in Chapter 1) suggest that the prospect of becoming an unwed mother is considerably more daunting than the prospect of becoming a divorced mother. Qualitative coding of the articles sampled, however, revealed clear and dissimilar patterns in the ways divorcées and unwed mothers are depicted under the surface of similarity. The first important difference has to do with the kinds of women described as having a child outside wedlock or divorcing their husbands. Out of forty articles with an unwed mother as the protagonist, fourteen dealt with women who were actresses, singers, or models, compared to six out of forty-four articles about divorced mothers. A few articles even specifically mentioned that such behavior as having illegitimate children is to be expected in the show business world. The association in the media of unmarried childbearing with exceptional lifestyles is likely to offer at least a partial explanation as to why women rarely contemplated unmarried childbearing as anything that could happen to them in the future. When confronted with a possibility of becoming an unwed mother, many women, like Haruko, a 34-year-old junior high school graduate, did not quite know how to react, because: “I never heard of unwed mothers being anyone but artists or something. So it just wasn’t about me!” Years after they had a child outside wedlock, most women continued to talk with surprise and disbelief about the turn their lives took. Natsumi, a 46-year-old part-time employed unwed mother with a junior high school education, whose illegitimate son was 10 years old at the time of the interview, said being an unwed mother still “feels like a dream,” not reality. Few women identified with single mother­hood before giving birth, feeling that unwed motherhood is something that happens to TV drama characters, while they themselves “belong to a normal family.” None of the divorcées I spoke to had a comparable feeling of disconnection with normality. While they felt theirs was not the best possible family structure, it was not something they thought was completely outside the universe of “ordinary” people. The perception that girls from “normal” families just do not have children outside wedlock is likely to discourage at

   Chapter 5 least some unmarried women from even considering carrying a premarital pregnancy to term just because they are “ordinary” women. Yet, just placing unwed motherhood outside naturally considered solutions for a premarital pregnancy is unlikely to produce such a strong and proactive desire to distance oneself from single unwed motherhood as was displayed by my interviewees. Quite a few women in my sample felt that unwed motherhood was much less pardonable than divorce.22 “It’s the ordinary that’s great. Divorcées were married, ordinarily married. Being ordinary is the best. To people who stray from that, others still react like ‘What!?’” (Masako, a 45-year-old high school graduate). Hinting at deeper underlying anxieties, my interviewees often volunteered that they are not women with loose morals and that they did not really want to have a child outside wedlock. As immorality and independence with a strong career orientation are also the two main images of single mothers presented in the media, these arguments are, I believe, reactions to two key preconceptions about women who have illegitimate children. These two preconceptions are “immorality” and “active agency.” They are at the core of the stigma of unwed motherhood, and neither is relevant for either divorcées or widows.23 stigmatization Immorality In Chapter 2 I showed that unwed motherhood was an unpopular choice and even women who actually made this choice often felt apprehensive about it. An unintended consequence of this unpopularity is that unwed motherhood is more often than not thought to be a forced choice. These days in Japan shotgun marriages are numerous and (if sometimes grudgingly) accepted. A seemingly high success rate of obtaining a husband in case of pregnancy is one of the reasons why a failure to marry is so suspect. “Obviously the family structure really is a bit different from what is called ordinary, [so people think] ‘why would that be?’” sympathized Yoko, a 39-year-old unmarried childless woman with a university education. Promiscuity or having an affair with a married man are thought to be the most likely reasons. Such interpretations are stigmatizing, appear to reflect on the women’s character, and are not applicable to either divorcées or widows, who were successful in securing marriage. Promiscuous (fushidara) women, who simply did not know who the fathers of their children were, are usually believed to live in poverty, subsisting on support from their family or the state.These mothers are often associated with child abuse or child neglect in the media and represent the negative extreme of the images of single mothers.24 In an attempt to respond to this perception, quite a few women pointedly mentioned that they dated only

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

one man at the time of pregnancy, or that “both children are from the same father” or even “I didn’t take it lightly; I was planning to get married.” Even if the suspicion of promiscuity is avoided, unwed mothers unlike divorcées often have to deal with the additional stigma of a home-breaker.25 When she heard that Asami, a 24-year-old university dropout, was unmarried, the first reaction of the nurse who provided the postpartum home care was “Oh, the child’s father is married then?” The differences in the perceptions about unwed and divorced mothers become most notable in the articles that refer to adultery as the main reason for the parents’ separation. Unwed mothers and divorcées are conspicuously placed in opposite camps. In five articles out of forty, unwed mothers were portrayed as adulteresses, violators of family norms, and home-breakers. On the other hand, in three out of four articles on divorced mothers that mentioned adultery, divorcées were portrayed as victims of the adultery of their husbands. Since the late nineteenth century, the state, later together with big businesses, promoted the two-parent family as the norm and a crucial operating unit of society. This made the stigma associated with “home-breaking” particularly damaging in Japan. Responding to it, those unwed mothers who had children by unmarried men often brought my attention to it early on in the interview even before I could ask them. When the child’s father was married, warding off the accusation of home-breaking was more difficult. One way in which unwed mothers seemed to be doing this was pointing out their appreciation of the precedence of the legal family and maintaining that they do not expect to hold a strong claim on the father of their children. Few unwed mothers tried to push married fathers of their children to divorce.The most commonly stated reason for such reticence was the knowledge that the man already had children within his marriage.26 Losing a father before reaching adulthood was seen by my interviewees as a possible cause of irreparable damage to those children, and they said they were not prepared to be responsible for it. Biological fathers of illegitimate children also reportedly often invoked their legitimate children to explain to my interviewees why they will not leave their wives. As soon as legitimate children were involved, any explanation became credible. Natsuko’s case was probably the most striking. In spite of living separately from his wife and children for years, her son’s father still explained he could not have a divorce as it would be too great a shock for his legitimate children. When he left his family, his youngest daughter’s hearing worsened, and he said he blames this on his separation from his wife and a new marriage is out of the question until his daughter recovers. At the time Natsuko, a 43-year-old high school graduate, discovered her pregnancy she had been living with the father of her child for about a year in Thailand and saw that he did not maintain much contact with his wife and children in Japan. Nevertheless, she agreed with his reasoning.

   Chapter 5 It is well known among academics and professional social workers that few fathers actually support their offspring when they are not married to their mothers. Nonetheless, unmarried mothers who enjoy financial support from their married lovers are a common image. This cliché is reportedly rooted in the concubinage system.27 Although polygamy is outlawed in contemporary Japan, there is a rich vocabulary of terms related to secret “second wives” that testifies to how relevant the concept still is.28 Responding to this perception, two mothers went as far as pointing out that they were not taking support from the man at all in order not to cause trouble for his family.29 In those cases where they were receiving support, most women said they were doing so because it is “the child’s right,” not for themselves. What about the more positive dimensions of unwed mothers’ image? Surely popular belief does not maintain that all unwed mothers are forced to become so because of their circumstances? What are the perceptions of women who have chosen unwed motherhood because they believed they alone could provide a better environment for their children? Active Agency The promiscuous woman or the secret mistress are not the only images of unwed mothers. Another common perception is “a hard-working career woman,” maintained Midori, an unmarried, childless woman of thirty-five with a college education. This image, however, is not entirely positive. For example, Midori, while claiming that in general she thinks highly of such single unwed mothers “because [they] can earn that much money” and support a family on their own, noted that she does not think that “being a single [mother] is good for a child.” Even though career women are sometimes referred to as “impressive” (kakkō ii),30 they are still stigmatized for having actively chosen a suboptimal, perhaps even harmful, environment for their children.31 As the mother’s main role is supposed to be protecting and nurturing her child, mothers who “condemn” their children to growing up without a father attract criticism for egoism.32 For example, Michiko, a 28-year-old high school graduate, was told by her employer that “the worst child abuse is the absence of a parent.” This criticism, of course, theoretically includes both unwed and divorced mothers, but as both media and interview analysis showed, unwed mothers are held more responsible for their situation than divorcées. Haruko, a 39-year-old university graduate, comparing herself with her divorced cousin, illustrated this very poignantly: My cousin on my mother’s side is now thirty. . . . She got married and had a child, but when the child was about 2 years old she got divorced. The reason was that her husband started seeing another woman and so they split. At that time I was told

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame    the following thing and it really freaked me out. I’m a single mother, she’s a single mother too, but the way we are seen, the way other relatives see us [is different]: Haruko-chan became like that [a single mother], because she wished to, she decided that herself, but Yuko-chan, it is as if she got into a traffic accident. In short, Yukochan is not at all to blame. This way of thinking takes it for granted that only her husband is bad, because he started seeing another woman. . . . It was a shock for me, though I thought maybe that’s how it is.

Even a very cursory comparison of articles about unwed mothers and divorcées shows that unwed mothers are much more likely to be presented as active agents who brought their current situation upon themselves through their own choices and preferences. Out of forty articles on unmarried mothers, twenty explicitly depicted women as actively responsible for ending up as single mothers. Out of forty-four articles on divorced mothers, only six portrayed the divorce as the women’s choice. In two articles women were shown as battling against their husbands’ wishes to obtain a divorce. Ten other articles stressed that it was women’s husbands who left them with little choice and made divorce unavoidable. The articles dwelled on husbands’ shortcomings, which included serious criminal offences, domestic violence, drinking, and compulsive spending. Even when the divorcée was seen as responsible for the family’s dissolution, articles often framed this as a question of joint rather than sole responsibility. On the other hand, out of forty articles on unwed mothers, only three suggested that their status as single mothers may not have been exclusively the women’s fault. A wealth of information is usually available on the husbands of divorcees when the reasons for divorce are discussed. This is virtually never the case when articles consider the reasons why unwed mothers had children outside a marital union. Men hardly appear at all, and the articles concentrate on why the woman in question did not have an abortion. A comparison of interviews with single unwed mothers and divorcées also showed that the latter were more likely to talk at length about the man’s faults and attribute a large share if not all of the responsibility for the failed relationship to him. In sum, any unwed mother who is successful in supporting her child is suspected of an active choice. This type of stigma is hard to avoid without facing the stigma of immorality, as rejection of marriage in case of intended childbearing is rarely believed to be justifiable. Moreover, if there is a reason to forego marriage, unmarried and pregnant women always have the last resort of abortion, which is regarded as far less problematic in Japan than in Western countries. Thus the choice of unwed motherhood is often talked about as deviancy. There is simply no widely accepted positive role model for unwed mothers in contemporary Japan. The experiences of being a divorced and being an unwed mother are dissociated, ensuring that the growing numbers of divorcées do not serve as

   Chapter 5 a reference group for women who are considering possible resolutions of a premarital pregnancy. Consequently, the increase in the numbers of divorcées does not seem to have encouraged a growth in the numbers of unmarried single mothers. This potentially serves to explain the huge difference in the numbers of divorced and unwed mothers, a pattern unobserved in the Western industrialized countries. Before finishing this section on public perceptions of unwed mothers it is important to note that just as the economic and legal circumstances of unwed mothers have improved over the past decades, perceptions of single mothers have not stood still either. The ever more common working married mothers reduce the visibility and stigmatization of single mothers who are unable to concentrate fully on childcare. In the words of Chizuko, a 34-year-old unmarried and childless university graduate, Somehow since I was small I had an image of a child with a key.Yes–yes, really coming back home, and no one is there, sadly waiting for the parents to come back with no one around. Now my idea of single mothers is not like that anymore. Rather than single mothers, there are more married working women like that. . . . So there is no more old image of a lonely child, who has to go to day care and then be alone at home. So there is no such image of single mothers as well.The difference between families with [both] parents and single-mother families is not so visible.

The proportion of Japanese people who say they disapprove of a woman who wants to have a child as a single parent but does not want a stable relationship with a man has fallen considerably since 1981 (see Table 1.1). Many of my respondents, both unwed mothers and not, also felt that these days there is much less prejudice against single mothers in general. Akemi, a 36-year-old unwed mother with a high school education, said that “now, unlike the old days, people don’t care. If you say I’m a single mother, you mostly get something like ‘Oh really?’” Many women made a direct connection between the rising numbers of single-parent households and decreasing stigmatization. Mariko, a 52-year-old university graduate from Tokyo, notes that “recently divorce is growing, so single mothers are getting more common and don’t seem to attract much attention any more. I think it’s very good.” Unmarried childless women in their early thirties also noticed these changes. The changing perceptions concern single mothers in general rather than unwed mothers specifically, but their role should not be underestimated.The widely noted decrease in prejudice against single mothers is not sufficient to make most unwed mothers embrace their identity. At the same time, the decreased prejudice against all single mothers is probably behind the falling levels of curiosity single mothers attract.This in turn helps most unwed mothers to pass effortlessly for divorcées whenever they wish to do so. When asked

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

if she has been ever singled out as an unwed mother, Ayumi, a 44-year-old university graduate, explained: “well there are many people who realize I’m a single parent, but if I don’t mention it, no one knows I was never married, so I don’t think [I was ever treated in any particular way] because of that.” This ability to pass undetected raises an important question about the viability of shame as an explanatory mechanism. Shame needs an audience and works through social penalties. Thus, if, as alluded to in the beginning of this chapter, the mechanism deterring pregnant unmarried women from childbirth is shame, the next step is to prove that the status of an unwed mother leads to negative social experiences.

Locating Oneself within Public Perceptions In analyzing the way unwed mothers related to public perceptions of them, it is useful to invoke labeling theory. “A labelling theory explanation of conflict involves two converging processes: creating and imposing the label of ‘deviant’ on certain acts and persons and the individual’s acceptance of the label as a central feature of their identity.”33 The preceding section addressed the creation and imposition of the label; now let us see what the individual reaction to the label was. My interviewees were well aware of the fact that public opinion toward women like them is far from understanding. This belief was reinforced through the media as well as sometimes through “well-meaning” advice of relatives and friends. Keiko’s mother called her almost every evening during her pregnancy trying to convince her to have an abortion “for the sake of the child.” One of Sachiko’s friends was very concerned about her situation and argued with her at length that she should not be giving birth like that, that childbirth has to be within marriage for the good of the child and the mother. The internet as a medium that offers anonymity provided many unwed mothers with a place to “come out,” to find others in a similar situation, and to seek advice. At the same time, I was told by unwed mothers that internet chat rooms for single unwed mothers attract severe bashing, as did some of the more general chat rooms such a 2 channeru when the topic of unwed mothers came up. This even led to the closure of quite a few personal home pages and chat rooms of single unwed mothers (including the one I used for finding interviewees). Kaeko, a 36-year-old professional school graduate, explained that “no one ever said anything to me directly, but I often browse the internet, look at BBS, etc. In these kinds of places I came across prejudice.”34 As we will see below, such experiences made unwed mothers very careful when it came to managing their identity. Public perceptions of single unwed mothers have penetrated common knowledge to the extent that unwed mothers frequently referred to them

   Chapter 5 when talking about themselves. Moreover, those who had few or no other unwed mothers in their social networks tended to believe that other unwed mothers may well be like those popularly constructed images. Consequently, my interviewees saw their situation as far from neutral. Mieko, a 36-year-old university graduate, explained to me that “in Japan apparently the perception of adultery is very common. . . . [An unwed mother] is seen not as someone who ‘did not marry,’ but as someone who ‘could not marry.’” The label of “deviance” hence clearly exists for unwed single mothers, and they are well aware of the existing moral hierarchy. But what about their acceptance of the label? Unlike what Patricia G. Steinhoff found in the case of student movements and what Robert Stuart Yoder found for juvenile delinquents, although the label exists and unwed mothers are well aware of it, it is not accepted.35 On the contrary, it is often strongly resisted. Many women asserted that they subscribe to majority values and are very pro-marriage. One manifestation of this fierce commitment to the majority norms and marriage idealization was unwed mothers’ professed strong desire for their children to have a “normal” marriage.36 This is how Sachiko, a 32-year-old college graduate, explained her position: “I don’t want her to go down the same road. I want her to have a proper marriage; it will be fine even if it is a shotgun marriage. I want her to get married properly and have a respectable family. That is my greatest desire.” When I asked “Why do you want her to marry so strongly?” Sachiko replied: To be sincere, I don’t think marriage is the only way of life, but I myself had to suffer so much. When you want to rely on someone, there is no one. I wanted to rely on a man, but I could not. So it is not that I’m sad, but if there was a person to support me, my way of thinking probably would have changed and my life too. Being a single mother as such is not hard, but I think there are many difficult aspects. So I would not want my child to be like that, but rather marry ordinarily and have a normal life. A shotgun marriage will be OK too; I want her to have an [ordinary] life.

Arguing for the importance of marriage in general, most unmarried mothers I interviewed assessed unwed motherhood negatively. Quite a few subscribed to the common perceptions about unwed mothers outlined above, while maintaining that they themselves are exceptions. Time and again I was told by my interviewees that they are not at all typical unwed mothers. Sachiko, for example, claimed she is managing so well that “people who do not know can’t imagine anything else but that I have had a divorce and am raising a child alone. Really, they wouldn’t think I’m an unwed mother at all.” Having internalized the general belief in the hierarchy and typology of unwed mothers and at the same time maintaining their own difference, unwed mothers I interviewed expected that they will have to do a lot of explaining if

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

they tell anyone they had a child outside wedlock. This, as we will see below, also encouraged them to manage information about themselves and their children with utmost care. Only a minority had liberal family views. Invoking shame, of course, is only possible if the stigmatized individual holds the same social norms and beliefs as the conventional majority. Otherwise he or she will be shielded by the norms of his or her own group. As argued above, most unwed mothers in my sample subscribed to the majority’s norms and conventions.37 But a few liberal-minded single unwed mothers held unconventional family norms and thus were insulated from public scorn. These unconventional women were more likely than not to belong to groups of progressive women who shared their beliefs and supported their choice, providing them with a positive sense of identity.38 manag ing one’s ide ntity The conventional majority The stigma associated with unwed motherhood in Japan is, to use Goffman’s term, invisible in all but very few social encounters. As we have seen in Chapter 4, over the past several decades legal changes related to the family registry have made disclosing unwed motherhood largely a matter of a personal choice. High divorce rates and the widespread incidence of husbands being transferred to work away from their families (tanshin funin) mean that women raising their children alone are not usually thought to be unwed mothers. When such mimicry is possible, Goffman argues that “because of the great rewards of being normal, almost all persons who are in a position to pass will do so on some occasion by intent.”39 Conversely, the fact that people conceal some information about themselves is a good indication that they perceive this information as stigmatizing, rather than as a mere variation of the norm. The amount and extent of efforts associated with such concealment then tell us how strong or weak a certain stigma is. As Goffman predicts, unwed mothers often do take advantage of invisibility and use various strategies to avoid disclosure of their identity at least some of the time.40 As a result, these women more often are confronted with difficulties related to information management than direct discrimination. There was, however, an indication of a generational gap in the commitment to active avoidance of stigma.41 Unwed mothers aged between early twenties to late forties at the time of the interview were not proud of their situation and usually did not advertise it. Nevertheless, few women went to such extremes as altering their family register, for example.42 Most women either passively chose to pass for divorcées or were content with “silent understanding,” as Natsuko, a 43-year-old high school graduate, called it. Natsuko

   Chapter 5 believed that all her old friends, relatives, and acquaintances knew about her situation since she made no secret about having the child and at the same time never mentioned marriage to them. Nevertheless, she preferred not to go into the details of her situation with anyone and generally avoided telling about it at work and to her new friends and acquaintances. A significant minority of these unwed mothers seemed to make only desultory efforts to avoid detection. Kyoko, a 42-year-old college graduate, said: I never hid it really. Only when I go to a different section [at work] with different members and people don’t know me and my past, sometimes there will be a question ‘and your husband?’ If I’m busy and don’t have time, I would just dodge the question saying ‘Hmmm . . .’; though I don’t have a particular desire to deceive, I tell [the truth] when the time is right.

At the same time Megumi, a 73-year-old unwed mother, arranged for her child to be registered as a legitimate daughter of her own parents, as recounted in Chapter 4. The girl was even sent to live with them, far away in the countryside, until she reached age eighteen, seeing her mother only during winter and summer vacations.43 The generational difference in the perceived seriousness of deviation is also reflected in the fact that parents of unwed mothers took the impending birth of an illegitimate child much more gravely than unwed mothers themselves or their siblings. Naomi, a 45-year-old high school graduate, pointed that out explicitly, telling me she “never thought [about unwed mothers the way her] parents talk about them: promiscuous, and society will never forgive them.” I will discuss the role of parents as significant others in more detail later in this chapter. The Unconventional Minority A few women chose to reveal their identity as unwed mothers to everyone due to their ideological beliefs. In Goffman’s terms, unwed motherhood is a discreditable rather than a discredited stigma; that is, it is not immediately apparent. Thus when it came to revealing one’s situation, unconventional women faced the issue of how to do it consistently and to everyone. For example, one of the first things Sumiko, a 53-year-old high school graduate, did after moving in with the father of her child was nailing her own surname on the door along with his so that no one had any doubts about their marital status.44 Mariko, a 52-year-old university graduate, once a year “took paid leave and brought my child to my work place. Everybody knew I would be coming as [I said] ‘I’ll come tomorrow with my child.’” In order to invoke shame and hence affect human behavior, the stigmatizing characteristics need to be observed. As the stigma associated with unwed motherhood is not immediately visible, its effect is limited. Still, it is impossible to hide one’s situation from everyone. To gauge the possible

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

effect of shame, I will now investigate who knew of the situation of unwed mothers-to-be when they were trying to make their decisions and whether the decisions were seriously affected by the opinions of those who knew.

Perceived Pressure and Support from Others: The Efficiency of Shaming Shaming is argued to be a crucial mechanism that gives shame traction in upholding majority norms across different societies.45 Moreover, the consensus model, discussed in the introduction to this chapter, maintains among other things that Japanese people have an especially strong desire to maintain group harmony and so are particularly susceptible to shaming. Finally, sizeable proportions of young Japanese men and women give “gaining social respect” and “fulfilling expectations of those around” as important reasons for marriage.46 All this suggests that the opinions and pressure of “those around” should be an important concern for unwed mothers-to-be. In the following I will discuss how people who were aware of the impending birth of an illegitimate child reacted to the women’s decisions, whether shaming occurred, and how the unwed mothers-to-be were affected by these reactions. My account is based on my interviews with unmarried single mothers as well as what unmarried women with no children hypothesized would happen in case they got premaritally pregnant. Therefore, the material I use to discuss other actors is based on women’s perceptions of these actors and their reactions. While this may not always reflect the objective truth, exactly these beliefs about what other people may think and do rather than others’ objective views are crucial for decision making. For convenience of exposition I will separate the significant others into several groups: the child’s father; the father’s extended family; the woman’s own parents; the woman’s siblings and friends; and the woman’s employers and colleagues. Goffman writes that a widely employed strategy of a person whose stigmatizing attributes are not apparent is “to handle his risks by dividing the world into a large group to whom he tells nothing and a small group to whom he tells all.”47 With a few exceptions it was only the child’s father, the woman’s own parents and siblings, and sometimes her friends who were “told all” and allowed to play an active role in the choice an unwed motherto-be was making. Others were not told anything and were at most allowed to be passive reference points at the back of the woman’s mind. the child’s fathe r The majority of men who fathered illegitimate children were reported to lack interest in them. One plausible explanation for this is that adverse selection determines who ends up as a father of an illegitimate child. In Japan

   Chapter 5 the beliefs that a child needs two parents and that an illegitimate child will suffer and be stigmatized are shared not only by unwed mothers but also, as a few mothers reported, by some of the fathers. The more responsible men thus are more likely to marry women they got pregnant and then maybe divorce them later rather than leave them to become unwed mothers. Hitomi, a 37-year-old college graduate with a full-time job, was one of a few unwed mothers who refused a marriage offer because they found the father of their child extremely unsuitable. It took her a while, however, to convey her position to the child’s father: “Although we dated for no more than two months, once I got pregnant he thought naturally we’ll get married.” Some indirect evidence supporting the idea that marriage may be a common way to avoid illegitimacy is the high rate of shotgun marriages in Japan.48 A recent study also found that 10 percent of all children conceived outside wedlock in Japan, but born within marriage, spend the first five years of their lives in single-parent families, suggesting possible use of paper marriage.49 In my control group of divorcées who separated from their husbands when their child was less than a year old, half had shotgun marriages. Moreover, most of the divorcées I interviewed during their pregnancy had already considered the possibility of divorce. Ai, a 39-year-old divorced mother with a university education, convinced the man to marry her in order for their child not to be born illegitimate by stressing the horrible fate of an illegitimate child. Satomi, a 21-year-old divorced mother with a junior high school education, realized she was pregnant when it was too late to have an abortion, and her and her boyfriend’s parents immediately organized a marriage for them. Who then were the men who allowed their children to be born outside wedlock? In my sample, men who did not marry their girlfriends in many cases had grave reasons such as already being married to someone else. More than half of the women had children by married men.50 Among women who had children by unmarried men, a substantial minority (seven women) had children by foreigners.51 A possible interpretation of the high proportion of foreigners among the fathers of illegitimate children52 may be that Japanese men, if they get their girlfriends pregnant, feel more compelled to marry them than do men in similar circumstances in other societies (especially Western ones) because of the difference in social norms and perceptions of what illegitimacy implies.53 More often than not a relationship that led to an illegitimate birth was secret and short.54 In most cases the women said they could not give me much information about the family of the child’s father’s (I asked for age, education, and the jobs of his parents) and two-thirds have never met the parents of the child’s father. A substantial minority also said they did not know what his level of educational attainment or his exact job and his sal-

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

ary were at the time of their pregnancy. Most unwed mothers did not have many connections with the father’s social networks. All this probably put these women in a very weak bargaining position when it came to pregnancy resolution. From the fathers’ point of view, it also made them obvious candidates for an abortion. Sixty-two out of sixty-eight unwed mothers I interviewed told the fathers of their children about their pregnancies soon after finding out themselves. Two women did not know who their children’s fathers were. Only two women tried to strategize and wait until some better moment. Two other women never told the fathers about the pregnancy. Both of them said they chose not to tell because they did not feel it was worth the effort, rather than because they worried about the father’s reaction. This is in stark contrast with the amount of strategizing involved in finding the right moment to tell one’s parents. Most of my interviewees were gravely concerned about their parents’ reaction, and only thirty-six of them found the courage to tell about the impending birth to at least one of their parents while the option of abortion was still open. The rest waited to “come out” until legal abortion was impossible.55 In some cases the fear of parental reaction made unwed mothers hide their situation from them until after childbirth. Some women may have told the men early on because they wanted to be sure of the options open to them and hoped that the men would offer to marry them. However, as I mentioned above, in more than half of the cases the father of the child was already married to somebody else, so there could not be much hope for marriage. Once told, the fathers made it clear early on whether they would support the women and their children or not.56 Haruko, a 39-year-old unwed mother with a university education, told me that “he of course was very surprised and as I expected said he couldn’t marry me, but whether to give birth to the child or not he’d leave for me to decide. Somehow irresponsible. But he told me he’d do what he could [to provide support].” A quarter of the men insisted that their girlfriends should have an abortion immediately, but few women told me they were afraid of being forced into an abortion by their children’s fathers. After clarifying their attitude, most men drifted, leaving the final decision on the pregnancy to the women.57 Married men, especially those who had legitimate children, were the ones least involved in the decision making.58 Their primary responsibility and allegiance was seen by everyone, including their mistresses, to be toward their legal families.Yumiko, a 46-year-old university graduate, one of the few women who were supported by the fathers of their children, said they could not live together because “he has children who are still going to school, and when it comes to that I myself feel uneasy. I wonder whether we can get over this or not.”

   Chapter 5 Women reported the least conflict and the least expectations when they had children by married men, especially those with non-adult children. Indeed, with a few exceptions their reports show an absence of much discussion and common deliberations. Akemi, a 36-year-old high school graduate, described what seemed to be the typical, somewhat bewildered reaction of men. Akemi: We had an agreement to meet on the day I found out. So I told him I may be pregnant. E. H.: What was his reaction? Akemi: A bit shocked: “Hmmm, are you really pregnant? Hmmm.” I said I want to give birth. “Hmmm”; he said: “if you give birth your life will all change.” He said that if I give birth he’ll be happy, but it’s very hard. “But I can’t get a divorce” [he said]. E. H.: His wife? Akemi:Yes–yes. At the time, they had an elementary school child, and he said he can’t get a divorce till the child grows up.

Reportedly, married men did not try very hard to affect women’s choices. This was usually based on a tacit or sometimes not so tacit understanding— at least from the man’s point of view—that he would not have to do much, if anything, to support the future child. Kazuko, a 35-year-old high school dropout, told the child’s father about the pregnancy straight away, and his first reaction was shock, but “he didn’t talk about abortion as a possible choice [because] I gave the impression that I’ll give birth.” When the man was unmarried there were more negotiations, especially on the subject of marriage, and men exerted more pressure for abortion. Five women planned their pregnancies and agreed with the men they would not marry. The majority, however, reported conflict and an eventual failure to negotiate marriage. In these cases men often attempted to convince their mistresses that an abortion is an altogether preferable alternative to unwed motherhood. Rather than shaming them, these men were appealing to the mothers’ guilt before their future children.59 In the end, the majority of the men took no or hardly any interest in their children once they were born.When marriage is unwanted or impossible, few fathers seem to have any desire for shared parenthood, while mothers have low expectations for them.60 Unlike in most Western countries,61 in Japan the legal concept of shared parenthood does not exist.62 A child of divorced parents becomes a charge of one of them. In the case of unmarried parents, a child is automatically listed in the mother’s family register, and she is the only person who has parental rights even if the child is acknowledged. Parental rights can be passed to the father in this case only if the biological mother renounces her parental rights and the child is taken off her mother’s family register and listed in the father’s. In this case the child also gets the father’s surname.

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

While the law makes it legally impossible for parents to share parental rights, it does not prevent them from having their own private arrangements and doing it de facto. According to my interviewees, only eight fathers chose to be involved in the child’s upbringing. The limited involvement of men with their illegitimate offspring translated into an even more limited role for the father’s side of the extended family. Previous research has portrayed the extended family on the father’s side as a force to reckon with within marriage.63 Among my own interviewees, many women pointed out that one has to maintain a good relationship with one’s husband’s family once married and that this is not always easy. Quite a few of the divorcées I interviewed brought to my attention the important role their husband’s extended family played in many child- and marriage­related decisions.Yoko’s parents-in-law played an important role in preventing her from having an abortion because her marriage was falling apart. Masami, a 32-year-old divorcée with high school education, left her husband largely because his mother was trying to force her to have an abortion. When it came to out-of-wedlock pregnancies, however, the extended family rarely played any role at all. In three cases considerations about his parents ruled out the option of marriage for the child’s father, but these were exceptions. Very few unwed mothers ever had any contact with the extended family of the child’s father. The low perceived obligations in the case of “nonstandard” family arrangements may be an unintended consequence of the state’s efforts to construct the two-parent legally married family as the only real family. parents Parents’ opinions bore heavily on their daughters’ decisions.64 Half of the women found it difficult to muster the courage to tell their parents about the pregnancy, and concern about one’s own parents’ reactions was shared by almost all the women I interviewed. Makiko, a 34-year-old high school graduate, for example, only let her mother know in the sixth month of pregnancy because she feared that if her mother “understood earlier there would be a lot of trouble.” Other women were prepared for the worst, which must have made their resolution to continue with the pregnancy a more difficult decision. Michiko, a 28-year-old high school graduate, remembered that her “father was furious.” E. H.: What did he want you to do? Michiko: Either you should have an abortion or get out of this house; choose! E. H.: Did you expect this? Michiko: I expected that, so I thought I would have to leave. It is when my mother told me I could give birth that I was quite surprised. I thought she’d say, have an abortion; she’d say, go away too.

   Chapter 5 Some women dared to notify their parents only post factum because as Yoshiko, a 30-year-old university graduate, said, “if I told them earlier they would have definitely made me have an abortion. I was expecting that reaction.” Living with one’s parents was not an incentive to have a child outside wedlock, as only a minority of women counted on parental support before the child was actually born. Many parents did not accept their daughter’s decision at first, and many said they would not help until it was after the time abortion was possible and they had to come to terms with the idea. Some parents only mellowed after they actually saw their grandchild. Even the most understanding and supportive of parents, like those of 34-year-old university graduate Takako, “at first were really at a loss. I then explained to them. It is true that then they understood. But still [they worried about] how will we explain to our relatives, what will grandma say . . . things like that.” Parents’ backgrounds had an effect on their reactions. Parents from rural areas tended to be more conservative than parents from urban areas. Parental reactions also differed by gender. In all but a very few cases the father’s reaction was severe and uncompromising. Quite a few fathers blackmailed their errant daughters, demanded an immediate decision between abortion and leaving the natal home and sometimes even exercised the severing of all ties (engiri ). Haruko only dared to tell her father just before her son was born. After hearing the news, he almost drank himself to death and had to be hospitalized with alcoholic poisoning. Hearing about this, she wrote him a long letter apologizing for her decision. Soon the reply came back. It was a letter of notification of severing all ties with me. “I do not think you are my daughter, do not think you are my child.” It was a letter severing ties. From then on he really refused to have anything to do with me for three years. Just before the child became three we for the first time went to meet his grandfather. That was the first time he agreed to meet us.

Yumiko, a 46-year-old university graduate, had almost the same experience. Her father wrote to her that he does not “want to see the grandchild; he does not recognize [this child] as his granddaughter. It was a terrible letter.” She had never seen her father like that in her life. Few fathers managed to maintain this severing of ties for longer than a few years and in most cases it was over as soon as they saw their grandchild. Still the threat was always felt as serious and real, and usually the fathers carried it out at least till their grandchild was born. The mothers’ reported reactions were much more varied: as often as not mothers sided with their daughters and helped to talk the fathers over. Mothers also often gave their daughters a lot of practical advice and support during pregnancy and after the child was born. The mothers’ own personal

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

experiences with marriage appeared to affect their reactions considerably. Women in unhappy marriages seemed to be much more tolerant when their daughters had children outside wedlock. At the same time, 16 percent of women who were themselves single mothers (almost exclusively divorcées) tended to strongly oppose their daughters’ choice of single motherhood.65 They often reacted most severely and did their best to dissuade their daughters from having a child outside wedlock.66 Miho, a 52-year-old divorced mother with a university education, told me she had a shotgun marriage with a man she hardly knew in order not to disappoint her mother’s hopes that at least her daughter would have a happy marriage. The marriage promptly dissolved before her child turned 1 year old. In spite of the variations, mothers of premaritally pregnant women intent on having their children were more accepting than their fathers. My interviewees explained the disparity in their parents’ reactions by the fact that the mothers could sympathize with their daughters who were caught between the norm of marriage and the norm of childbearing,67 whereas the fathers could not understand it.This difference was congruent with men’s generally more critical attitudes toward illegitimacy,68 keenly felt by some of my interviewees, including unmarried and childless women. Mayumi, a 36-year-old university graduate, when asked about discrimination, explained: Yes, there is, there is. I think probably among women there’s not much. Especially among today’s women in their thirties, early forties, women of our generation, there is probably no [intolerance]. My mother, women of a bit older generation, I think feel prejudice. But men have it very much. Men strongly support the stereotype that [a woman] is to marry, and then have a child; that’s probably why they feel so strongly about single mothers. The women themselves obviously have experience facing such a choice [marriage or childbearing]; that’s probably why they do not feel much prejudice.

Why Were the Parents so Much against Having Illegitimate Grandchildren? Almost all parents were more conservative than their daughters, and none of them reacted positively to the idea of having an illegitimate grandchild. Goffman in his analysis of stigma and the management of spoiled identity shows that stigma attached to one member of the family travels to the others.69 Thus, apart from sharing women’s worries about their grandchildren not having a normal family,70 parents reportedly were strongly concerned about the shamefulness of unwed motherhood. As mentioned, felt shame and perceived stigmatization varied by age. Parents who naturally represent the older generation present us with the best example of how much more stigma and shame affected behavior when it came to illegitimacy in the old days. Parents often were more actively involved in information manage-

   Chapter 5 ment about their daughters’ status than the daughters themselves and were seriously concerned that the stigma from their daughters could be transferred onto themselves or their whole family. They often tried to hide the truth from relatives and neighbors for years, taking numerous precautions and sometimes going as far as banning their daughters from visiting them. As discussed above, if agents conceal information about themselves, this is a good indication of their susceptibility to stigma and shame.The proliferation and extent of the disinformation strategies parents resorted to show that they were much more susceptible to stigma and shame than their daughters. Haruko, whose son was 6 years old at the time, told me that she herself did not mind telling relatives about her son, and so close relatives from her mother’s side knew. However, her father was finding it very difficult to deal with the situation, so his relatives still were not told about her son. He himself was a school headmaster, [of] an elementary school, but still he retired as a headmaster. He put both myself and Daisuke [her younger brother] through university. He was particularly proud that we went to rather good universities. So from the point of view of Father, [he had] a family he was satisfied with. But although he was proud of us, I had a child outside wedlock. This was a real minus, a real disadvantage for him. So [to this day] at relatives’ gatherings he cannot tell about it. If he is asked whether I’m doing well, he can’t answer anything but “Ah, she’s struggling with her job in Cambodia, she is a hard worker, a hard-working career woman!” So the relatives on his side still don’t know [about my son].71

Parents tried to affect their daughters’ decision through both sanctions and reasoning much more than biological fathers did. Some parents succeeded in projecting their own fears onto their pregnant daughters. “Apparently my family controlled my thinking very much. [They kept saying] let’s hide it, let’s hide it; if it comes out what shall we do? That was the hardest thing probably,” explained Makiko, a 34-year-old high school graduate. Apart from pointing out the shamefulness of their situation, the most common argument that parents used when they tried to reason with their daughters was appealing to their sense of guilt before the unborn child. I will analyze this guilt in Chapter 6; here I will just note that the general feeling of guilt before the child who was “forced” to be born without a father was common across generations. In my sample the women’s parents were disproportionately absent during the women’s pregnancy. About a third of my interviewees either lived very far from their parents or at least one (usually the father) or both their parents were deceased at the time. When parents lived far away it was easy for women to hide their pregnancy for almost as long as they wanted and thus avoid pressure to have an abortion. In cases where both parents were dead there was obviously no pressure, and the absence of the father usually meant considerably less pressure. In addition, living away from one’s parents as an

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

adult or having only a surviving mother usually meant that these women were no longer financially and residentially dependent on their parents. This independence also probably played a role in allowing my interviewees to carry their pregnancy to term. Why Was so Much Importance Attached to the Parents’ Views? Half of the unwed mothers I interviewed hid their pregnancy from their parents as they thought that if their parents found out they would be forced to have an abortion. Most women in my sample were between their midtwenties to early forties when they had their children, so the extent of parental influence seems rather disproportionate. One reason why Japanese parents have such a strong influence on their children’s choices could be that fewer young people are financially independent in Japan than in the West. The rate of young unmarried children coresiding with their parents is very high in Japan and has been growing recently.72 Thus, even when they are not receiving any cash from their parents, many young people are effectively supported by them.73 Also once the children are born, parents are often essential in helping the mothers balance work and childcare.74 Against this background it is not surprising that single mothers in Japan rely more heavily on parental support than their counterparts in Western countries. In the United States in 1998, 16.7 percent of single-mother families coresided with the mothers’ parents; in Japan the figure was 28.2 percent in 2006.75 In my sample thirty-two single unwed mothers received extensive support from their parents, and twelve women were coresiding with them at the time of the interview. Most of these women believed explicitly that raising a child alone would have been impossible for them without their parents’ help. At the same time, almost a half of unwed mothers in my sample were completely independent from their parents, but even they did not escape parental influence altogether. Goffman mentions “sentimental concern with those with whom we no longer have actual dealings with” as the main reason why someone may wish to avoid disclosing one’s status to relatives and friends and acquaintances from one’s “pre-stigmatized” life.76 It is also important to appreciate that people are likely to wish to avoid causing suffering to their loved ones and thus possibly limit the amount of information about their situation when in contact with people with whom the parents have regular contact. This may be especially the case in Japan where, as I will show in the next chapter, parents are believed to be almost exclusively responsible for the way their children turn out. Thus many women may be inhibited from making a choice to have a child outside wedlock out of consideration for their parents.

   Chapter 5 Kaori, a 31-year-old high school graduate, for example, said that when she decided to carry a premarital pregnancy to term she first planned not to tell her parents anything because “I was told by my parents long ago I should have a proper marriage. I felt sad to destroy [their dream].” Similarly Mayumi, a 36-year-old childless professional woman with a high income, who realized she desperately would like to have a child while she still could, said she personally did not mind too much even if she had a child outside wedlock. However, my parents think in the old way. That’s why especially my father very much wants me to have a proper marriage like in the old days. My mother thinks I should have a child while I still can. So both ways [within and outside marriage] are possible. If possible, as my father is an old type person, though I think he has half given up, if possible I think it would be better if I could at least formally be married once for my parents. My mother is not too fixated on that. If I got pregnant and said I want to have a child, I don’t think they both would protest too much. But still, I come from a rural area. So even for the times when I’ll be visiting with the grandchild, it’s is better to do it [marry]. If possible [I want] it the proper way.

These considerations made her hesitate when it came to having a child outside wedlock and increased the risk of procrastinating till infertility. The difference between parents and their daughters in reaction to stigmatization and shaming associated with a premarital pregnancy is obvious from Asuka’s story. It took place when Asuka’s mother first came to visit her at a maternity ward where Asuka, a 36-year-old unemployed university graduate, was recovering after childbirth. A nosy nurse loudly expressed concern for Asuka’s “poor child” and professed deep sympathy with the mother of a daughter who went on and gave birth to an illegitimate child.77 While Asuka herself was merely angry with the nurse’s behavior and complained to the hospital authorities about this unwelcome intrusion, her mother was so embarrassed she never dared to visit Asuka in the hospital again. My interviews show that not all unmarried and pregnant women equally feared the stigmatization and shame associated with childbearing outside marriage. Their parents were, in general, much more susceptible. Shaming is likely to remain an effective control mechanism when it comes to women’s parents and it influences the women indirectly through them. siblings and frie nds Typically, the older generation prospective grandparents were strongly concerned with their grandchildren’s illegitimate status. By contrast, very few of my interviewees reported meeting the explicit disapproval of siblings or friends. Most of the women in their thirties who were not married and did not have children also said that they themselves would not discriminate against unwed mothers, feeling that times have changed.

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

In the majority of cases, siblings and friends were supportive. If some were critical, this was not seen as a particularly big obstacle. Most women told their close friends that they were having a child outside wedlock, and in the words of Keiko, a 36-year-old university graduate, “because these were friends whom I trusted I was not worried. They supported me.” Naomi, a 45-year-old contract worker with a high school education, explained that no one [among her friends] objected like my parents did. Everyone thought I will give birth anyway and regardless of whether I will or won’t be able to marry in the future, everyone supported me. After birth too, they looked after the child a little. . . . If it was not for that, something would have gone wrong with me. But I got support from different people.

Objections to their decision to have a child outside wedlock were more often than not made on practical rather than moral grounds. As Kaeko, a 36-year-old professional school graduate, explained about her friend, “for her it was ‘What?! . . . Having a child is hard!’ She asked: ‘Are you sure it will be fine for you like that?’ But she was not against it, she didn’t say I should give it up. She just thought ‘it’s hard.’” When unwed mothers did come up against moral objections from their friends, this had little power to affect their decisions. Rather as Noriko, a 39-year-old university graduate, explained, “you just create a distance with such people. This is the end of the relationship. Only supportive people stay around.” Siblings also rarely tried to affect their sisters’ choice. Only in one case, that of Chihiro, a 29-year-old university graduate, an older brother actively resisted her decision to have a child outside marriage, banning her from visiting their parents. Chihiro’s case was exceptional as she came from a very conservative farming family and her brother was to take over the family business and already had a lot of authority in the household. Several women reported extensive practical help from their sisters. Some sisters even moved in during the first year of the child’s life and helped care for the child. In turn, a few of the brothers performed the role of substitute fathers. The byand-large positive attitude of people from the younger age group again accentuates the importance of age for the perceptions of stigma and shame. employers and colleague s I have partially discussed employers in Chapter 3. While employment was crucial for single mothers who had to support their families, employers were not seen as having direct power over women’s reproductive choices because the information they had could be relatively easily manipulated. At work women used several strategies to manage the information about their family situation. Quite a few unwed mothers decided to avoid telling their employers and colleagues about their situation and resigned before the pregnancy

   Chapter 5 became noticeable. These women realized that others would only guess that they had a child outside wedlock in case they kept the job, and if they took a new one after birth they could pose as a divorcée.78 There were also a few women like Makiko, a paid companion for men, who worked in jobs where everyone was secretive about personal circumstances. These women did not need to tell the whole truth. Makiko, for example, “lied that [she had] suddenly got married. It was because it [the truth] is troublesome.” More often women resorted to telling their colleagues and employers about marriage plans in the near future. Finally, quite a few women told the whole truth to their employers and colleagues and secured their cooperation. This strategy was the most prevalent among women who had decently paid and stable jobs, such as Rika, a 41-year-old high school graduate: Rika: At my work it was known I am single. I told them straight away I want to go on with pregnancy and also want to continue working. My boss said “OK, OK.” In that regard it was good. E. H.: Did you have any problems at work? Rika: No, there was nothing like that.

To conclude, the fact that a significant number of women used different strategies to avoid detection as single unwed mothers testifies to the importance of shame, fear of shaming, and other repercussions. At the same time, the ease with which women could avoid detection shows how limited the reach of shame has become since employers were banned from requesting potential employees’ family registers. Women usually did not expect positive reactions to the birth of an illegitimate child from other people with whom they interacted regularly, such as brothers and sisters and other relatives, and sometimes friends, colleagues, current and possible future employers, and so on. However, in interactions with all these people shame did not appear to have been an important consideration. People of the same age, usually brothers, sisters, and friends, often were sympathetic and did not see unwed motherhood as a transgression against social morals. Rather they viewed it as creating unfortunate circumstances for the child that could be alleviated only by very hard work and the dedication of the mother. Older people, such as employers, were more likely to consider having a child outside wedlock as immoral, but then unwed mothers could usually hide their circumstances from them if they wanted to. While the reactions of these groups were in the back of women’s minds, they were seen as much less of a problem than the reactions of parents. Contrary to the predictions of the consensus model, general considerations of maintaining harmony were not reported to be important by any of my interviewees. The only group among “those around” whose opinions

The Role of Social Stigma and Shame   

were seriously considered were the women’s own parents. Even in case of parental pressure, none of the women mentioned general considerations of harmony. Apart from such practical reasons as the need for parental support and a desire not to cause unhappiness, parental views probably carried as much weight as they did to a large extent because they appealed to the women’s sense of guilt before the parents and especially the unborn child.

Concluding Remarks In this chapter I have discussed the importance of stigmatization and shame as mechanisms behind the universal conformity to the childbearing-withinmarriage norm. There are strong indications that stigmatization and shame were important in inhibiting premarital childbearing a few decades ago.This importance, however, has been reduced for the current generation of unwed mothers. My younger interviewees did not report undue concern with the possible stigma and shamefulness of their choice or with the rule that they should not be the “nail that sticks out.”79 Most women found avoiding detection easy. That is a strong argument against the critical role of shame, as “shame typically needs for its actualization the presence of others.”80 The decreasing visibility of single unwed mothers81 should reduce the roles of stigmatization and shame. Shame seemed to operate directly only for some single unwed mothers, generally those from the older part of the sample. My findings on the reduced role of shame are strengthened considerably by my interviews about hypothetical pregnancies with unmarried women who had no children.These interviews show that the weakening perception of shamefulness of illegitimacy among younger generations as well as their patchier knowledge of the relevant legal provisions is not an artifact among the fringe group of single unwed mothers. Nevertheless, shame in most cases had at least an indirect effect on women’s decisions through pressure from their parents. It is unlikely that this was the crucial factor explaining the low number of unwed single mothers, however. If parental pressure was the only reason keeping illegitimacy in check, a sample of unwed mothers should have been dominated by women who lost their parents or did not care for their opinion. This, however, was not the case. A whole spectrum of parent-daughter relationships was present in the sample. An indirect mechanism cannot be as strong as a direct one, and with the latter fading away, we should observe more births outside of wedlock. As we do not, there must be some additional deterrent to such births. In sum, stigmatization and the shame associated with it have contributed significantly to making the norm of childbearing within marriage remarkably stable over the past several decades in Japan, but their importance is decreasing. A change of beliefs about a certain action should also bring about

   Chapter 5 a change in behavior. The reduction of stigmatization and perceived shamefulness of unwed motherhood over the past few decades, however, did not lead to a dramatic generational change in the trends of childbearing outside marriage. Thus this chapter still leaves us in search of a mechanism to explain why premaritally pregnant women continue to avoid out of wedlock childbearing. One persistent theme throughout this chapter has been the strong association of unwed motherhood with bad mothering. It was raised in the press and by desperate parents who were trying to dissuade their daughters from having an illegitimate child. Could all these repeated allusions to bad mothering take their toll and make unwed mothers feel guilty for damaging their children’s lives?

  r 

“The Worst Child Abuse Is the Absence of a Parent”

6

the role of guilt

when i met chieko, she was a confident, 56-year-old woman actively involved in lobby groups supporting single mothers. Her son was born as a result of a very late pregnancy (she was forty-four when she discovered it) and was the joy of her life. She passionately denied ever considering an abortion when finding herself unmarried and pregnant. Just before she became pregnant, she had accepted that she would go through life without having her own family and children. The pregnancy was a wonderful surprise. She had no practical worries about being able to support herself and the child as at the time she discovered her pregnancy her full-time position as a Japanese language teacher provided her with a good income. She also held very progressive views on female equality and fought for her views, successfully helping the part-time (almost exclusively female) staff at her workplace negotiate better employment terms. Her views on women’s labor rights were matched by her liberal attitudes about “nonstandard” family forms. She had a lengthy cohabiting relationship in her thirties and never thought she should get married. As Chieko, a gifted narrator, detailed the story of her life I more and more felt that I had figured her out: She must have had her child outside wedlock because of her liberal family views. She must be one of those modern Japanese women boldly challenging traditional family norms and successfully raising their illegitimate children alone. It all seemed clear—that is, until Chieko reached the point in her story where she explained why she ended up as a single unwed mother. She had not used any contraception throughout her life and yet never got pregnant, so at forty-four she was convinced she was infertile.The pregnancy came as a surprise to both Chieko and the child’s father, a young man almost twenty years her junior. Chieko said she was in love with him, but had few illusions about their relationship. They had broken up before and then

   Chapter 6 patched it together again, so she was resolved to enjoy the present and not expect too much of the future.When she discovered the pregnancy, however, it changed everything. In spite of her liberal attitudes as well as her ability to support herself and her child comfortably, Chieko confessed that “thinking about the future child at some point I literally begged him to marry me.” Her boyfriend was to inherit land in Nagano prefecture. Chieko’s whole life and career were in Tokyo, and she could not really imagine leading the life of a farmer’s wife in rural Nagano. Nevertheless, she pleaded with him passionately: “if you have to go to Nagano and inherit the house and if my life in Tokyo is an obstacle, I’ll [give it up and] go to Nagano with you!” It did not take Chieko long to realize that for the child’s father the pending birth was a nightmare come true rather than a joyous surprise. When he heard the news “he went white, and grew silent. From his behavior it was clear that this was not something he wanted although he did not say so.” In spite of that, Chieko was determined to convince him to marry her. It took five years of futile pleas and humiliation to make her give up the idea. Chieko’s story vividly illustrates the puzzle I will address in this chapter. Why would a financially independent woman who did not think childbearing outside wedlock shameful still desire marriage so fiercely, almost at any cost? Much existing research argues that in Japanese families the parentchild bond is stronger than the bond between spouses.1 If this is true, then why do women who have a child and thus have successfully attained the most important family relationship still desire so strongly the one that is seen as weaker and less important? In the preceding chapters I focused on several factors that should decrease the disincentives for women to have children outside wedlock: the improvement of women’s labor market situation, the improvement of welfare for single unwed mothers and their treatment in the legal system, and the decreasing stigmatization and shame associated with unwed motherhood.What does not seem to have changed, however, is how much most women still try to avoid childbearing outside wedlock. In 2004, 26.7 percent of all Japanese legitimate first-born children were conceived before their mothers got married.2 None of them ended up being born outside wedlock. The growth in the numbers of shotgun marriages over the past decades reflects the persistent association of childrearing with marriage against a general background of ever more liberal sexual behavior. What is the mechanism behind this persistence?

“Should I have done this to my child? Poor thing . . . ” In his treatise on the role of emotions in maintaining social norms, Elster attributes the key position to shame. At least in the case of reproductive decisions, however, research has noted another emotion as having a huge, usu-

The Role of Guilt   

ally conservative effect on behavior—the guilty fear of consequences. “No one is more susceptible to an expert’s fear-mongering than a parent. Fear is in fact a major component of the act of parenting. A parent, after all, is the steward of another creature’s life, a creature who in the beginning is more helpless than the newborn of nearly any other species.”3 Elster discounts guilt because it “attaches to specific actions rather than to one’s character as a whole” and does not necessarily involve an audience. Thus it is much more amenable to alleviation through self-deception than shame.4 When guilt is future oriented, however, it turns into acute fear of the potential consequences of one’s actions. When such major choices as those related to the future of one’s children are concerned, this fear is likely to be a powerful mechanism promoting adherence to practices that hold the promise of positive results.5 The outcomes of reproductive decisions can be very costly and long-lasting, as presumably it is not easy to “undo” an unhappy, neurotic child. The future orientation of this guilt makes it resistant to alleviation. It is difficult to assess one’s child’s happiness before the child has grown up and impossible to make amends after he or she has grown up. As a result, when parents believe they are making a decision detrimental to their child they may imagine the worst, thus bringing guilt and fear to a level that corresponds little to the immediately discernable well-being of the child.This insecurity has made parents notoriously easy to influence in their beliefs of what is best for their children.6 In Chapter 5 I gave a brief explanation of why in the Japanese case guilt or fear of consequences never became a popular explanation for the maintenance of social norms. Were it not for the dominance of the consensus model of Japanese behavior, they might have attracted attention as promising explanations at least when it comes to reproductive choices. After all, in Japan parents, especially mothers, are held almost exclusively responsible for their children’s outcomes. Little room is left for nature or society in general. As we will see, Japanese women tend to hold a particularly strong belief that illegitimacy may have a seriously detrimental effect on their children. Therefore, childbearing outside wedlock is likely to be associated with a greater amount of guilt and fear of consequences than that experienced by Western women with out-of-wedlock children. the centrality of the middle class and the emphasis on childre n’s malleability Before we address feelings of guilt among unwed mothers, we need to understand the strong beliefs in parental responsibility in Japan and where they come from. In the West, there has been an ongoing scientific debate about whether we turn out to be as we are chiefly due to our genetic predisposition or our environment.7 While it still is and will for a long time be impossible to

   Chapter 6 tell precisely how much our personalities depend on nature and how much on nurture,8 it is accepted in both Western academia and society in general that both of these factors matter. In postwar Japanese society, however, the emphasis has been heavily on nurture, especially on parental care. Academic research on the Japanese family documents how important parental and especially the mother’s care are perceived to be for the way a child turns out.9 The importance of mother-care is thoroughly impressed on all pregnant women.10 In her recent article about prenatal care, Tsipy Ivry shows that Japanese doctors conceptualize mothers as environments for their unborn children, and the quality of these environments is seen as totally dependent on the mothers’ efforts. Expectant mothers are socialized into the idea of a “perfectible” fetus and are extensively lectured on their diet, weight, and the like.11 At the same time, fetuses are rarely tested for potential genetic complications.12 This shows how deeply the mothering experience in Japan is rooted in the idea that people’s innate characteristics are basically equal, and individuals are strongly malleable. The implications of these perceptions are far-reaching. “In Japan eventual success is not assumed to depend on one’s innate capacities but on virtuous characteristics one can develop. Hence potential is regarded in Japan as egalitarian—everyone has it but some work harder to develop it than others.”13 Once a child reaches school age, this potential is expected to be assessed and developed through education. Goodman notes that “in most of the literature on teaching and learning in Japan the child is described as tabula rasa who learns through imitation and effort, in opposition to the Western idea of education wherein the child is seen as having innate abilities which need to be drawn out by a teacher.”14 This perceived importance of formal education in molding children, however, does not reduce the role of parenting—if anything it increases it. As the emphasis is on efforts, not on talent, the parental contribution is seen as essential in motivating the child to make the required efforts. A suitable family environment is argued to be the crucial counterpart of formal education and a necessary condition for the child to be able to achieve the best possible results. The emphasis on malleability and achievement through one’s efforts is intimately related to the history of education and the history of the “new middle class” in Japan. Already in the Tokugawa era educational achievement was perceived as associated with effort rather than talent.15 Until the Meiji restoration, however, educational attainment was the path of only a few and had little power to change one’s social position. The abolition of the rigid class system by the Meiji government in the late nineteenth century allowed a new middle class to develop: “It was new in that education more than inherited status was the key credential that opened doors to middle class occupations.”16 The new middle class started appearing after the Meiji res-

The Role of Guilt   

toration, but until the 1960s it remained a minority. Social patterns began to change dramatically as Japan entered the postwar period of high economic growth. Employment in agriculture shrank. Fewer and fewer people were self- or family-employed and many more became salaried employees. This, combined with the technological advances that required a better-educated labor force, had a remarkable effect on the role of education. It became the main mechanism for sorting children into appropriate positions in life. For a limited period, access to education was exceptionally egalitarian,17 supporting the idea of essential meritocracy and fairness behind people’s positions in life. While the real meritocracy ended relatively quickly, waning already in the 1960s and more rapidly in the 1970s,18 the perception of meritocracy lingered and so did the role of education as the sorting mechanism. Success in life came to be strongly related to one’s educational achievements.19 Moreover, whether one ends up successful or not is seen as a deserved outcome of past efforts. One of the consequences of this construction of children as malleable and society as meritocratic is that virtually all the burden for children’s outcomes is put squarely on the parents’ shoulders20—especially the mothers’, for it is the mother who is supposed to guide her children through their school years and help them to perform as well as possible.21 Mothers are constantly reminded of their responsibilities. It is not exceptional22 for a childrearing adviser to preach: “One must be so smart to be a good mother these days. Did you know that only one out of every four children is born smart? Sixty per cent of children’s intelligence comes from their mothers.”23 Elster points out that “we do not blame people for what is outside their control.”24 As we have seen, children’s educational achievements—which to a large extent determine their success in later life—are believed to be much more in their parents’ control in Japan than in the West. This situation has been worsened by the ongoing public discourse of insecurity about achieving and maintaining middle class status. This insecurity arguably has been a constant characteristic of the new middle class, but it reached a new high with the 1989 economic downturn.25 The difficulty of making it through “examination hell” into a good university followed by a good job means that parents are expected to offer all the support they can to their children to ensure their success.26 the disastrous e ffect of g rowing up in a single-pare nt family If it takes two people to create a child, how many does it take for the child to grow up normally? What is the perceived effect of growing up in single-mother families on children’s outcomes? These questions are answered

   Chapter 6 differently in different societies.27 Although there is little solid academic evidence that nonmarital childbearing per se carries adverse consequences for children born into these families,28 single-mother families in Japan are seen as a very detrimental environment for a child to grow up in. Even women who themselves formed alternative families, such as Kaeko, a 36-year-old vocational school graduate, felt that “it would have been better if there was a father.” A guilty fear of the consequences one’s decision would have for one’s child was an emotion the majority of the unwed mothers I interviewed experienced poignantly during pregnancy.29 Many, like Naomi, a 45-year-old high school graduate, explained, “I myself am prepared. But if my daughter is thinking unpleasant thoughts [about her situation], I can’t bear it. That is why I thought everything through very seriously.” Often these women explicitly differentiated themselves from their children and lived in constant fear that even if everything goes smoothly for them, their children may be suffering.30 These feelings are best exemplified by Yumiko, a 46-year-old university-educated civil servant, who mused “It’s OK for me as it is now. But what does the child think? It’s a little bit. . . . I wonder if there is something wrong with me [that I can be content]?” When I asked my interviewees whether growing up in a single-mother family affects their children, the first reaction usually was: “badly?” I then emphasized that my question was about any effect, positive or negative. Still the reply I received was in most cases based on the presumption that there must be some negative effect. When I specifically asked women whether they could think of any positive effect of their unmarried status on the child, almost all were at a loss. This view of a child as a victim of the mother’s selfish wish to give birth was spread irrespective of the actual quality of life the women were able to provide for their children. Indeed, in several cases the women felt guilt for the absence of the fathers although their descriptions of these men suggested that the women and their children were better off in their current situation than they would have been with irresponsible, jobless, sometimes violent fathers. The media reinforce the perception that children suffer in families headed by single unwed mothers: it is a common theme in three recent popular TV dramas with unwed mothers as the protagonists.31 In all of them the women were portrayed sympathetically. All three protagonists became unwed mothers through no fault of their own and fully subscribed to the ideal of marriage, thus narrowly avoiding two potential sources of stigmatization as discussed in Chapter 5.32 They could be sympathized with. Nevertheless, their situation was displayed as far from acceptable. Watashi no Aoi Sora, for example, discusses in great detail and in several series the stress of Taiyō, a young boy whose parents are not married. The parents, incidentally, are portrayed as committed to the child and manage to maintain a rather

The Role of Guilt   

amiable relationship between themselves. But they are not married and do not live together and that is what appears to matter. Taiyō keeps wishing his parents were married, runs away from his mother to go and live with his father, and then comes back again. The emotional pain caused by his inability to find his place in a “nonstandard” family leads Taiyō to lie about his family and prompts him to throw a violent tantrum in school. Toward the end of the drama, worrying that his birth ruined his mother’s life, Taiyō succumbs to an illness that renders him temporarily mute. Watching this drama one would conclude that growing up in a single unwed mother family causes continuous suffering for the child, which no amount of care from separated parents or from relatives and friends can alleviate. Some of this fear of negative effects on the child is fear of discrimination that an illegitimate child might face. Like the shame associated with illegitimacy as discussed in Chapter 5, the belief that the child may be discriminated against varied significantly across different age groups in my sample. Older mothers as well as the mothers’ parents seemed to show more concern for the child’s family register and associated discrimination. The father of Rika, a 41-year-old high school graduate, for example, was adamant about not letting his daughter have an illegitimate child and did all he could to convince her not to give birth, saying the child to be born would be pitiful (kawaisō). “He says she is a child with no register (seki no nai ko).” Older unwed mothers in their mid-forties and above also tended to worry much more. Masako, a 45-year-old mother of a 7-year-old daughter, a cute girl who at the time of the interview appeared cheerful and bright, thought about the future in very gloomy terms: “The child is pitiful. She may be told unpleasant things in the future. When I think of what is to come I feel insecure; it’s hard. Whatever happens to me is fine, but was this really good for this child? She is pitiful. It is hard to think the child is having unpleasant thoughts. [She cries.]” Still, today it is rather easy for an unwed mother in most walks of life to pass for a divorcée and in that way also shield her child from being singled out as illegitimate. Many women noted how they and their children benefited from the growth in the numbers of divorcées. Having other children growing up in single-parent families attending day care, for example, prevented their children from feeling special or being discriminated against. Altogether, like other shame-related obstacles, the fear that an illegitimate child may be discriminated against appears to be declining. Japan is not the only place extolling the benefits of parental marriage and two-parent stable families.33 The strength and unconditionality of the belief in the superiority of two-parent families is, however, striking. Women continued to idealize the two-parent family in the face of most convincing negative evidence. In my sample, three women left the fathers of their

   Chapter 6 children because they were abusive, but still believed it would have been better for their children if they had stayed with those men and felt guilty for their “egoistical” failure to tough it out.34 “Abnormal” family arrangements, by contrast, were believed to have disastrous effects on the child. The feared consequences were strikingly similar across my sample: children in “nonstandard” families, my interviewees thought, are bound to suffer, underachieve from early on, and thus see their chances in life crumble before them and even become delinquent.35 The expected effects seemed much more extensive than comparable worries of single-mother households in the West.36 They included psychological damage and were believed to have potential lifelong negative effects on the child’s happiness and achievement irrespective of the amount of care offered by the mother and the level of financial stability of the family.Such expectations made experimenting with alternative family forms a difficult decision. But what exactly was it that children could gain in two-parent families and were believed to be missing in single-mother ones?

What Are the Beliefs That Make the Two-Parent Family Seem So Crucial? The belief in the necessity of a two-parent family for a child is widespread and has changed little over the past decades. In the 2005 World Values Survey, 89 percent of Japanese people agreed with the statement that “a child needs a home with both a father and a mother to grow up happily,” virtually the same proportion as in 1995.37 When unpacked, this belief turned out to be ultimately based on the assumption that male and female roles in the family are extremely different. We all have heard about the models for an ideal man and an ideal woman: a salaryman and a professional housewife. While it is arguable the extent to which real men and women conform to this extreme gender role differentiation,38 the widespread conviction that the difference exists is undeniable. I found this belief in intrinsic differences of male and female family roles to be strong among my interviewees almost irrespective of socioeconomic standing and age. My interviewees associated single-mother families with substandard parenting on the basis of two complementary beliefs about the father’s and mother’s role performance: first, the father’s presence was deemed necessary for a child’s normal development. Second, a woman alone was believed to be unable to realize herself fully as a mother. The arguments below about the perceived detriments of a single-mother family largely apply to both unwed- and divorced-mother families. The question of why these perceived disadvantages have a stronger deterring effect on would-be unwed rather than would-be divorced mothers will be addressed later in the chapter.

The Role of Guilt   

“it is hard without a prope r fathe r” The belief that fathers are necessary and irreplaceable persisted even though most women did not have a good relationship with the child’s father and moreover not many had close relationships with their own fathers. Fathers of the women I interviewed belonged to the generation of so-called corporate warriors who did not get involved much in their children’s upbringing. As Makiko, a 34-year-old high school graduate working as a dispatched worker, put it: The father’s presence? In Japan historically there was no such thing, I think. From the old days people thought that the man brings the earnings and the child is the wife’s responsibility. This way of thinking is strong. People started talking about the father’s presence only recently. Generally, it’s probably useless to ask men of our generation to be fathers. I myself also don’t feel I would like him [the father of her child] to do something father-like. He too doesn’t understand what it is to be a father. He doesn’t understand how to interact with a child. His own father, whom I never met, was always abroad. His mother brought him up. That’s why he has no memories of playing ball with the father or having something done by the father. So even if you tell him to do something father-like, he doesn’t understand.

The common distress over the lack of a father figure also flies in the face of reality in which fathers participate little in everyday family life.39 According to statistics,40 in Japan an average father of a 0- to 6-year-old child and a working wife spends 24 minutes a day on child care (compared to 1.9 hours for the wife) and 24 minutes on housework (compared to 3.8 hours for the wife).41 Iwasawa Miho and Mita Fusami have noted that single mothers do not feel the burden of childrearing more acutely than mothers from twoparent families and hypothesize that this might be a result of the father’s generally low involvement in childrearing.42 The inconsistency between fathers’ actual participation in family life and the perceived need for their presence was very obvious when I was interviewing Hanako, a 39-year-old college graduate employed full time. She first joked that she is becoming like a father: “I hardly get to see my children.” Yet, a few minutes later she asserted that “it is hard without a proper father. When I think about childrearing. . . . ” Having heard similar statements several times I set out to find out what exactly Hanako and other single unwed mothers thought they and their children were missing without a father in the family. Some women I interviewed had viewed the father as the final authority in disciplining children.43 Several interviewees confessed they felt unsure as to how to chasten their offspring properly without a father on whose authority they could rely. Like Hana, a 34-year-old junior high school graduate employed part time, many believed it is important that there be “one parent that scolds and one that indulges.” Some went as far as Aiko, a 35-year-old

   Chapter 6 high school dropout, who argued that it is a problem “for a human if there is no scary figure, no leader. In that sense if there’s no father, it’s a handicap.” One might think, however, that even married women whose husbands work in different cities, not to mention divorcées and widows, must have the same problem. Some insights of how the father can be largely absent and at the same time be held as essential can be gleaned from a study by Masako IshiiKunz.44 She investigated how married Japanese women coped with the fact that their husbands spent little time with their children. Raising their children virtually alone, these women built an image of an ideal father for them, an image they then continuously appealed to. One of Ishii-Kunz’s interviewees explained her efforts as follows: Since my husband is gone most of the time, my son really needs a role model to be a strong and responsible man. That is why I remind him constantly of what a diligent, dedicated, responsible, and great father he has. I also tell my daughter that it is important for her to find a hard-working man like her father who earns a comfortable living for the family.45

Understanding the need for the father as a masculine role model throws light on an important problem divorced and unwed single mothers face compared to women whose husbands just work in a different city.46 The fathers of their children abandoned them, and thus it is impossible to construct them as virtuous if busy and get around the problem of their absence the way married women do. To make matters worse, Japanese children are believed to learn by imitation,47 and this makes the absence of the correct masculine role model a major drawback. Momoe, a 36-year-old high school graduate, read many books on childrearing and, according to her, discussions of families always included “a person fulfilling the female role and a person fulfilling the male role. Seeing that, a child from infancy gets an ordinary family input in her mind, a way of being ordinary when she grows up. This makes me worried about our family.” For unwed mothers with sons, the absence of a father presented an almost insurmountable problem. Nobuko, a 38-year-old college graduate employed full time, felt that “because he is a boy it would be good if he was taught how to live as a man. Obviously because I’m a woman I think there is something lacking.” Worries of Mizuki, a 35-year-old college graduate in a non-fulltime job, were very similar to those of Nobuko. “When my son gets older, since he’s a boy, [growing up in] a single-mother family may have an effect. I mean as there is no father, there is no man, and I worry how will that affect [him]. I just hope [my son] doesn’t become feminine in a weird way.” Unwed mothers with daughters tended to worry less. Even so, quite a few were concerned that their daughters may not be able to cope with men

The Role of Guilt   

if they grew up in an all-female household. Rika, a 41-year-old high school graduate employed full time, felt that “there are differences between men and women and it is better if she [her daughter] knows what men are. So I take her to play with families of friends.” “explaining to the child— that is the most difficult thing” Reflecting the perceived importance of a decent father figure, the problem of telling an illegitimate child about the circumstances of his or her birth loomed large for most unwed mothers. More than half of my interviewees reported this to be a very difficult issue. The best strategy to adopt in telling one’s child the circumstances of his or her birth was among the most popular topics at informal meetings of single-mother support groups. It also came up time and again as an important theme in my interviews. While there were nine women48 who told their children the truth about the circumstances of their birth early on and did not perceive explaining these circumstances as a huge dilemma, the majority agreed with Kaeko, a 36-year-old vocational school graduate, living on welfare at the time of the interview, who is quoted in the heading of this subsection. Many women feared that young, fragile children would not be able to bear the truth about the parents’ relationship and kept putting off the explanation. “When she reaches a certain age” or “I don’t want her to know till she becomes an adult. If she finds out during her adolescent years and suffers psychological damage, that will be so sad” were the commonly mentioned time frames and justifications. It was not uncommon for unwed mothers to think it would be easier to tell their children that they were divorcées or widows rather than to admit they gave birth outside wedlock. Mika, a 41-year-old high school graduate employed part time, mused, “maybe it’s good to say he died?” During my interview with Natsuko, a 43-year-old high school graduate in full-time employment, her 7-year-old son, Takashi, started questioning her about his birth: Takashi: Mom, were you married? Why did you have a child? Why were you married? Natsuko: I was [married]. Takashi: Who to? Natsuko: To someone I liked very much. Takashi: What’s his name? Takuya? Natsuko: Takuya is mother’s older brother. Takashi: Who to? Natsuko: I’ll tell you later. What do you want to know? I’m not married now. ...

   Chapter 6 Takashi: Why do you have a child? Natsuko: Why. . . . Mommy and Takashi were connected. It was your fate to be born to mommy. God decided.

This dialogue shows quite vividly how difficult it is for many women to tell their children that they were born outside marriage. When cornered by her son, Natsuko resorts to lying, claiming there was a marriage in the past. At the same time she has much less difficulty pointing out that she is “not married now,” leaving Takashi to presume that she has had a divorce. Clearly Natsuko feels that knowing that his parents have had a divorce is somehow less damaging for Takashi than her coming out as an unwed mother. Fifty-five percent of the fathers in my sample were already married to someone else at the time of the pregnancy.Twenty-nine percent of all the fathers, including both the married and unmarried ones, abandoned the mothers the moment they heard about the pregnancy, while twenty-five percent chose to spend some time trying to cajole or threaten the women into having an abortion. Thus, the difficulty unwed mothers faced in constructing a positive father image without resorting to lies surpassed that of divorcées, not to speak of widows and “properly” married women. The only positive thing to say about some of the fathers was: “He didn’t demand an abortion. Though he said he will never meet neither me nor the child.” For others, even this was impossible, so the mothers concentrated on avoiding presenting these fathers negatively. Kaeko, a 36-year-old vocational school graduate living on welfare at the time of the interview, was adamant: “I definitely don’t want to talk badly about the father. Of course I don’t want to glorify him either. I just [will say the relationship was] a bit [problematic] in an ordinary way.” In reality this father’s reaction when he found out that Kaeko was going to have his child could hardly be called ordinary. He was so much against the birth of his child that even after the baby was born he continued to terrify Kaeko with vague threats. When she called him from the hospital to tell that their son had been born, he retorted: “Don’t tell your family or work colleagues anything unnecessary about the child. If you do tell [them about me]. . . . You be prepared!” Kaeko got so upset she could not sleep and had to be put on medication. The Japanese family registry puts severe limitations on the creative representation of the father. Although accessing a stranger’s family register has become progressively more difficult over the past decades, the level of detailed information noted in the registry has not changed much. This allows children to find out quite a lot about their parents’ relationship once they are twenty and have the right to access their own register without the guardian’s consent.49 This sword of Damocles contributed to many women’s worries. “Now she doesn’t understand,” said Michiko, a 28-year-old high school graduate

The Role of Guilt   

in full-time employment. “She is still in day care. These days divorce is common; there are many homes where there is only a mother, right? So it’s OK to tell people you have had a divorce. But what shall I tell [my daughter]? She will understand once she sees the family register. If only this will somehow, somehow . . . I [am thinking] already now about what to say.” The women’s desire to present fathers in a positive light sometimes resulted in deliberate efforts to make their relationship look better on the register. At the time of the interview, Kaeko was going through court mediation with the father of her child to get him to acknowledge their son. As the DNA test confirmed his paternity, Kaeko could have got the forced acknowledgment any time she wished. She felt, however, that since it is recorded whether the acknowledgment was forced or not, a forced acknowledgment should be avoided at all costs. Having a forced acknowledgment record would mean that she would not be able to tell her son that the father was happy about him being born, so Kaeko continued negotiating with the man hoping to secure acknowledgment by agreement. For similar reasons several women believed that getting their children acknowledged was their duty. Their inability to secure the father’s acknowledgment suggests complete noncooperation from the father or that the mother does not know who the father is, reflecting badly on both parents and potentially making the child feel rejected. So far I have shown that unwed mothers felt the absence of fathers to a large extent as the lack of a reference point. What about the role of the father as provider, much highlighted in the literature? The following section will argue that this function is indeed seen as very important. Notably, however, the desire for the father-provider was only marginally dependent on the actual material circumstances of a mother. The most common reason given for his importance was a conviction that the presence of a fatherprovider makes it possible to perform one’s role as an ideal mother. “a child obviously would not g row up without a mothe r” Understanding what it means to be a good mother varies from country to country and also within different social groups in the same country. Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas demonstrated this clearly in their work on low­income mothers in the United States: women’s modest understanding of good mothering as keeping children clean, well fed, and standing by their side at all times, empowered them to have children in situations where the majority of middle class women have abortions.50 What does it mean to be a good mother in Japan then? Compared to the father’s role, that of the mother is at the same time less vague and much broader. Mothers are expected to take sole responsibility for virtually all the

   Chapter 6 needs of their children. Consequently, almost as an afterthought, they tend to become the main culprits of virtually any problem their children may be facing.51 The perception of the mother’s importance grew considerably in the postwar years. One of the best indicators of this trend is the fact that in contemporary Japan mothers predominantly gain the custody of their children in case of divorce.52 “The best interests of the child, already invoked in custody disputes in the late nineteenth century, had never before been linked so strongly to belief in the importance of maternal presence for child development [as in recent decades].”53 As we saw above, a father is mainly believed to be needed as a reference point and could perform this role successfully even if absent most of the time. In reality, men tend to be little involved in day-to-day family matters. When pressed to give a concrete explanation and examples of what specifically is the father’s role in the family for the child, the women could not come up with a detailed image of everyday involvement. Rather, as detailed above, fathers were seen as needed to just be there or at most get involved in a child’s life only sporadically, mostly to scold if the child was doing something very wrong. If I continued to press for an explanation of how fathers contributed to family life, I most often got a somewhat feeble reply that fathers should earn money for the family.54 The strong perception that a father is necessary does not appear to be matched by a desire for any particular action on their behalf for the child apart from providing.Things were different when it came to mothers. The growth in the numbers of working mothers and children attending day care has made the imperative for Japanese mothers to dedicate all their time to their children pale if not disappear in recent years. Among my interviewees, few felt guilty for not spending all their time with their children, and three-fourths of my interviewees, including unwed and divorced mothers as well as unmarried childless women, believed that having a working mother has its benefits. There was one important caveat, however. Women did not feel guilty as long as their children were doing well. If the child had any problems, both unwed and divorced mothers found themselves in a terrible conundrum.55 Although they themselves as well as everyone around them felt very strongly that it was their duty to be with the child and continuously support him or her, they could not afford to do this as they were the sole providers of their families. This necessity to work at least partially explains the association in the public eye of single mothers with delinquent children. Mothers are seen as persons who can and should mold their children into better human beings. Women who cannot or choose not to dedicate themselves to full-time mothering whatever the circumstances are seen as an important cause of problematic children. Thus men’s role as providers is seen as a necessary backup for women to be good mothers. A few moth-

The Role of Guilt   

ers in my sample whose children were having problems felt this very keenly. Akiko, a 47-year-old university-educated full-time employed unwed mother whose daughter had problems in school and suffered from school-refusal syndrome for a while, felt this acutely. Akiko explained: “In the homes of friends around, all fathers are working and mothers are housewives. So if there was a father . . . I could stay at home, that would have been ideal . . . for my daughter I think. If there was a father, if there was a person who works, who brings in the money.” Yuko Ogasawara writes at length about the construction of men’s and women’s roles at work. One of her key points is that men’s responsibility in the working place is perceived so broadly that men can be held accountable for the performance of their female subordinates.56 Conversely, I would argue that in the family domain women are seen as responsible for the well-being of the family (excluding purely economic well-being) and are saddled with the responsibility for gaining men’s cooperation. This responsibility can even include ensuring a two-parent family for the children. If forming a two-parent family is impossible, a woman, it is assumed, should choose an abortion. This point is vividly illustrated by the story of Noriko, a 39-year-old unwed mother with a university degree employed full time. She was dating a man for several years, and they were engaged to be married when she discovered that she was pregnant. Feeling very happy, Noriko started preparing to get married. It turned out, however, that her boyfriend was seeing somebody else at the same time, and he could not bring himself to marry Noriko. He told Noriko he wanted to be with the other woman and wished that Noriko have an abortion. After lengthy and painful deliberations, Noriko decided to have the child anyway and raise him without relying on her partner. This decision immediately prompted strong accusations from her ex-fiancé. “He could not accept that his child would be born that way. And in this case naturally he starts blaming the woman. Like ‘it’s your fault.’” If unwed mothers could disregard the opinions of partners who abandoned them, they struggled to find excuses that they felt would justify them before their children. Sakura, a 35-year-old unemployed vocational school graduate, exemplified this dilemma. Like most other women, she had the final say about whether to keep her pregnancy or have an abortion and felt this decision was a heavy responsibility. “I always feel it was my capricious decision; my son did not have any choice,” she confided. The feeling that the mother is responsible for providing a two-parent family environment for her children could sometimes overcome even negative personal experiences, especially when it came to older people. The mother of Yoshie, a 33-year-old unemployed high school graduate, maintained that “a mother has to have a father ready for the child” in spite of

   Chapter 6 suffering years of casual abuse at the hands of her philandering husband and talking about her wish to divorce for as long as Yoshie could remember. My interviewees were very aware of the importance ascribed to a suitable family environment by those around them. When asked whether she ever faced prejudice or discrimination, Mieko, a 40-year-old full-time employed unwed mother with a university education, explained that now that her daughter is developing very well, it is all going fine. However, she added that she realized that if anything went wrong, if her daughter became unruly or slow in kindergarten, her family situation would be seen as the main reason, and she as the mother would be the person to blame. In sum, being a single mother led to role confusion: mothers had to perform fatherly roles, and “a mother cannot understand the father’s role.”57 Spending time and energy on performing the father’s role also prevented women from performing their motherly roles to perfection. Finally, creating a two-parent family for a child was seen as mostly the mother’s responsibility, a responsibility that single mothers clearly failed to perform. The seriousness of such concerns became clear to me when I realized that “normalizing” the children’s environment was one of the top priorities for many unwed mothers.

Attempting to Create a “Normal” Environment for the Child The only way to create a truly “normal” environment for the child was of course to marry the child’s father. That is exactly what many premaritally pregnant women in Japan do.58 More than half of my interviewees strongly desired marriage with the biological fathers of their children, even with the seemingly least attractive ones. The father of Mieko’s child, for example, was severely indebted, sleeping around, and, she suspected, earned money doing something illicit. Mieko, a successful systems engineer with managerial responsibilities, earned 9.3 million yen (about $85,000) a year and did not need financial support from the child’s father.Yet she still said she would have married him if only he could at least clear his debts. She tried living with him, feeling this would be best for their daughter. He, however, got involved in shady business, borrowed money from her and never returned it, and did not help around the house or with childcare either. Eventually Mieko kicked him out. Kaeko’s partner, a long-distance truck driver, tried to threaten her into abortion. As he was almost fifty and had never fully recovered from a minor stroke he suffered a few years before meeting Kaeko, the man was also likely to need serious care soon. Neither his behavior, nor the practical difficulty of caring for an infant and an elderly disabled man prevented Kaeko from maintaining that she would like to get married and live together.

The Role of Guilt   

While the role of shame in discouraging “non-ordinary” family arrangements is declining, women I interviewed were keenly aware of the fact that they are raising their children in an “abnormal” family environment and felt strong guilt about it. Just as Elster predicts, many women worked hard to undo the “wrong” they have done to their children.59 That is how Yumiko, a 46-year-old university graduate, described her dream: I decided to let bygones be bygones and go on living. I wanted to show that a child is not pitiable when there is no father but that even if there is no father a child can grow up well. I want in the end to be told [by the child]: ‘It was good that you gave birth [to me].’ That is why I can be strict and when I indulge my child I indulge all the way. I make our life no different from that of normal people. I thought that I have to do my best in this regard.

Other women went down the route of trying to provide at least a surrogate father. Hanako, a 39-year-old college graduate employed full time, for example, elaborated on this point in great detail: Yes, without a proper father it is probably difficult. I naturally think like that about my children’s upbringing. My older child is a boy. For boys, if they don’t have more contact [with an adult man] they might become strange. I worry about that. That’s why I’m looking for people who will perform the father’s role for my children. My brother does it, grandfather does it, the husband of my younger sister does it, and so on. . . . I would like the children to have a person by their side who’ll be a father for them.

The socialization of women into the two-parent family norm is so successful that when asked hypothetical questions about single motherhood, one of the first thoughts of unmarried childless women was how to substitute the lack of crucial masculine qualities. Mayumi, a 36-year-old university graduate, when asked how she would raise a child if she were an unmarried mother, said possibly she would look for a partner. “Apart from that, well, probably because my parents are healthy . . . they will look after the child. So the grandfather [will play the father’s role]. Also I have a lot of [male] friends, so I think somehow it will be OK.” Given the perceived need for fathers and frequent attempts to find surrogates, it is at first glance puzzling that only about 40 percent of the single unwed mothers in my sample said they would marry someone other than the biological father if they had a chance.60 The rather limited enthusiasm for marriage derives from the perceived difficulties in dealing with reconstituted families and from concerns about their potential harmfulness for a child. While it is highly desirable that a biological father be present in the family, few women considered marriage with other men, and many associated nonbiological fathers with child abuse.61 Even though child abuse was “discovered” in Japan only recently, it has deeply penetrated the public consciousness and firmly established itself in the discourse on family matters.62

   Chapter 6 Mika, a 41-year-old high school graduate, for example, had very firm views on a hypothetical future marriage. If my new partner understood my situation—that I have a child—then it would be fine. But now is the time when people kill. I have a child already, so I don’t want to get married. There are killings these days. It is [better] with only two of us, me and my daughter. Though it’s really tough, I’ll probably never get married.

Most women felt that once they had a child that was where their primary allegiance belonged. Naomi, a 45-year-old high school–educated dispatched worker, stated flatly, “I don’t have any interest in marriage. . . . Now all I’m interested in is my child. Only in ten years or so, for the first time I’ll be able to think of my own life again.” Marrying anyone apart from the child’s biological father was often perceived as putting one’s own happiness ahead of that of the child. This was very clear in the response of Michiko, a 28-year-old high school graduate employed full time, to a question about the possibility of a future marriage. Do I want to? If I met a man whom I would like that much I think I’d want to get married. That much. If there was a man I liked more than my child. If the man likes children, I think I would want to. But I’m not in a hurry. These days there is a lot of child abuse, isn’t there? Toward others’ children. Because this happens often, I’m afraid.

Of course, not all women were so strongly opposed to marriage with men other than their children’s fathers. As I pointed out above, 40 percent of the single unwed mothers in my sample and 28 percent in the JIL sample say they will or probably will marry if they have a chance. For those of my interviewees who wished to marry, looking for a surrogate father was an important reason. Haruko, a 39-year-old contract employee with a university degree, really wanted to marry. Or, as she explained, “I want not only a partner for myself but the closest man for Satoshi. If possible I want a man who’ll act as Satoshi’s father and will also be my partner. That is ideal. Because he [Satoshi] is a boy, it is obviously difficult [for a woman to raise him alone].” For some women, having a child changed their whole outlook on marriage. Emiko, a 34-year-old self-employed university graduate, confessed “I was never in awe of marriage as such. For a child, however, I think it’s better if there is a father and a mother and they are married. I thought a lot about marriage. I think it’ll be better if I have a partner.” Given a chance, she planned to marry in the future. Similarly Akiko, a 47-year-old university graduate employed full time, put it this way: Akiko: If I had a chance [I would have gotten married]. . . . Because I gave birth to a child like that, I started desiring marriage. When I was young I didn’t want it at all. E. H.: Why [did you change your mind]?

The Role of Guilt    Akiko: Apparently, as my daughter says, I wanted to try staying home and being a housewife.

In sum, having a child made most women sensitive to the need of proper parental role performance. The majority of women were adamant that the father’s role must be played by the biological father, not just any father. A substantial minority saw a stepfather as a possible proxy and were prepared to marry a man that would make a good father for their child. Only very few women thought children can do as well without a father.

The Unconventional Minority Women in this group varied considerably by age, education, income, and so on. The one thing they all had in common was a conviction that growing up in a single-parent family does not affect children in a particularly adverse way. This conviction turned out to make the choice to have an illegitimate child much easier. Five of these women were feminists who had extensive networks of likeminded mothers, many of whom also formed alternative families. These contacts affected my interviewees in two ways. First, they knew singlemother families where illegitimate children grew up happy and successful. Second, they had extensive information and support networks. Thus, as Mariko put it, “there were so many [women in the same circumstances] around me. From the very beginning I really didn’t have any feeling that I was doing something hard.” For the remaining ten women from this unconventional, laid-back minority, it was their personal history rather than their ideological convictions that played the crucial role in determining their attitude toward illegitimacy. A significant number of these women grew up in single-parent families themselves.63 Remembering their own childhood experiences, these women remained unconvinced that a father’s presence is absolutely necessary for a child’s well-being. Makiko, a high school graduate working as a dispatched worker, explained: “I didn’t have a bad perception [of single-mother families]. I myself grew up in such a family, and though our mother was neglectful in some ways, she worked properly and the children grew up properly. If my mother could do that I thought I should be able to do that too, so I didn’t have a bad image.” Kazuko, a 35-year-old self-employed high school dropout raised by her maternal grandmother, said, “I grew up in an environment with no parents. Even if I had had one parent, it would have been great. Even with one parent a child will grow up [fine]. . . .The environment I grew up in made me think that way.” Apart from having positive experiences with non-two-parent families, women who were confident in their decision to have a child outside wedlock

   Chapter 6 were sometimes influenced by negative experiences with two-parent families. Women who grew up in very poor communities with high rates of divorce saw many unhappy marriages of friends, relatives, and acquaintances. These women became reflective about the value of marriage and sensitized to its possible drawbacks. Kaori, a 31-year-old mother with a high school education and a part-time job, remembered how she was in awe of marriage in her teens. But already “in my twenties I thought marriage really limits you and it didn’t have any particular appeal. . . . When I looked around there was hardly anyone who had a really happy marriage and was enjoying it; there is always some kind of trouble. If it’s like that, one is happier alone or together with one’s child. I don’t have a desire [for marriage].” Holding unconventional views may also have been easier for women from poor communities: due to the high proportion of single-mother families in these communities, there was little if any stigma attached to single motherhood. Moreover, like feminists, women from poor communities were likely to have extensive information and support networks. Finally, having been abused in their natal families, two women lost any particular regard for two-parent families and were confident a single-parent family could not be worse. The experiences of the unconventional minority corroborate the argument above that highlighted the strength of the perceived importance of the two-parent family. Few women became unconventional because of their ideological convictions; the majority did not idealize two-parent families because of personal experiences. This suggests that the belief that a oneparent family is a substandard environment for a child to grow up in was so powerful that almost nothing but personal experience to the contrary could overcome it.64 As these women were not ideologically committed to alternative family forms, they are also unlikely to be prime movers in a broad process of social change. Several of my unconventional interviewees explained that having a child alerted them to the positive side of marriage, and some even admitted feeling that they would like to get married. The finding that daughters from single-mother families tend to be less convinced about the superiority of a two-parent-family norm, however, indicates that the increase in the number of children who grow up in households headed by (mostly divorced) single mothers might slowly be eroding the childbearing-within-marriage norm. Throughout this chapter I have argued that it was perceptions of what an ideal family should be that made the choice to have a child outside wedlock such a painful one. In order to make this argument convincing, however, it is necessary to explain why unwed mothers would feel more guilt before their children and be more susceptible to fear of the consequences than divorcées. Without such an explanation it is impossible to account

The Role of Guilt   

for the huge disparity in the numbers of unwed mothers and divorcées in contemporary Japan.

Why Are Unwed Mothers Particularly Susceptible to Guilt? Just like unwed mothers, divorcées bear at least some responsibility for their children’s growing up in a single-parent family.65 Ambiguity about their choice of single motherhood was not unknown to divorcées. Having divorced her thieving husband,Yukie, a 43-year-old university-educated mother, worked full-time for many years with a comfortable income. Her daughter grew up looked after by caring and adoring grandparents. At the time of the interview, Yukie was starting her own company. Nevertheless, when a friend contemplating a divorce approached her seeking advice,Yukie counseled her against it because “there is a father’s role and a mother’s role. One can’t do it alone.” The preceding chapter showed that their perceived responsibility for the situation that is presumed harmful for their children is the key reason why even educated, self-reliant unwed mothers end up at the bottom of the hierarchy of single mothers.66 This perception of active agency has much to do with the easy availability of abortion. Sharing the views of the general public, many unwed mothers were left with a sense of unease for passing up the ethically less controversial option of abortion. This unease was keenly manifested in the way unwed mothers seemed to appeal to some power beyond their control to justify their not having an abortion. Only two women out of the sixty-eight I interviewed told me they were religious,67 yet seventeen women explained the child was given to them by God or by fate and so they could not have an abortion. Already in 1993 Sumiko Iwao mentioned that the expression most of these women used (kodomo wo sazukaru) was outdated. Women of the prewar generation regarded conception as a gift from the gods (the verb often used for “conceive” was sazukaru, which is used for things received from the realm of the divine), and the first postwar generation regarded childbirth as a matter of course. More recently however, contraceptives have given women greater control over their biological destiny and their role has become far more active in planning their family. Today the role of the divine has been shunted into [the] background (some couples have been known to plan their children’s birthdays). Today’s young women would never use the expression “kodomo wo sazukaru (a child bestowed upon us)”; instead, they say “kodomo wo tsukuru (make a child).”68

The old-fashioned phrasing is indicative of the difficulty unwed mothers faced in explaining their choice without admitting that their children were unwanted or that they actively chose single unwed motherhood, a choice that is believed to have severe repercussions for their children. Appealing

   Chapter 6 to a greater power outside one’s control was the only way to solve this contradiction. Divorcées did not face a similar conundrum because they did not have an option of “undoing” their children, comparable to abortion. Their closest option conforming to the accepted two-parent family ideal is to stay in a failing marriage. The much more straightforward nature of the “best possible” solution available to unwed mothers69 seems to be at the core of the difference in susceptibility to guilt between unwed and divorced mothers. Unmarried women also tended to idealize marriage much more than women who had had a failed marriage. Thus unwed mothers were much more concerned about complementary parental roles and an ideal family environment. Thinking about the father their children did not have, they imagined the kind of father appearing in magazines for expectant mothers and hospital brochures. He was nice and caring, spent time with the child, and earned enough to allow the woman a choice whether to work or not: the best father one can imagine. Even having had a very negative experience with the biological father of their children was often insufficient to prevent unwed mothers from entertaining these idealizations. Although more than half of the unwed mothers in my sample had children by married men, which should have given them a more cynical view of the institution, for many this was not the case. Having never been married themselves, they seemed to see their unmarried status as the main cause of all their problems and marriage as the happiest solution to a pregnancy.70 On the other hand, divorcées had succeeded in forming a “normal” twoparent family for their children, and this family then became their reference point. In real families things do not go as smoothly as in magazines and brochures; a real man can never be as good as an ideal one. Rika, who had her older child within a marriage that failed and her second child outside wedlock by a different man, quite poignantly described this change of perception from an ideal to a real marriage. I retired when I got married. Back then, twenty years ago, in Japan everyone did this. At the company the atmosphere was that one has to quit with marriage. Also, I myself was dreaming that when one is married one does not have to work anymore. So I quit. But about six months after the birth of the child my husband started gambling. So I had to start working and my older daughter grew up in day care. Since then [I began to think] one could not rely on a man; they come up with weird things.

In sum, divorcées could think about their marriage and parental roles more realistically having had the experience of marriage, whereas women who were never married based their perceptions on ideal role fulfillment. This led to a much greater sense of guilt toward the child for depriving him

The Role of Guilt   

or her of an ideal environment—something that any mother is supposed to strive to provide. As shown in Chapter 5, the reactions of people around them tended to reinforce this difference in perceptions. Divorcées were seen as someone who tried to form a “normal” family, and their failure to do so was perceived as not exclusively their fault. Unwed mothers, on the other hand, were seen to be solely responsible for their predicament and treated accordingly.

Concluding Remarks This book has analyzed whether the theories used to explain the rise of the numbers of illegitimate children in the West are applicable to the experiences of Japanese single unwed mothers. I found all of the existing approaches wanting. Ideational changes that presume growing individualization of people’s views and choices in postmodern societies cannot account for Japanese women’s persistent and virtually uniform avoidance of bearing children outside wedlock. Economic and legal disadvantages as well as stigmatization (as the opposite of social contagion) suggested potential partial explanations. None alone, however, can account for the continuously low illegitimacy rate in Japan, since stigmatization and the economic and legal disadvantages of unwed mothers have been reduced substantially over the same time. As a result, in all these areas the difference between unwed and divorced mothers today is very limited. In Chapter 2 we saw that abortions are considered both morally neutral and physically nonhazardous. Abortion hence presents itself as the superior solution to most premaritally pregnant women. While we saw what made abortion superior, it still remained unexplained what specifically made bearing an illegitimate child so inferior. Looking at the beliefs about child­ rearing and their effect on the actions of mothers-to-be, the present chapter has provided a solution for this lacking piece of the puzzle. In my interviews, the belief in the importance of a two-parent family for children was brought to my attention time and again by women who actually failed to form such families. A deeper analysis of women’s underlying ideas showed that this compulsion to form a two-parent family was based on women’s belief in the difference and complementarity of parental roles. This compulsion was strengthened by a belief in children’s malleability, which has ascended to prominence in Japan with the rise of the new middle class. The importance and strength of these perceptions has led me to suggest that in explaining the persistence of childbearing within marriage in Japan, it may be most useful to rely on the conceptual framework of Jon Elster about the way social norms are sustained through sociopsychological mechanisms— with one critical exception. Elster contrasts shame with guilt, arguing that it

   Chapter 6 is much easier to avoid guilt than shame, and that guilt does not quite have the power of shame. The reason he gives is that guilt is only attributed to a specific action, rather than one’s character as a whole, which allows one to reduce one’s guilty feeling by making amends. Shame on the other hand is “categorical” or “global”; “in shame one thinks of oneself as a bad person, not simply someone who did a bad thing.”71 However, in this chapter I have shown that if an action has sufficiently enduring consequences and is close to impossible to make amends for, a guilty fear of the consequences can be a very potent conveyor of social norms. Premaritally pregnant women who veer toward abortion because they think that bearing the child they want is egoistic are a perfect example of this mechanism at work. The expectation of guilt was echoed by women who have not yet had children. The majority of the unmarried women with no children were willing to hold out until marriage even at the risk of becoming infertile. This shows that the fear of the consequences is not confined only to the small minority of single unwed mothers.There are also no signs of a generational change in the beliefs about the importance of a suitable environment for a child to grow up in—or in the definition of what exactly this suitable environment is. This allows us to hypothesize that it is the lack of change in these perceptions that continues to make it so difficult for premaritally pregnant women to opt to have a child outside wedlock.

Conclusion

this book has tried to explain why it is so hard for Japanese women, as opposed to their Western counterparts, to choose to become unwed mothers. As I showed in the Introduction, the proportion of children born outside wedlock in Japan compared to all children born has changed little since the 1950s, even as it grew strongly in Western industrialized countries, including the most conservative ones. This puzzle of the persisting association between marriage and childbearing in Japan is compounded by the fact that the association of marriage and childrearing has weakened considerably as the numbers of children affected by divorce in Japan have soared. This is the first study to offer a detailed analysis of the forces that shape Japanese women’s decisions whether to have a child outside marriage or not. Studies on Western cases, however, abound. The rise of the numbers of unwed mothers in Western countries is most commonly explained using economic and ideational theories or social contagion theory. In addition, some studies of the Japanese family have suggested that legal discrimination against unwed mothers and their children prevalent in Japan may be an important obstacle to out-of-wedlock childbearing. This book investigates the reach of these theories. As Chapters 2 through 5 detail, while some of these theories—largely developed from Western data—provide useful insights, they do not offer a comprehensive explanation for the very low illegitimacy rate in contemporary Japan. In Western countries industrialization and modernization are firmly associated with diversification of family forms. This inspired the ideational theory of fertility, which argues that industrialization and modernization lead to individualization of choices and lifestyles. Contrary to the predictions of the ideational theory, there are few signs of such individualization in Japan when it comes to childbearing decisions. The majority of my interviewees, who had children outside wedlock and who thus arguably formed the least conventional families in Japan, praised marriage. With the exception of a

   Conclusion few feminists, most women from the unconventional minority found it possible to doubt the importance of the two-parent family as a result of their personal life histories rather than because of the need to challenge the status quo and to assert their individuality. Unmarried women with no children also almost uniformly endorsed marriage as the only suitable environment for children to be born into. This suggests that the norm of childbearing within marriage is held in high regard throughout Japanese society and not only by the small minority of women who failed to follow its prescription. This notable divergence in family formation trends from Western countries begs the question of why Japanese childbearing norms are so resistant to change even as many other family norms seem to be converging with those of other industrialized countries. I started by evaluating the explanatory power of two frequently cited reasons: economic and legal disadvantages. A detailed scrutiny of the Japanese labor market, welfare changes, and related perceptions allowed me to demonstrate that fear of economic disadvantage cannot be the only force keeping the illegitimacy rate in check in Japan: as we saw, the economic environment of unwed mothers has improved since the 1950s. Today there is little difference in the way unwed and divorced women are treated, at least from an economic point of view. Yet the difference in the number of households headed by divorced and unwed mothers exceeds an order of magnitude. The recent significant positive changes in the legal environment of unwed mothers imply that legal discrimination also cannot sufficiently explain the continuing adherence to the childbearing-within-marriage norm. According to John Ermisch, the numbers of European women opting out of marriage increased dramatically since the 1970s through social contagion. In particular, the more people found cohabitation rather than marriage to be a suitable response to premarital pregnancies the less daunting the prospect of out-of-wedlock childbearing became.1 In Japan, however, cohabitation so far has not had such an effect. Rather than becoming an alternative to marriage, it is a relatively short transitional stage preceding marriage or separation, and rather than promoting premarital childbearing, it has been shown to lead to earlier marriage.2 A perceived difference between divorced and unmarried mothers ensures that growing divorce rates so far have had little effect on women considering how to resolve their premarital pregnancies. Thus until now social contagion has not played a role in Japan in pushing up the incidence of childbearing outside wedlock. Whereas social contagion facilitates social change, stigmatization tends to fulfill the opposite function, maintaining the status quo. My analysis has shown that being an unwed mother is both stigmatizing and shameful. At the same time, the proliferation of divorce in the past decades has under-

Conclusion   

mined the stigma associated with single motherhood. This, as well as the reduction in legal discrimination against unwed mothers, makes it easy for them to hide their status if they wish to do so. The effectiveness of shaming as a deterrence mechanism has been compromised by this newly acquired choice of anonymity. Few unwed mothers in my sample had an experience of face-to-face discrimination, and their lives were in effect little different from those of divorced mothers.The reduction in the potency of stigma and shame, however, has not brought about a radical increase in the numbers of illegitimate children. In sum, the main theories used to explain the rise of illegitimacy in the West together with the possible effects of legal discrimination against unwed mothers and their children do not seem to cover all the factors that affect the reproductive choices of premaritally pregnant women in Japan. My findings fill the gap in existing explanations by drawing attention to the crucial role of norms and beliefs associated with childrearing. Their role has usually been neglected or underestimated in the literature on Japan and in studies of reproduction in general. None of the studies mentioning the very low illegitimacy rate in contemporary Japan explicitly discussed the potential role of childrearing norms. This book addresses this omission. A brief comparison of my findings with those from a study done by Edin and Kefalas on low-income U.S. unwed mothers demonstrates that expectations of material penalties following childbearing outside marriage are broadly similar in Japan and United States.3 Most women expect to experience economic hardship and when possible rely on extended families for support. Both studies suggest that when premaritally pregnant women consider their options, their understanding of motherhood and beliefs about the potential effects of illegitimacy and its alternatives—marriage and abortion—on the unborn child, play a crucial role in the decision making. In Japan, as discussed in Chapter 6, virtually all women believe it is essential for the normal development of any child that the parents be married. In the United States, on the other hand, lower-class women see marriage as a luxury. Failure to secure this luxury in their view does not have a dramatic negative effect on their ability to raise children properly. Similarly, a large difference in perceptions is obvious when it comes to abortion, a popular alternative to premarital childbearing in Japan. In Japan, as we saw in Chapter 2, abortion does not have the negative moral and religious associations it has in the West. At the same time, everyone, including unwed mothers themselves, sees the choice of bearing an illegitimate child to be egoistic and potentially harmful for the child. As a result, the choice of abortion presents itself as a clearly optimal, guilt-free, and easy solution not only for the mother but also for the prospective child. The perceptions are reversed in the United States, with abortion being the

   Conclusion morally more dubious of the two. Childbearing, even if outside marriage, gives some moral high ground to American women who opt for it as a difficult but more responsible decision. These differences in the subjective attractiveness of out-of-wedlock childbearing and its alternatives stem to a large extent from women’s perceptions of motherhood. Edin and Kefalas have shown that the common and seemingly self­defeating decisions by poor American women to bear and rear their children early and alone have a lot to do with these women’s understanding of what it is to be a good mother and their assessment of whether they can become one.4 In the view of low-income American women, a good mother stands by her children come what may and does her best to provide for them. These rather limited expectations stand in stark contrast to the expectations associated with motherhood in Japan. While American low-income mothers are expected to support their children in crises, Japanese mothers are encouraged to mold their children and the children’s environment in a way that will preclude crises from arising altogether.They are to provide the best possible environment for the child from the moment they find themselves pregnant and decide to keep the baby. Failure to do so is believed to undermine the child’s future chances in life, potentially ruining his or her ability to secure middle class status. When they discovered their pregnancies, most women Edin and Kefalas interviewed were confident of their ability to become good mothers, as they understood the concept. This confidence was matched in Japan by women’s constant fear that the consequences of their “egoistic” decision to give birth in suboptimal circumstances will sooner or later catch up with their children. Moreover, American unwed mothers were shown to see marriage as a luxury beyond the reach of many. This pessimistic view of marriage was supported by the rarity and fragility of marriages in poor American communities. In Japan, far from being viewed as a luxury for the lucky ones, marriage was seen as a necessary condition to ensure a suitable environment for children. Indeed, a good Japanese mother is expected to secure a twoparent family for her offspring. Most of the single unwed mothers in my study had to struggle with the guilty fear that by having children outside a “normal” family, they have jeopardized the children’s chances in life. Edin and Kefalas argue that the huge class differences in illegitimacy rates in the United States may largely be due to differences in childbearing­related norms and beliefs. A comparison of their findings with mine allows us to take this conclusion a step further. It suggests that childrearing norms may account for much of the variability in the outcomes of premarital pregnancies not only within one country, but also cross-nationally. A comparison of Edin and Kefalas’s findings with the analysis in Chapters 5 and 6 suggests two important conclusions. First, general considerations premaritally preg-

Conclusion   

nant women go through and the normative pressures they are most sensitive to can be very similar in different societies. Second, this similarity of underlying mechanisms does not preclude very different outcomes. The concept of “good motherhood” affects the reproductive decisions of both American and Japanese unwed mothers. It is the different meanings imbued in this concept that exert downward pressure on illegitimacy rates in Japan and encourage high rates of out-of-wedlock childbearing among low-income American women. On a more theoretical level, this research contributes to the investigation of mechanisms behind the resilience of social norms. It builds on the theoretical studies of shame by Elster and stigma by Goffman, fleshing out their arguments with micro-level data. My findings suggest an important extension to Elster’s and Goffman’s mechanisms that essentially rely on outside pressure for norm maintenance. Adherence to the childbearing-within-marriage norm has persisted even as outside pressure has decreased. This finding drew my attention to the role that guilt plays in maintaining social norms. Previous research discounted guilt because it was argued to be easy to alleviate through rationalizing and self-deception. In contrast with these arguments, I have shown that when guilt is future-oriented and related to such major decisions as childbearing, it can be a powerful agent promoting the status quo. A belief that giving birth to a child outside wedlock may have devastating effects on the child’s future puts a huge moral cost on this choice and makes the norm of childbearing within marriage extremely hard to break. What are the implications of this book’s findings for contemporary Japanese society? An aspiration to middle class status for one’s children, strengthened by a belief that it can only be achieved through the child’s efforts maximized by the support of the parents, especially the mother, has been pervasive in postwar Japan. This book has suggested that this aspiration has been a key factor in upholding the connection between marriage and childbearing in contemporary Japan. Growing awareness of social inequality in recent years is bound to take its toll on people’s belief in the essential meritocracy of Japanese society.5 Coincidentally, just as this belief in meritocracy is eroding, the number of children who have experienced parental divorce and who, as this study has shown, tend to be less committed to a two-parent family form, is growing. This may create fertile ground for a quicker growth in the number of women who do not consider a two-parent family a necessity for childbearing. If they get pregnant before marriage, these women may negotiate the alternatives open to them differently from the majority of my interviewees. My findings also have a broader significance. Japan offers a useful case study of potential methods and costs of achieving a low illegitimacy rate in a modern industrialized society. On the one hand, my findings suggest that

   Conclusion illegitimate births can probably be successfully curtailed through modifying people’s beliefs about the effects different family forms have on children. At the same time, the book has identified some of the costs of achieving a low illegitimacy rate in a modern society. These include high abortion rates and women’s willingness to marry undesirable partners in order to legitimize their children.6 Given the emerging positive correlation between nonmarital and overall fertility rates across industrialized countries, they may also include lower overall fertility. A state aiming at achieving low illegitimacy rates might find it useful to evaluate this goal against its potential costs.

Reference Matter

Appendix

Key: B = boy, G = girl JH school = junior high school H school = high school LP = on Livelihood Protection Scheme FT = denotes here permanently employed women. Does not include contract or dispatched workers. Note: In a few cases where the income data are missing, the interviewees declined to disclose this information.

36

24 36 44

56 29 34 46 37 34 39

39 41

Akemi

Asami Asuka Ayumi

Chieko Chihiro Emiko Eri Etsuko Hana Hanako

Haruko Hiroko

32 34

44 25 31 30 30 30 33

24 35 35

27

University University

Univ dropout University University (grad. school) University University University University University JH school College

H school dropout H school

35

Aiko

30

Age at birth of Age the first child Education

Case

Non-FT Attending grad school

Non-FT Non-FT Self-empl FT Unempl Non-FT FT

Non-FT Unempl Non-FT

FT

Unempl

Employment

5.3 0

1.76 1.2 3 2.5 0 1 3

1.02 0 3

Just started

LP

B–11 G–4 B–2 B–16 B–7 G–4 B–6 G–4 B–6 G–7

G–5 B–2 G–9 B–8 months G–0 G–5 months B–9

Yes

Yes

Yes

Self-employed Civil servant Bank employee Car mechanic Unemployed Company employee Japan Railway employee Primary school teacher Civil servant

Factory worker Company employee Self-employed

Company employee (electric power firm) Company employee

Yearly earnings In a welfare Unwed mother’s own (mill. yen) Child (sex, age) inst? father’s occupation

Interviewees’ Characteristics at the Time of Fieldwork, 2004–2005 unwed mothe rs

   Appendix

37 42 36

31 35

36 31

50

42 36

27

34

52 45

30

Hitomi Junko Kaeko

Kaori Kazuko

Keiko Kimiko

Kumiko

Kyoko Sayuri

Madoka

Makiko

Mariko Masako

Mayu

29

30 38

26

27

38 23

36

29 30

31 27

35 34 35

H school dropout

University H school

H school

H school

College H school

University

College College Vocational school H school H school dropout University University

Non-FT

FT FT

Non-FT

Non-FT

FT Non-FT

FT FT (on maternity leave) Self-empl

Non-FT Self-empl

FT FT Unempl

1.2

7 2

1.5

3.2

5 1.5

2.8

3.6 4.5

irregular 8

4 2.8 LP

G–1

G–22 G–7

8 months pregn B–8

G–4 B–12

G–13

G–7 B–0

B–0 B–7

G–1 G–7 B–0

Yes

Yes

Yes

Electronic company employee Self-employed Self-employed (small business) Parents divorced; no contact with the father. Mother is a nurse

Self-employed (small business owner) Self-employed Pachinko parlor manager Self-employed

Lawyer Company employee

Medical doctor Bank employee Self-employed (unstable) Civil servant Father unknown

Appendix   

28 40 29

41 56

56

40 35

36 35

36

45 43

Michiko Mieko Miho

Mika Miki

Miwa

Mizue Mizuki

Momoe Momoko

Naoko

Naomi Natsuko

33 36

27

33 35

35 33

39

38 19

24 36 24

H school H school

H school Vocational school H school

H school College

H school

H school H school

H school University University

Vocational school

73

Megumi

27

Age at birth of Age the first child Education

Case

unwed mothe rs (Continued )

Non- FT FT

Unempl

Non-FT Unempl

Unempl Non-FT

FT

Non-FT Unempl

4.5 4

LP

2 0

LP 2.1

1 Disabled welfare support 1.6

G- 12 B–7

G–8

B–3 G–0

B–4 B–2

G–3 G–37 B–36 B–23 G–17

G–3 G–3 B–5

G–45

Yes

Yes

Yes

Self-employed (liquor store) Self-employed Self employed (small business) Engineer Small business owner, farmer Self-employed (small business) Tile setter Civil servant

Car mechanic Company employee Self-employed (small business owner) Delivery man Land owner

Male nurse (?)

Yearly earnings In a welfare Unwed mother’s own (mill. yen) Child (sex, age) inst? father’s occupation

Now pension (before civil servant) FT 1.5 FT 9.3 Non-FT 1

Employment

   Appendix

46

38 39 19

41

32

35

35

34

38 53 34

48 47 39

26 27

Natsumi

Nobuko Noriko Reiko

Rika

Sachiko

Sakura

Setsuko

Shiori

Shizuko Sumiko Takako

Teruko Tomiko Tomoko

Toshiko Umeko

19

44 28 39

36 26 33

34

24

29

19

20

35 36 16

29

H school University University (grad school) H school Vocational school

H school H school University

JH school

Vocational school College

College

H school

H school dropout College University JH school

Non-FT FT

FT Non-FT Self-empl

FT FT FT

FT

FT

Unempl

FT

FT

FT FT Unempl

Non- FT

3 to 4 2.5

8.5 1.2 3.5

3 1.5 6

2.8

5

LP

1.8

4.5

12 3.5 0

1.2

G–7 7 months pregnant

G–3 G–20 G–0

G–2 G–27 B–1

G–10 months

B–11

B–3 B–4 B–3 B–1 G–20 G–3 G–13 B–9 B–6

B–10; B–17

Yes

Yes

Company employee Civil servant

Company employee Company employee Civil servant

Japan Railway employee Self-employed (small business) Company employee Teacher Company employee

Driver

Self-employed

Bank employee Self-employed Construction worker

Company employee

Appendix   

30 42 35

46

38

Yoshiko Yuki Yukiko

Yumiko

Yuri

33

41

29 33 24

University

University

College University H school

JH school H school

36 33

Yasuko Yoshie

34 32

Age at birth of Age the first child Education

Case

unwed mothe rs (Continued )

FT (civil servant) FT

FT Non-FT Non-FT

Non-FT Unempl

Employment

3

7

4 1 1.2

1.1 0

G–5

G–1 B–8 B–11 B–1 G–4

G–2 G–0

Yes

Yes

Newspaper company employee

Company employee

Plumber Manager of a real estate agency Carpenter Company employee Bus driver

Yearly earnings In a welfare Unwed mother’s own (mill. yen) Child (sex, age) inst? father’s occupation

   Appendix

32 52

36 33 21 23

33 32 26 43

Masami Miho

Rie Satoko Satomi Shizuka

Tomomi Yoko Yuka Yukie

27 32 22 26

33 29 16 19

27 26

College University H school University

University University JH school JH school

University H school dropout H school University

39 26

Ai Maiko

27 20

Age at birth of Age the first child Education

Case

divorced mothe rs

FT FT Non-FT Self-empl

FT Non-FT Non-FT Non-FT

FT FT

Non-FT Unempl

Emplment

3 3.12 7

3.4 1.7 1.5 1.2

3 8

2.2 welfare

Yearly Income (mill. yen)

G-3 G–4 B–5 G–3 G–2 G–0 B–6 B–0 B–3 G–17

G–11 B–5 B–2 B–5 G–26

Yes

Yes Yes

Yes

Company employee Civil servant Civil servant Company employee

Cameraman Parents never married. Mother = dressmaker Self-employed Accountant Plumber Own parents divorced; Mother = matt maker

TV company employee Blue-collar worker

In a welfare Divorced mother’s father’s Child (age, sex) inst? occupation

Appendix   

35 34 39 42 34 34 41 54 36 34 35 44 39 39 36

Aiko Aya Chikako Chisa Chizuko Fumiko Hisae Jun Mayumi Mako Midori Orie Sawako Utako Yasue

University University (grad school) University University University University (grad school) College University (grad school) University (grad school) University College College University College College

Age Education

Name FT FT FT FT FT FT Non-FT FT FT Non-FT FT Non-FT Non-FT Non-FT (studying) FT

Employment

10 4.8 4 3 3 Pocket money 3

7 12 8 6.5 9 14 5.5

Yearly Income (mill. yen)

unmarrie d wome n ove r thirty-four without childre n

Bank employee Company employee Company employee Company manager Architect University professor Company employee Buddhist priest Company employee Architectural planner JR employee Company employee Transportation company employee Company employee Company employee

Father’s occupation

   Appendix

Notes

Chapter 1

1.  Edin & Kefalas, 2005, p. 3. 2. The sixth most popular according to a study by Video Research Ltd., a Japanese company specializing in TV audience ratings research. It was watched by 16.8 percent of Japanese households (www.videor.co.jp/data/ratedata/backnum/2006/ vol43.htm [accessed 10.06.2008]). 3.  Asahi Shinbun, 2007b. 4.  Asahi Shinbun, 2007d. 5.  http://nab.or.jp/ (accessed 10.06.2008) 6.  MHLW, 2005a. In England and Wales, the total population of which is less than half than that of Japan, 209 children were born to mothers below 15 years of age in 2004, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS, 2006a). The U.S. census only collects data on births to women above 15 years of age, so a comparison is impossible. 7.  Ibid.; U.S. Census Bureau, 2004. 8.  See Chapter 5 for a description of several other recent TV dramas about unwed mothers. 9.  McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994; Parke, 2003. 10.  MHLW, 2006a. By contrast, one child in about three (32.8 percent) in the twenty-seven member states of the European Union was born outside marriage in 2005 (Eurostat, 2008). 11.  Jolivet, 1997; Meguro & Nishioka, 2004; Tsuya, Mason, & Bumpass, 2004; Yamada, 1996;Yoshizumi, 2000. 12.  Coleman, 1983; Raymo, Iwasawa, & Bumpass, 2007;Yoshizumi, 1995. 13.  The few exceptions are Hertog, 2008; Iwasawa & Mita, 2008; Wright, 2007. Iwasawa and Mita offer a quantitative description of characteristics of women who end up as unwed mothers in contemporary Japan, Wright investigates the consequences of opting for unwed motherhood, and Hertog looks at the effects of norms associated with childbearing and childrearing on women’s decisions to have a child alone. 14.  Aoki, 2003; Ezawa, 2002; Ezawa & Fujiwara, 2005; Peng, 1997; Shimoebisu, 2008. As noted by Irokawa (quoted in Wright, 2002, p. 12), earlier work by Japanese

   Notes to Pages 2– 7 researchers on single mothers concentrated on widows, welfare policy, and problems faced by children growing up in these “substandard” families. 15.  According to a recent estimate, “the risk of divorce for new marriages in Japan now matches the highest levels in Europe” (Raymo, Iwasawa, & Bumpass, 2004, p. 404). 16.  Recalculated from ONS, 2006b. 17.  Recalculated from U.S. Census Bureau, 2004, p. 53. 18.  (MHLW, 2006e). Three large surveys have been collecting information on single mothers in Japan since the 1970s: Zenkoku Boshi Setai tō Chōsa (National Survey on Lone Mother and Other Households), Kokusei Seikatsu Kisō Chōsa (National Basic Survey of Life)—both of which are carried out by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW)—and Kokusei Chōsa (Census), carried out by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Single mothers are defined differently in these surveys and as a result, they provide very different estimates of their numbers. The differences between the surveys can be summarized as follows: Survey

National Survey on Lone-Mother and Other Households

Single mothers’ age Types of households judged to be singlemother households

Any Not only mother-and-child households

National Basic Survey of Life Census Younger than 65 Only mother-andchild households

Any Only mother-andchild households

Throughout this book, I rely on the Zenkoku Boshi Setai tō Chōsa whenever possible as it is the only survey that includes single-mother households who live with other family members, most often the mother’s parents (for more details, see Shimoebisu, 2008, p. 19). 19.  Rindfuss, Guzzo, & Morgan, 2003. 20.  Becker, 1991. 21.  Murray, 1984. 22.  See, for example, Lesthaeghe, 1995; Lesthaeghe & Meekers, 1986; Preston, 1987. 23.  Lesthaeghe, who has been most active in developing and testing the ideational theory on material from Western industrialized countries, considers this theory as complementary rather than antithetical to the economic hypothesis. 24.  Rosenberger, 1996, p. 30. For similar arguments, see also Ho, 2008, p. 33. 25.  “Social contagion” is sometimes also referred to as tipping. 26.  Ermisch, 2005. 27.  Raymo, Iwasawa, & Bumpass, 2007. 28. The proportion of first births that were conceived before marriage increased from 8 percent to 30 percent between 1975 and 2005 (Raymo & Iwasawa, 2008, p. 849). Abortion rates on the other hand have decreased somewhat. This might indirectly indicate that shotgun marriages are the main solution for premarital pregnancies. 29.  All my single-mother interviewees told me they knew at least one divorced

Notes to Pages 7–12    mother before they became single mothers themselves. All my unmarried-womenwithout-children interviewees also knew at least one divorcée. 30.  One of the outcomes of the strong association between marriage and childbearing is that desires, views, and considerations may be much less explicit for norm-abiding women. Jun, a 54-year-old unmarried woman with no children, for example, maintained she never particularly liked or wanted children and even if she married she would not have actively planned pregnancy, but “naturally” she would have stopped using contraception. Decision making is a much more deliberate process among unwed mothers. 31.  Eichenberger, 2001, p. 37. 32.  Most of my interviewees had only one child, and this child was born outside wedlock. However, there were also two women who had a child in marital union and then a second child outside it. There was also one woman who had her first child outside wedlock and then a second child in marriage with a different man. 33.  All the personal names in the book have been changed to protect the anonymity of my subjects. Unless specified otherwise, the women quoted are unwed mothers. 34.  Lee, 1993. 35.  Comparisons are mainly made with Western countries because contemporary illegitimacy rates are not readily available for industrialized Asian countries. 36.  JIL, 2003, p. 426. See Chapter 3 for a detailed discussion. 37.  For a detailed description and discussion of the survey, see JIL, 2003. 38. The Longitudinal Survey of Children Born in the Twenty-first Century (21 Seki Shusseiji Jūdan Chōsa), which includes 612 families with children born outside marriage in its sample, gives a significantly different description of unwed mother families from that in the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (JIL) survey (Iwasawa & Mita, 2008). This demonstrates that a description of such a stigmatized minority group as unwed mothers in contemporary Japan based on a small sample is unlikely to be generalizable. 39.  www7.big.or.jp/~single-m. 40.  According to the organization, roughly 40 percent of its members are unwed mothers, most others being divorcées (personal communication). 41.  One of the explanations I heard from the group leaders for this low participation of young women was that women in their twenties are much less interested in political activism, and it is hard to get them involved with the group’s goals. Another explanation offered had to do with the spread of the internet. Today single mothers can get the information and psychological support they need online, and young women prefer chat rooms to real meetings. 42.  Since then the Kansai group gained legal independence. 43.  An abbreviation of Kongaishi Sabetsu wo Tatakau Kai (Association Fighting Discrimination against Illegitimate Children). 44.  www.grn.janis.or.jp/~shogokun. 45. Tanaka Sumiko is the only individual whose real name I am providing. She is a champion of anti-discrimination activism, and all the information about her family situation and activities is publicly available. 46.  http://mie-i.jp.

   Notes to Pages 12– 14 47.  MHLW, 2006e; Zenbokyō, 2006. 48.  In total I visited thirteen Mother and Child Living Support Facilities (one in Niigata, two in Tottori, one in Kurayoshi, five in Tokyo, one in Yokohama, two in Kyoto, and one in Osaka). For more information about these facilities, see Matsubara et al., 1999; MHLW, 2006e; Zenbokyō, 2006. 49.  See the Appendix for individual case-by-case characteristics. 50.  All the wage and prices figures discussed in this book are from between 1991 and 2006. The consumer price index varied in these years only slightly (see World Bank Development Indicators), so I decided it is not necessary to use a deflator on them. All the U.S. dollar figures presented are calculated using the average 2005 exchange rate ($1 = 110 yen). 51.  JIL, 2003. These incomes translate into 831,000 yen (about $7,600) a year per household member on average for single mothers compared to 2.033 million yen (about $18,500) a year per household member in an average household and 1.618 million yen (about $14,700) a year per household member in an average household with at least one child (MHLW, 2004f). For my research it would have been most meaningful to compare lifetime incomes. As information on lifetime incomes is unavailable for single unwed mothers, I will use yearly incomes as the best available proxies. 52. These figures can be compared with those of the 2003 survey of single mothers by the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training in which 23.6 percent of single unwed mothers were employed in full-time regular jobs, 44.5 percent worked in non-regular jobs, 10.1 percent were self-employed, and 22.5 percent were unemployed (JIL, 2003, pp. 308, 326).The 19 percent of my sample who were unemployed consisted of thirteen women: seven lived on welfare, one was pensioned, one received disability benefits, and five had no income at all. 53.  Unwed mothers in my sample are better educated than those in the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training sample. My interviewees are closer to the general female population in Japan, although in my sample there are considerably more women who never graduated from high school. In 2005 about 97.9 percent of Japanese women went to high school (compared to 88 percent in my sample), 13 percent to colleges, and 35 percent to universities (Monbukagakushō, 2005). 54.  See the Appendix for details. 55.  Osaka, Hyogo, Kyoto, Nara, Shiga prefectures. 56. Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba prefectures. 57.  According to my recalculations of the statistics from JIL, 2003, p. 299, about 30 percent of all single unwed mothers live in the thirteen biggest cities, 56 percent in towns, and 13 percent in villages. By comparison, in 2005, 13.7 percent of the total population of Japan lived in villages, 22.6 percent in the thirteen biggest cities, and 63.7 percent in towns (Sōmushō Tōkeikyoku, 2005). Thus, unwed mothers were somewhat more likely to live in big cities than the general population. I found it especially difficult to get interviewees from rural areas and only succeeded in interviewing a handful. Apart from the fact that there are generally fewer unwed mothers in rural areas there are two additional possible reasons that could explain this difficulty. First, the stigma of single unwed motherhood may be much stronger in villages, so such mothers might find it unbearable to live there and move to a big city

Notes to Pages 14– 20    as a result of having a child outside wedlock. Second, single unwed mothers who gave birth in small villages may be particularly unwilling to talk about their experiences. Based on interviews with women from rural areas I succeeded in conducting, I believe that both mechanisms are at work. My interviews suggested that the main difference between the urban and rural environments for unwed mothers was the greater density of social networks (especially the extended family and neighborhood networks) in rural areas and their stronger impact on women’s decisions. See Chapter 5. 58.  MHLW, 2004c. 59.  Iwasawa & Mita, 2008, p. 186–273. 60. The average income in this sample was so high because among the fourteen women I interviewed two earned a great deal: 12 and 14 million yen, respectively. 61.  Previous researchers have noted the difficulties of accessing large samples of single mothers without institutional connections (Wright, 2007). 62.  For more information on the software, see http://maxqda.com.

Chapter 2

1. The sum of 3.3 million yen is considerably less than the income of an average Japanese household with at least one child. At the same time, if we recalculate her earnings per family member (presuming her family has two members: herself and her daughter), then her income was actually a bit higher than that of an average household. 2. The period within which abortion is legally possible. 3.  Technological advances today have of course made IVF possible; however, since it is still a minority experience (in 2004, 18,000 children [1.6 percent of the total of 1,110,721 children born]) were born in Japan with the help of this technology (Asahi Shinbun, 2006; Sōmushō Tōkeikyoku, 2005) and none of the unmarried mothers I interviewed used or considered using it, I am going to ignore it here. 4.  Coleman, 1983, p. 198. In most of Japan’s modern history, the Japanese people have separated sex and marriage and put a low premium on female virginity. High rates of illegitimacy, a tradition of testing a spouse before marriage (especially in western Japan and urban areas), and high rates of divorce and remarriage for both men and women (especially in eastern Japan and the countryside) are well documented in Fuess (2004, pp. 59–67). Garon (1997, p. 107) also offers evidence that sexual relationships between young men and women were not uncommon in prewar Japan. In the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries there was a period when the state actively promoted the ideal of female chastity through various means, of which education was probably the most successful (Kushner, 2005, pp. 62–64). The chastity norms did not become widely accepted until the postwar years. See Smith & Wiswell, 1982, for numerous examples of liberal sexual behavior in rural areas in the mid-1930s. 5.  See, for example, Retherford, Ogawa, & Matsukura, 2001, p. 89. The fairly recent and top-down introduction of the norm of female chastity has meant its power was always relatively limited. A 1989 cross-cultural study of mate preferences found only moderate value placed on chastity in Japan. It was valued in Japan more than

   Notes to Pages 20 – 21 in most western European countries, excluding Ireland, but considerably less than in other East Asian countries surveyed (Buss, 1989, p. 11). 6.  MHLW, 1999, p. 90. 7.  The extent to which marriage and sex are dissociated these days is reflected in the fact that even the most conservative interest groups involved in sex education debates do not attempt to lobby for abstinence before marriage. Rather, the favored solution is responsible sex (Yamamoto, 2005, p. 3). 8.  Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2005, p. cxxvii. Compared to 34.9 percent in 1990 (Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2000, p. 235). 9.  Hara & Katase, 2005. By comparison, in 1974 only 5.5 percent of high school girls and 10.2 percent of high school boys reported having had sexual experience. For university students the figures were 11 percent (female) and 23.1 percent (male). If the reported figures reflect the real change in behavior, there should be a corresponding change in the numbers of unplanned pregnancies unless Japanese unmarried people became considerably more skilled in contraception use. This issue will be discussed in the next section. According to the 2005 Durex Global Sex Survey, the average age of first sex in Japan is 17.2 years. This age is comparable to the ages reported for other industrialized countries: France: 17.2, Italy: 18.1, United States: 16.9, UK: 16.6, Germany: 15.9 (www.durex.com [accessed 26.05.2007]). This internet-based survey is less reliable than the other sources cited, but its results are consistent with all other findings reported here. 10. The total number of these hotels is estimated at 37,417 (West, 2005, p. 172). 11.  Ibid., pp. 150–54. It has been suggested that 1,370,000 couples use love hotels daily, which is more than 1 percent of the population (Chaplin, 2007, pp. 149ff.). 12.  MHLW, 2005e;Yamamoto, 2005. 13. The first three surveys rely on self-reports. The study of love hotel clients is not based on a representative sample.The STI prevalence figures in turn rely heavily on the diagnosis rate. Some epidemiologists estimate that there are up to four times as many undiagnosed men and women as there are diagnosed ones. 14.  Callahan, 2004, p. 1. 15.  Norgren, 2001, pp. 90–91. 16.  Decades after it became available in most other industrialized countries. In the United States, for example, oral contraceptives were approved for sale to unmarried persons in 1972; for married people’s use they have been available since 1965 (Goldin & Katz, 2002, p. 733). Similarly, in Britain oral contraceptives became widely available to single women in 1972. In 1975 the National Health Service (NHS) started providing contraception in the UK for free, so from then on access to contraception became independent from one’s ability to pay (Wellings, 2005, p. 16). Norgren points out that the (then) Ministry of Health and Welfare came close to approving the pill three times within the last four decades of the twentieth century, only to back down at the last minute (Norgren, 2001, p. 3). The last time it happened, in 1998, approval of the pill was postponed with the Drug Council ordering that research be conducted on the environmental effects of the pill, as well as the relationship between the pill and uterine cancer (Norgren, 2001, pp. 128–29). 17.  The pill is the only type of hormonal contraceptive available, and by 2007 only six brands (producing either combined pills or phasic pills) were on the market.

Notes to Pages 21–22    This is far fewer than in most other industrialized countries, including Asian countries, like South Korea, for example (International Planned Parenthood Federation, 2008). For additional discussion, see also Sato & Iwasawa, 2006. 18.  Norgren, 2001, p. 130. 19.  Goto et al., 2000, p. 306. The dollar figures here are recalculations in the original. 20.  “Contraceptive methods are rated by the probability of a pregnancy per year according to the average woman (or couple) who uses the method ‘perfectly’ and who uses it ‘typically.’ The oral contraceptive (with estrogen and progestin) has a rating of 0.1% and 3% respectively, the diaphragm, (used with spermicide) has a rating of 6% and 20% and the condom is rated 3% and 12%” (Goldin & Katz, 2002, p. 731). 21.  Castro-Vázquez, 2007, p. 105;Yamamoto, 1999. 22. Yamamoto, 2005, p. 14. 23.  Between twelve and sixteen pages depending on the book.Yamamoto’s analysis is based on books for the academic year 2004–2005 (Yamamoto, 2005, pp. 9–13). 24.  This may be related to the role of the 1990s AIDS scare in promoting sex education. 25. Yamamoto, 2005, pp. 16–17. 26.  A variety of topics related to both psychological and physiological aspects of sex. 27.  In Yamamoto’s survey, 88 percent of schools that responded to the survey said they taught sex education. This figure is likely to be higher than the actual number of schools cooperating with the Ministry of Education guidelines, as the response rate in Yamamoto’s survey was 60 percent and schools that do not have sex education were probably less likely to respond to a survey about it. 28.  A textbook that was aimed at third-year junior high school students and provided general information about teenage bodily and psychological changes including practical information on contraception. 29.  Asahi Shinbun, 2007a. See also Castro-Vázquez, 2007, pp. 40–44. 30.  Shakai Fukushi Hōjin Onshi Zaidan Boshi Aiiku Kai Nihon Kodomo Katei Sōgō Kenkyūsho, 2004, pp. 101–2. 31.  Indeed, in Japan doctors do not have any opportunity to give advice unless a person specifically comes to see him or her. This is because there is no system of general practitioners, like in the UK, where one doctor oversees a patient continuously and thus, some argue, is able to take a more general approach and offer advice. In the UK “the national statistics omnibus survey (2004) reported that 81% of women between 16 and 50 years old had seen their own GP or practice nurse in the last 5 years for contraceptive advice, 32% had been to a community clinic, 3% had seen another GP or nurse, 8% had seen a pharmacist and 1% had used a ‘walk-in’ service” (Mansour, 2005, p. 46). In Japan, according to Yamamoto, health care practitioners, mostly doctors, were involved in sex education teaching in onethird of the schools she surveyed (Yamamoto, 2005, p. 14). She also mentions (p. 17) that 41.8 percent of teachers reported they had invited someone, usually a doctor, to come to school to give a talk. This type of involvement, however, creates little opportunity for the doctor to interact with children on a one-to-one basis.

   Notes to Pages 22–24 32.  Goto et al., 2000, pp. 306–7. Similarly, Coleman (1983, p. 40) has found that “few private practice Ob-Gyns provide contraceptive counseling and methods for their patients.” 33.  In the survey of high school students in Hyogo prefecture, only 0.4 percent of boys and 0.7 percent of girls reported to have gained information about sex from doctors and medical counselors (Shakai Fukushi Hōjin Onshi Zaidan Boshi Aiiku Kai Nihon Kodomo Katei Sōgō Kenkyūsho, 2004, pp. 101–2). 34. Yangu Komikku manga is a quite explicit comic book (manga) series for boys. Castro-Vázquez, 2007, p. 104, reports similar findings in his qualitative study of adolescent boys. 35.  Parents, another potential source of information, rarely educate their children on sex-related matters in Japan. Only 3 percent of boys and 5.7 percent of girls said they learned about sex from their parents (Shakai Fukushi Hōjin Onshi Zaidan Boshi Aiiku Kai Nihon Kodomo Katei Sōgō Kenkyūsho, 2004, pp. 101–2). 36. White, 1993, p. 179. 37.  Ibid., pp. 175–83. 38.  Ibid., p. 183. 39.  Ho, 2008, p. 41. 40. To be fair, because of the age of the women in my sample most of them went to school before sexual education was made compulsory so it is possible that the younger generation is more knowledgeable. 41.  Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2000, p. 239. 42.  Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2005, p. cxxvii. 43.  In the UK in 2003–2004, 75 percent of women 18 to 40 years old used reversible contraception, in France 73 percent (2003), in Spain 53 percent (2003), in Italy 39 percent (2003), in Germany 59 percent (2003), in the United States 72.8 percent (2002). Contraceptive use levels in Japan are also far below other East Asian countries, where 87.6 percent were using contraception and 86.4 percent were relying on modern methods on average (2004). In China in 2004, 90.2 percent of women were using contraception and 90 percent were using modern methods. In South Korea in 1997 these figures were 80.5 percent and 66.9 percent, respectively. The figures for European countries are from Killik, 2005, p. 89; the data for all others are from United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Studies, 2008. The UN survey only gives information about women of reproductive age, in marital or consensual unions. 44.  In the Western industrialized world, the pill is one of the major contraception methods. In the UK in 2003–2004, 51 percent of all women between eighteen and forty who were using reversible contraception relied on it.The figures are 71 percent for France (2003), 34 percent for Spain (2003), 65 percent for Germany (2003), 55 percent for Italy (2003), and 18.3 percent for the United States (2002). Condoms are considerably less popular in the West than they are in Japan. In the UK, 38 percent of all women between 18 and 40 who were using reversible contraception relied on them in 2003–2004.The figures are 5 percent for France (2003), 60 percent for Spain (2003), 13 percent for Germany, 38 percent for Italy, and 12.2 percent for the United States (2002). The figures for European countries are from Killik, 2005, p. 89, and for the United States from the World Contraceptive Use 2007 database www.un.org/

Notes to Pages 24–27    esa/population/publications/contraceptive2007/contraceptive2007.htm (accessed 26.12.2008). The Japanese figures on contraceptive use are from Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2005, p. cxlx. The total contraceptive use in Japan seems to exceed 100 percent because the survey question about contraception allowed two answers. 45. Twenty-seven percent of women, typical users of withdrawal, conceive within one year of starting to rely on it (Mansour, 2005, p. 53). 46.  Coleman, 1983, p. 3. Some of the reasons for this situation are discussed in detail in Norgren, 2001. 47.  Ibid., p. 128. 48.  Guttmacher Institute (AGI), 1999, p. 17. Aya Goto with colleagues estimates that in 1999 46 percent of women who were treated for cervical and breast cancer in Yamagata had experienced unplanned pregnancies, 40 percent of them repeatedly (Goto et al., 2002). Given the substantial variation in cited estimates, and that measuring unintended pregnancies is a developing field, not too much faith should probably be put in the exact numbers. If we can trust the magnitude of figures in the literature, however, Japan seems to have higher numbers than most other developed countries. A 1991 study reports 31 percent of all pregnancies in the UK to be unintended (G. Barrett, 2005, pp. 20–22).The Guttmacher Institute study classifies 30 percent of all births in the United States in 1995 and 19 percent of all births in France in 1994 as unplanned. 49.  In a study of young men’s masculinity, Genaro Castro-Vázquez similarly found that affairs were strongly asociated with risk “while romantic relationships were deemed safe. If a relationship was considered safe contraception could be dispensable” (Castro-Vázquez, 2007, p. 110). 50.  It is probably also typical for the general population. In 2004, 26.7 percent of Japanese first-born legitimate children were conceived before their mothers got married (MHLW, 2005b).These marriages are so ubiquitous that companies organizing marriage celebrations now offer special services, like healthy food, for pregnant brides (Asahi Shinbun, 2007c). Similarly high rates of shotgun marriages were observed in other industrialized countries before the pill and abortion were legalized. For example, 32.9 percent of children were born within six months of marriage in Denmark in 1955 (Christensen, 1966, p. 66), and in the United States the proportion of nonmarital conceptions resulting in shotgun marriages was estimated to be as high as 60 percent in the early 1960s (Raymo & Iwasawa, 2008, p. 847). The pill and abortion allowed for dissociation of sexuality and marriage, and this inadvertently led to a dissociation of marriage and childbearing (Akerlof, Yellen, & Katz, 1996; Goldin & Katz, 2002).The freedom to carry or not to carry one’s pregnancy to term did not lead to the same results in Japan as it did in the West. 51.  In 2002, 88.3 percent of women and 87 percent of men said they hoped to get married eventually (Wright, 2007, p. 107). In 2005, only 5.2 percent of women in the fifty-five to fifty-nine age group were unmarried (Sōmushō Tōkeikyoku, 2005). 52.  See Chapter 6 for a detailed discussion of this ideal. 53. The collapsing Japanese birth rate has been found to be due more to women marrying later and having fewer children rather than women choosing not to have children at all (Ogawa, 2003). According the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (NIPSSR) study, among couples who were married for fifteen to nineteen years, only 5.6 percent had no children in 2005 (NIPSSR, 2005b).

   Notes to Pages 27 –33 54.  Sōmushō Tōkeikyoku, 2005. 55.  Including women from the unconventional minority. 56. The children’s father actually had quite a difficult time explaining his lifestyle at work and was criticized by colleagues who knew he had not married his children’s mother and presumed that it was his decision, not hers. 57.  This is true both for countries where nonmarital childrearing is common and where it is rare (Thomson, 2005, pp. 131–32). See also Ermisch, 2005. Similarly, in the United States a recent study estimates that about half of the couples who have children out of wedlock are cohabiting at the time their children are born (Carlson, McLanahan, & England, 2004, p. 250). 58.  Raymo, Iwasawa, and Bumpass, 2007. 59.  Iwasawa & Mita, 2008, p. 186. 60.  Many of the economic advantages to marriage, such as marriage and family bonuses provided by companies, a provision that allowed married wives not to contribute to pension funds, etc., have not survived the post-1989 economic downturn. 61.  Marriage is the only family form in which parents can share the parental rights. In cohabitation, by contrast, in order to give children their father’s surname, the mother would have to give up her parental rights. Children born to cohabiting couples are registered as illegitimate and thus subject to the legal discrimination discussed in Chapter 4. When they were already raising a child outside wedlock, many women were much more amenable to the idea of cohabitation with a nonbiological father. See Chapter 6 for a discussion of the underlying reason for this difference. 62.  Absence of cohabitation was part of the definition of single unwed mothers in my sample.Thus even the women who lived in cohabitation-like relationships did not coreside with the fathers of their children; they just spent a lot of time together. In some cases the fathers spent half of the week or even more at the women’s place, but still kept their own apartments. 63.  See Flanagan & Richardson, 1992, p. 71; Macintyre, 1977; Phoenix, 1996; Rains, 1971. 64.  Michael Howard’s claim at a lecture at the Conservative Political Centre in Blackpool, quoted in Phoenix, 1996, p. 178. 65.  Rains, 1971, p. 175. One of the reasons why adoptions were especially widespread in the 1960s was of course that legal, safe, and affordable abortion was unavailable until 1973 in most states. 66.  Foster care is much less prevalent in Japan than it is in Western countries. Goodman has argued that an important reason for this rarity is the widespread confusion of fostering with adoption in people’s minds. In this book I will concentrate on the analysis of why adoption was rarely seen as an option for unmarried and pregnant women. Due to the confusion of fostering with adoption, the conclusions in this section are likely to apply to fostering as well. For more information on foster care, see Goodman, 2000, pp. 137–44. 67.  Hayes & Habu, 2006, p. 141. 68.  Ibid., p. 5. 69. The fact that teenage women in Japan are more likely to have abortions after the twelfth week of pregnancy than older women lends some indirect support for this suggestion (MHLW, 2004a). The proportion of shotgun marriages out of all

Notes to Pages 33 –34    marriages in this age category is also especially high: 82.9 percent for 15–19 year-old women and 63.3 percent for women between 20 and 24 in the year 2004 (MHLW, 2004c). 70.  Article 817(2) of the Civil Code. In 1973 a Japanese doctor, Noboru Kikuta, announced that he persuaded 220 women who got pregnant outside wedlock to bear their children to term and give them up to women who could not have children. The children were registered as natural offspring of the adoptive mothers. One of the key reasons of his success, he maintained, was that he provided anonymity to both parties involved, the biological mother and the adoptive mother. As a result of the controversy that ensued, the law was modified in 1987 (effective from 1988), creating the special adoption system. For detailed discussions, see Bryant, 1991, p. 137; Coleman, 1983, p. 204; Goodman, 2000, p. 150. 71.  If one is determined, however, there are clues that allow deducing from the parents’ register whether the child was adopted or not (Bryant, 1991, p. 138). 72.  Supposedly to rule out the possibility of involuntary incest (Goodman, 2000, p. 151). 73.  Ibid. 74.  In today’s Japan there is one way a mother of an illegitimate child can give the child up without having any trace of childbearing in her family register. In 2007 a hospital in Kumamoto introduced “Baby post” (Akachan posuto), a service that allows parents to give up unwanted children anonymously and takes care of these children afterward. There has been, however, no rush to use this service, suggesting that apart from fear of stigmatization there are strong moral reasons that prevent women from taking this choice. After one year in service there were only seventeen children left at the “Baby post.” The number seems small in comparison with the number of illegitimate children born each year, especially given that the children abandoned at the “Baby post” came from all over Japan (Asahi Shinbun, 2008a). 75.  In the first year after enactment of the special adoption system, 3,202 applications for special adoptions were presented to the family courts. Many of those, however, were to reclassify an “ordinary” adoption as a “special” one (Bryant, 1991, p. 139n194). By the second year, the number of applications almost halved. Now the courts handle 400–450 cases a year. In Chapter 4 I will show how the stigmatization based on the family register has been gradually reduced over the past decades. Logically this reduction should also make adoptions more acceptable as a choice. However, not only is there a strong stigma associated with giving up a child for adoption, but arguably one’s stigmatizing biography cannot be hidden from one’s potential future husband and his closest relatives the way it can be protected from strangers. Thus having given up a child for adoption may drastically affect one’s future marriage chances. 76.  Hayes & Habu, 2006, p. 136; MHLW, 2004c. An additional 1,500 applications were filed for ordinary adoptions (Hayes & Habu, 2006, p. 141). 77.  She was over 40 years old. 78.  The option of adoption is also hardly ever mentioned as a solution to unwanted pregnancies in TV dramas. One of the most extreme examples is the first season of a successful TV series, San nen B-gumi Kinpachi-sensei (Third Year B Class’s Teacher Kinpachi), which has been broadcast by TBS since 1979. The plot of the

   Notes to Pages 34–35 first season revolves around 13-year-old Asai Yukino, who finds herself seven months pregnant. It is too late for her to have an abortion. Teachers, parents, and friends all look for a solution, and Yukino is pressured and almost forced to submit herself for labor inducement—so the baby is born dead. No one, however, suggests that Yukino could be allowed to give birth and then her baby be given up for adoption or put into an orphanage. 79.  Goodman, 2000, p. 39; Hayes & Habu, 2006, p. 103, note the same phenomenon. 80. There are two different types of institutions that can be subsumed under the word orphanage: nyūjiin, for infants up to 2 years old, and yōgoshisetsu, for older children. Here I will only discuss nyūjiin since they are the institutions to which unwed mothers could turn with their newborn children. 81.  MHLW, 2004d, p. 9. 82.  Hayes & Habu, 2006, p. 103. 83.  MHLW, 2004d. 84.  This idea of temporary institutionalization was more a possibility than an actuality though. Only 22.9 percent of children aged 0 to 2 years institutionalized in orphanages for infants had returned to live with their guardians in 2003. The rest stayed on, graduated to orphanages for older children, or were, in 9.8 percent of the cases, taken into adoption or foster families (ibid., p. 12). 85.  “Every prefecture and designated city in Japan is required by law to set up a child consultation centre, and the total is approximately 175 around the country” (Goodman, 2000, p. 35). See also Hayes & Habu, 2006, ch. 1. On privately run adoption agencies, see Hayes & Habu, 2006, p. 9. 86.  In 1997, for example, 244 of the 361 approved special adoptions were secured through child consultation centers and 53 through private adoption agencies (Hayes & Habu, 2006, p. 137). 87. This is evidenced by the fact that though there are almost ten times as many public centers as there are private ones, they manage to secure only a bit over four times more adoptions. Goodman (2000, p. 37) points out that they are severely overworked and usually cannot offer the continuous guidance that is needed in case of adoptions. Hayes and Habu (2006, pp. 106ff.) detail the institutional framework that makes putting children into orphanages an easier choice. 88. This is amply demonstrated by the caution and respect accorded to parental rights by courts, arguably even in cases when this might be against the child’s best interests (Hayes & Habu, 2006, p. 128). While this belief also exists in Western industrialized countries, in Japan it is exceptionally strong. See my discussion of the importance of parents in Chapter 6. 89.  Until recently the reported figures were considerably higher than in most industrialized Western countries (Henshaw, Singh, & Haas, 2001). Official Japanese abortion rate, however, fell from 50.2 percent in 1955 to 10.3 percent in 2005. In 2001 there reportedly was one abortion per 3.42 births in Japan, compared to one for each 3.37 births in England and Wales, for example (MHLW, 2006c). 90.  Frühstück, 2003, p. 190, estimates that the real number of abortions in Japan is three to four times the official one. In an older study, Matsuyama estimated that the real number of abortions in Japan is at most 1.4 times greater than the

Notes to Pages 35–36    reported one (Matsuyama, 1988). The reason for potential underestimation is that the fine to be paid by a doctor who is caught underreporting the numbers of abortions performed is low (about 100,000 yen, or $910) relative to his potential gains from unpaid taxes on the performed abortions. Therefore, there is little incentive for doctors to report the numbers of abortions accurately (Goto et al., 2000, p. 307). The unreliability of available figures is reflected in the discrepancies in the official surveys. A 2006 joint survey by MHLW and the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA), relying on self reports of abortion, estimated that 14.2 percent of Japanese women 16 to 49 years old have had an abortion (www.jfpa.or.jp/02-kikanshi1/637. html#topic01 [accessed 31.05.2007]). The figure given in the Cases from the 2006 [Public] Health Administrative Reports for this age group is 9.9 percent (wwwdbtk .mhlw.go.jp/toukei/data/130/2006/toukeihyou/0006097/t0135958/HAR0600 _001.html [accessed 31.04.2008]) (MHLW, 2006c). 91.  Amended again in 1952 and replaced by the Maternal Protection Law in 1996. 92.  More than 99.7 percent of all abortions in 2006 were carried out citing it (MHLW, 2006c). 93.  Before that doctors were required to seek a second opinion and then apply to the local Eugenic Protection Committee for permission (Norgren, 2001, p. 40). In the UK, by comparison, in order to comply with the 1967 Abortion Act two doctors must give their consent, stating that continuation of the pregnancy would present a risk to the physical or mental health of the woman or her existing children. 94.  Most other industrialized countries started grappling with the issue of abortion more than a decade later. Abortion was made available on demand in: 1975 in Sweden, 1978 in Italy, 1992 in unified Germany, 1967 in the UK, and 1973 in the United States. In some European countries (for example, Spain) abortion is not available to this day.The lack of concern with the unborn life comparable to the one inherent in the Judeo-Christian tradition is one reason why in Japan it was possible to adopt abortion on demand so early. The other was the perceived urgent need to curb population growth after Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. For discussion, see Lefleur, 1992; Norgren, 2001, p. 36 95.  Maternal Protection Law 1996, Chap. 3 Protection of Motherhood, Article 4. This law “includes people who are not registered as married but who are married de facto” in the category of a spouse (Maternal Protection Law 1996, Chap. 2, Sterilization Operations, Article 3). 96.  In 2006, 96.8 percent of Japanese women went to high school and 50.6 percent progressed beyond secondary education to universities and colleges (Monbukagakushō, 2007). 97. The law itself does not clearly stipulate the time limit for legal abortions. The precise limit (the twenty-second week) is specified by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. In most Western industrialized countries abortions are not available on demand for so long. In 2002 abortion on request was effectively available until the end of the eighteenth week in Sweden, the third month in Italy, and the twelfth week in Germany. An exception is the UK, where abortions are legal for social and economic reasons until the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy (reduced from the twenty-eighth week in 1990) (United Nations Population Division, 2002).

   Notes to Pages 36–39 98.  Norgren, 2001, pp. 83–84. 99.  Hardacre, 1997, p. 71; Norgren, 2001, p. 51. 100.  According to the website of one of the clinics providing abortions, an abortion until the eleventh week of pregnancy typically costs between 70,000 and 150,000 yen (between about $640 and $1,400). An abortion after the thirteenth week costs between 200,000 and 300,000 yen (about $1,700–$1,800) (http://miyakeclinic.gr.jp/ippannsikkann/ippan23.htm [accessed 30.11.2005]). Although prices are reported to vary between different clinics and physicians (Goto et al., 2000, p. 306), these prices are very close to those given in Norgren, 2001, p. 160, suggesting they may be a useful benchmark. 101.  The price of a pack of oral contraceptives is now about 3,000 yen (about $27) a month. 102.  In addition, research on U.S. data has shown that “despite the relatively high cost of the procedure, most poor women in need of an abortion manage to obtain one—a testament to women’s determination not to bear a child they feel unprepared to care for” (Boonstra, 2007, p. 14). 103.  Iwasawa and Mita’s recent finding that women in their late teens and early twenties are disproportionately overrepresented suggests that lack of knowledge about or money for an abortion may be promoting the illegitimacy rate among younger women (Iwasawa & Mita, 2008, p. 175). 104.  The only parents who saw an illegitimate child as preferable were the mother of Haruko and the parents of Toshiko, all devout Christians. In 2000, 3.6 percent of Japanese were Christians according to D. B. Barrett, Kurian & Johnson, 2001, p. 412. Therefore, this experience cannot be a dominant pattern. 105.  Coleman, 1983; Hodge & Ogawa, 1991; Norgren, 2001. In 1994, 15,183 (65.4 percent) out of 23,208 of abortions performed after the twelfth week of pregnancy were exnuptial (Wright, 2007, p. 123). In 2006, 22.7 percent of Japanese women aged sixteen to forty-nine with an abortion experience said they “could not give birth because they were not married” at the time they discovered their pregnancy (JFPA and MHLW joint survey, www.jfpa.or.jp/02–kikanshi1/637.html#topic01 [accessed 31.05.2007]). 106.  Based on the analysis conducted by Miho Iwasawa on the data from the Cabinet Office of the Japanese Government, 2006 (personal communication). 107.  Quite a few of my interviewees had an abortion experience before giving birth to an illegitimate child, and several had an abortion after. 108.  See Norgren, 2001, for a detailed explanation of how abortion superseded contraception as the main guarantor of childbirth by choice in Japan. 109.  Most women said they made the decision themselves. Of course, they did not live in a vacuum and at least indirectly were affected by significant others. As will be discussed in Chapter 5, however, these significant others almost invariably were pro-marriage or pro-abortion. This highlights the importance of the unwed mothers’ own decisions all the more. In the following section I will therefore concentrate on the women themselves and their own feelings and values that led them to opt for birth outside wedlock in spite of everything. 110.  Of the five women who had no choice, three did not realize they were pregnant until it was too late, and two did not have enough money to pay for an abortion.

Notes to Pages 39–45    111.  For a discussion based on negative views of marriage, see the section on the unconventional minority below. 112.  In Japan spouses become responsible for each other’s debts. 113.  More than half of the conventional majority and two-thirds of the unconventional minority women. 114. This message is reinforced by the state’s vigorous promotion of motherhood as the noblest role for women that started in late nineteenth century and continues until today. Although the underlying reasons for this message changed, the emphasis on children as women’s destiny did not. There are several very good accounts of the Japanese family-related ideology throughout modern history (Fuess, 2004; Molony, 1993; Niwa, 1993; Nolte & Hastings, 1991; Osawa, 2002; Uno, 1993, 1999). 115.  Brinton, 1993; Coleman, 1983; Kelly, 1993, pp. 198–203; Ogasawara, 1998; Raymo, 2000. See Kelly (1993) in particular for a discussion of how ideas of strictly defined life cycles and life courses gained currency in 1970s Japan. 116.  MHLW, 2005a. 117. The Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (JIL) survey describes a similar age pattern. Of the unwed mothers in the survey, 1.1 percent had children before the age of twenty, 57.3 percent between the ages of twenty-five and thirtyfour, and 21.4 percent between thirty-five and forty-four (JIL, 2003). This suggests that childbirth is strongly appealing for women close to the average age of childbearing who may be yearning to move to the appropriate life stage. The Longitudinal Survey of Children Born in the Twenty-first Century, however, documents a pattern resembling that of many Western countries, where nonmarital childbearing is associated with early family formation (Edin & Kefalas, 2005;Wu & Wolfe, 2001, p. xx) so the JIL survey results have to be taken with caution. In the Longitudinal Survey, 20 percent of unwed mothers had their children before they turned nineteen, 23 percent between twenty and twenty-four, 42 percent between twenty-five and thirty-four, and 15 percent after they turned thirty-five (Iwasawa and Mita, 2008). 118.  Sometimes this was a result of one or more abortions at an earlier age. 119.  Contemporary Japanese medical policies are infused with assumptions connecting marriage and childbearing, and more serious forms of infertility treatment are not provided for unmarried women. Thus in spite of having few qualms about their choice, none of these women had a planned pregnancy. 120.  This is in striking contrast with the narratives of American low-income unwed mothers analyzed by Edin & Kefalas, 2005. In their sample many women explained they decided to stop using contraception and have a child with their partner because they loved him so much they wanted his child. 121.  Allison, 1996, pp. 139–40; Ivry, 2006. 122.  It almost never appeared as an explanation for the pregnancy itself. A mother’s desire to have children or her love for children can be construed as egoistic, and bearing the extramarital pregnancy to term as harmful for the future child. See a more detailed discussion in Chapter 5. 123.  One of the reasons these women were more numerous was probably because in their parents’ generation divorce was uncommon. 124.  I am well aware that hypothetical choices do not necessarily get translated into real choices when and if the person comes across the suggested hypothetical

   Notes to Pages 45–51 situation in real life. However, that unmarried women with no children invoked arguments against single unwed motherhood similar to the concerns expressed by single unwed mothers indicates shared beliefs, perceptions, and values that are bound to have at least some effect on the reproductive choices of people. 125.  This is supported by statistics, as unmarried women continue to state that having children is one of the most important reasons to marry (MHLW, 1999, p. 30). 126.  Most famously Yamada, 1999. For popular essays, see for example Sakai, 2004. 127.  Unmarried women with no children seemed to be similarly divided in their outlook, though because the comparison group sample was small there were only two women among them with unconventional views about marriage and childbearing. 128.  See, for example, Lesthaeghe, 1995; Lesthaeghe & Meekers, 1986; van de Kaa, 1996. 129.   Iwasawa, 2000; Izuhara, 2000, p. 17.

Chapter 3

1.  Ezawa, 2002, p. 91. 2.  Twenty-seven percent of all the divorced mothers in 2006 became single mothers before their child turned two and 54 percent before their child turned five. The number of women who divorced their husbands before their child turned two almost doubled between 1998 and 2006 (MHLW, 1998b, 2006e). 3.  I will specifically concentrate on the labor market environment and welfare policies between 1985 and 2005 as this was the time when most of my interviewees became unwed mothers. I can therefore offer their commentary on the ways the labor market and welfare policies affected their decisions. 4.  Among others, Brinton, 1993; Cameron, 1996; Hendry, 1993; Lam, 1993; Lo, 1990; Ogasawara, 1998; Roberts, 1994; Roberts, 2005a; Rosenbluth, 2007; Schoppa, 2006. 5.  Ogasawara, 1998, p. 2. At least compared with Western industrialized countries. This statement may be more difficult to prove if we compare Japan with Korea, for example. 6.  Bradshaw & Finch, 2002, p. 33. The figures for other Western countries discussed here were as follows: Sweden—78 percent, the UK—74 percent, (West) Germany—75 percent, Spain—75 percent, Italy—85 percent, the United States—73 percent. 7.  This changing aggregate pattern can, of course, at least partially be a consequence of women having fewer children, not the improvement of labor market conditions. 8.  Rebick, 2006, p. 78. In 2003, women’s labor market participation in Sweden was 71.5 percent, in the UK 65.3 percent, in Germany 59 percent, in Spain 46 percent, in Italy 42.7 percent, and in the United States 65.7 percent (ibid., p. 56). 9.  Monbukagakushō, 2006. 10.  In Japan women were for the first time allowed to enter university on an

Notes to Pages 51–54    equal basis with men after the Second World War. In 1955, 2.4 percent of women went to four-year universities. By 2006 this figure had grown to 38.5 percent (ibid.). See also Rebick, 2005. 11.  Rebick, 2005, pp. 117–18. 12.  Boling, 2007, p. 135. In 2003, 55.6 percent of all employed women were in “non-full-time” employment, compared to 20 percent of men (MHLW, 2004b). According to Osawa (2005, p. 9), in the early 1990s the hourly wage of part-time female workers was 72 percent of that of full-time workers, while in 2003 it was only 62.3 percent. Eighty percent of temporary employees in Japan are females compared to about 60 percent in the United States and the UK. 13.  Estévez-Abe, 2007. 14.  JIL, 2003, pp. 312–13. 15.  Non-full-time employees rarely receive much training. 16.  Raymo, 2000; Rebick, 2006, p. 8. 17.  Schoppa, 2006, pp. 73ff., 88ff. 18.  Women are supposed to be good wives and wise mothers first (a legacy of the prewar notion of the “good wife, wise mother” [ryōsai kenbo] ideology) and workers second (Molony, 1993). See also Schoppa, 2006, ch. 7, for a discussion of why the results of all the government’s campaigning for gender equality have been so limited. 19.  MHLW, 2005a. 20.  See, for example, Roberts, 2005a; Rosenbluth, 2007; Schoppa, 2006. 21.  For a discussion of why welfare is not an option for many, see below. 22.  JIL, 2003, pp. 308–9. By comparison, among married mothers only 29.2 percent are in some kind of employment when their youngest child is less than 3 years old (Sōmushō Tōkeikyoku, 2002). 23.  It is difficult for a woman to hide the fact that she is a single mother from a prospective employer as she is a head of household and sole provider, and a child has to be registered with her to be entitled to the benefits provided by the company. 24.  Single-mother support groups have widely publicized these difficulties. See, for example, Konsakai, 2004; NPO Hōjin Shinguru Mazā Fōramu (NPO Single Mothers’ Forum), 2004; Shinguru Mazā Fōramu (Single Mothers’ Forum), 1998, 2001. 25.  Also, as we will see below in the discussion of my interviewees’ experiences in the labor market, these fears can be successfully countered. 26.  Schoppa, 2006, pp. 162ff. 27.  Molony, 1993. For a history of debates over establishing motherhood protection policies, see ibid. 28.  Renamed Childcare and Family Leave Law (Ikuji Kaigo Kyūgyō) in 1995. 29.  Before 1995, firms with fewer than thirty employees were exempt from the law. Also from 1995 the parents on leave were excused from paying health insurance and pension premiums. For a discussion of the forces that brought about the introduction of childcare leave, see Schoppa, 2006, pp. 162–70. 30.  Eighty-three percent of all women who worked in firms with 100 or more employees (MHLW, 2004e). 31.  Before 2001 the rate of salary recovery was 25 percent. Today 30 percent of

   Notes to Pages 54–55 the salary is paid monthly during the maternity leave, and 10 percent is reimbursed upon the woman’s return to work. 32.  Provided that the employee has worked on a contract at one place for more than a year and there is some agreement that she will continue working there after her leave (www.mhlw.go.jp/general/seido/koyou/ryouritu/aramashi.html [accessed 11.01.2006]). 33. Those of my interviewees who worked in companies with fully implemented family-friendly policies did not face difficulties gaining access to the benefits offered by these policies because they were not married. For women employed in firms that had family-friendly policies only on paper, the story was quite different. Quite a few had difficulties negotiating even their entitlement to maternity leave and often could not get childcare leave at all. 34.  In Japan there are two major types of institutions for preschool childcare: kindergartens (yōchien) that are under the control of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, and day care centers (hoikuen) that are the responsibility of the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. Kindergartens only provide care for 3- to 5-year-olds, for a few hours a day, whereas day care centers now accept children as young as a few months old and typically care for them from 7 or 8 in the morning till 6 in the evening. Some also have an option of a “prolonged stay” and offer care for children until as late as around 10 pm. A mother has to be employed for the child to be eligible to attend. Demand for kindergartens has been falling steadily since 1975. Beginning in 2006, some were converted into ­kodomo-en: a day care service that emphasizes education like kindergartens, but has longer opening hours. In 2007 there were 105 kodomo-en in Japan (Holthus, 2008). All the single unwed mothers I interviewed used day care centers because kindergartens did not provide enough childcare support to enable them to work. Thus, I will only discuss day care centers here. 35.  For the history of day care in Japan, see Ezawa, 2002; Uno, 1999. 36.  Uno, 1999, p. 156. 37.  One of the aims of these plans was to remove the stigma from working mothers and to replace it with the idea that they should be supported so that they could have both careers and families (Goodman, 2000, p. 33). 38.  Rebick, 2005, p. 123; Roberts, 2002. 39.  Boling, 2007, p. 142. 40.  Providing care for such young children is much more expensive than for older ones. National requirements for licensed day care centers stipulate that there must be at least one child minder for every three children below 12 months old, compared to one child minder for thirty 4- to 5-year-olds (Wada, 2007, p. 158). 41.  MHLW, 1998a, 2006b. 42.  A recent study argues that until 1994 when it came to childcare provision rural areas attracted a disproportionate amount of funding and were allowed to subscribe to looser operational guidelines than urban areas. Only after electoral reform increased the political weight of urban areas in 1994 were policy changes benefiting them introduced (Wada, 2007, p. 167). 43.  This impression is supported by the fact that urban areas contribute disproportionately to day care waiting lists. In 2006, 981,113 children, less than half

Notes to Pages 55–56    (49 percent) of all the children attending day care, lived in one of the seven largely urbanized prefectures (Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa, Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo) or designated large and medium sized cities. The same prefectures and cities were, however, responsible for 76.4 percent of all the children on day care waiting lists (MHLW, 2006f). 44. The reverse was true as recently as 1998 (MHLW, 1998a; MHLW, 2006b). 45.  Although these must be limited even in the cities since there were only 598 centers providing such care nationwide in 2005 (MHLW, 2006g, p. 45). 46.  Boling, 2007, p. 138. The number of children enrolled in after-school clubs has more than doubled since 1998. As of March 2006, 15,858 after-school clubs provided care for 683,000 children in Japan. In 2005, 11,360 children were on the waiting list. Unlike for day care, the government does not set minimum standards for the clubs and with the growing demand congestion has become a serious problem (Oishi, 2008, p. 290). 47.  MHLW, 2006a. 48.  Ben-Ari, 1997. 49.  Roberts also finds little stigma and guilt associated with combining childcare and work among working class mothers. The salaryman/housewife model has always been mainly a middle class phenomenon, and with the growth of the number of double-income professional couples, the stigma of putting a child into day care has been further reduced (Roberts, 2005b, pp. 114–15). 50.  MHLW, 2006b. 51.  The proportion of children attending preschools is even higher for those above the age of three—38.9 percent (MHLW, 2006f). 52.  The income of the mother played an important role in the way she talked about the effect of working on the child.Women with low income were more likely to tell about the difficulties of balancing work and childcare, how important it was for the mother to spend long hours with the child, and how this made it impossible for them to take a better-paid job. They also maintained that companies are unsympathetic to women with small children. Better-earning women were more likely to emphasize the importance of material security and even affluence for the child. They said they would hate to deny anything to their children because they are single mothers. They also complained much less about difficulties with finding a job and maintained that although they work long hours, the time they spend with their children is communication-intensive and this is what matters. Ezawa, 2002, notes similar trends in her sample of single mothers and attributes this to a class effect. Apart from that, post hoc rationalization might also be affecting women’s perceptions. There is some indirect evidence for this: single mothers who were born into the middle class but by their income and lifestyle were closer to working class emphasized the importance of spending time with the child, while mothers who were born into the working class but worked themselves upwards into middle class standing emphasized the importance of avoiding material deprivation. 53.  JIL, 2003, pp. 308–9. In this section I discuss all types of single mothers, including unwed, divorced, and widowed mothers. The discussion will be narrowed down specifically to single unwed mothers in the following section. 54.  MHLW, 2005c, 2006e.

   Notes to Pages 56–62 55.  JIL, 2003, p. 326. 56.  And also to justify their decision to cut the Child Rearing Allowance discussed below. 57.  As will be explained in greater detail below, prefecture (47), big-city (14), and mid-sized city (37) governments have largely implemented the new policies by 2005, but smaller local governments (781) lagged behind, thus making the new schemes unavailable to many women. 58.  For the full implementation reports, see MHLW, 2005d, 2006d. 59.  Until 2003 independence supporters were employed only in cities (and called single-mother advisors [boshi sōdanin]), but from 2003 the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare specifically aimed to ensure there are single mother independence supporters in towns and villages too. 60.  A full-time job is necessary for a single mother to be able to support her children without additional help from her own family or the state. 61. The training is from a few days to several months long. 62.  Interviews with social workers in several local governments, 2004–2005. 63.  From 2005 local authorities have some discretion over adding additional professions to the list. 64.  A public agency that provides job search assistance. 65.  JIL, 2003, p. 406.The sample of divorcées in this survey is 1,199 women while that of unwed mothers is only 89, so all of the comparisons have to be taken with caution. 66.  Ibid., p. 312. 67.  Ibid., p. 326. 68.  Moreover, returning from part-time to full-time employment is very difficult (Rebick, 2006, p. 79). 69.  My recalculations from JIL, 2003, pp. 359, 406. 70.  MHLW, 2005b; Sōmushō Tōkeikyoku, 2002. 71.  JIL, 2003, p. 358. 72.  There is some indirect evidence for this: 20.5 percent of all single mothers caring for 0- to 2-year-old children have lost their jobs, more than twice as much as single mothers with children in any other age category (ibid., p. 406). There is also a strong relationship between a single mother’s income and the age of her youngest child (ibid., p. 358). Single mothers whose youngest child is between 0 and 2 years old earn the least—1.8 million yen (about $16,000) a year on average—and women whose youngest child is above 15 earn more than 2.7 million yen (about $25,000) a year on average. 73.  Iwasawa & Mita, 2008, p. 183. 74.  See also the section on welfare, below. 75. Women with younger children might be suspected, however. 76. This is a much lower rate of job loss than that of unwed mothers in The Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training sample and in the Longitudinal Survey of Children Born in the Twenty-first Century sample, probably because my interviewees were on average better educated and older than unwed mothers in both these surveys. 77. This is in stark contrast to the big scandals over unwed motherhood in 1970s

Notes to Pages 62–70    in Osaka and in 1991 in Fukui when unwed mothers lost their jobs because they gave birth outside wedlock, although in both cases the children were given up for adoption within days after birth (Asahi Shinbun, 1973a, 1973b; Osaka Shinbun, 1973; Sankei Shinbun, 1973; Shūkan Shinchō, 1991). 78. Those who had industry-specific rather than firm-specific skills as described by Estévez-Abe, 2007. 79.  For a detailed discussion of the presentation of the self, see Chapter 5. 80.  There appeared to be an important difference in the treatment of unwed mothers-to-be depending on whether the company was Japanese or Western. Foreign companies were less likely to create trouble for women who decided to have a child outside wedlock. This probably translates into an advantage for single unwed mothers living in big cities, as there are more foreign companies there. 81.  Their paramours were at most moved to a different office of the firm and often were not punished at all. 82.  See Chapter 5 for a detailed discussion. 83.  Parents provided some help with childcare for 43.9 percent of unwed mothers (JIL, 2003, p. 322). 84.  Since private day care is expensive, using it to cover for an irregular schedule was only an option for well-paid professional women. 85. The most widely received type of welfare support for single mothers. Not to be confused with Child Allowance (Jidō Teate), a general scheme for all families with young children. 86.  JIL, 2003, p. 358. 87.  See Chapter 5 for a discussion of why even successful independent career women were still subject to a strong stigma if they became unwed mothers. 88.  See also the discussion of the role of media in Chapter 5. 89.  Cf. the argument of the lack of a positive role model for single unwed mothers in Chapter 5. 90.  To give an example, in 2005, 71,921 children were affected by parental divorce, up from 23,240 in 1955 (MHLW, 2005a). In 2005 by the age of five almost 7 percent of Japanese children had an experience of living in a single-parent family (Iwasawa & Mita, 2008, p. 182). 91.  In 1997 the average annual earnings of a single mother was 2.2 million yen (about $20,000), whereas the average annual earnings of a married mother was only 1.9 million yen (about $17,000) (Fujiwara, 2008). 92.  Lewis, 1997. 93.  The proportion of GDP spent on public and mandatory private social security schemes in Japan (18 percent of GDP in 2003) is below the OECD average. The only OECD country that spends a smaller proportion of GDP specifically on family schemes is Korea: 0.2 percent compared to Japan’s 0.7 percent (OECD, n.d.). “The percentage of citizens under the poverty line in Japan is roughly the same as in the UK, yet Japan spends a significantly smaller percentage of its budget on poverty” (Estévez-Abe, 2008, p. 22n27). 94.  Goodman, 2000, p. 25. 95.  For discussion and additional references, see ibid., ch. 2, and Estévez-Abe, 2008; Schoppa, 2006.

   Notes to Pages 70–72 96. The divorce rate reached its first postwar peak in 1983 with 1.51 divorces per 1,000 people (Fuess, 2004, p. 145). 97.  Often also translated as Public Assistance. 98.  Ezawa, 2002. 99.  See, for example, Akerlof, Yellen, & Katz, 1996; Moffitt, 1992; Wilson, 1999, p. 94. 100.  www.mhlw.go.jp/bunya/seikatsuhogo/seikatuhogo.html (accessed 23.07.2007). Access to the Livelihood Protection Scheme and the exact level of support vary between local authorities. Apart from financial support, people on Livelihood Protection qualify for certain free public services, and single mothers receive in addition to the basic payment a single-mother subsidy. In 2004 the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare noted that while the average income of single-mother families receiving Livelihood Protection was 138,000 yen (about $1,250) a month, working single mothers in similar circumstances who were unable to secure Livelihood Protection lived on average on 118,000 yen (about $1,070) a month. This finding became the basis for the decision to abolish the single-mother subsidy under Livelihood Protection. It was thought this change would reduce the income of single mothers on Livelihood Protection to that of low income working mothers (Asahi Shinbun, 2008c). Since then many local authorities have been moving toward the abolition of the subsidy. 101.  It is possible both to work and to receive Livelihood Protection, but earnings are deducted from the amount of Livelihood Protection paid, thus reducing the incentive to work. 102.  In 2003, 82,216 single-mother households received Livelihood Protection, less than 7 percent of the total 1,225,000 single-mother households (MHLW, 2005f). 103.  For a broader discussion, see Estévez-Abe, 2008, p. 21. 104.  Aoki, 2003; Ezawa & Fujiwara, 2005. It is estimated that only 15–20 percent of Japanese households that could qualify for Livelihood Protection are actually receiving it (Asahi Shinbun, 2008c). 105.  One reason for the lack of associated stigma is that application for the Child Rearing Allowance does not involve the loss of privacy and disclosure the way the Livelihood Protection does. My interviews also showed that the low level of this support meant that receiving it did not make the women feel as if they were relying on welfare and so did not contradict the internalized belief that they should be earning for their family.The difference in attitudes has been tellingly reflected in the reactions of single-mother groups to the recent attempts to reduce the Child Rearing Allowance and Livelihood Protection provisions. Single-mother groups were at the forefront of the fight against the cut in the Child Rearing Allowance, whereas their involvement was much more limited in case of Livelihood Protection. 106.  If one does not apply for the Child Rearing Allowance for five consecutive years, one loses eligibility altogether, thus, in order to stay eligible, even women with a very high income in my sample kept applying every year only to be rejected. 107.  According to the 2005 eligibility criteria, one had to have earned not more than 1.3 million yen (about $12,000) in the previous year to be eligible for full support. If one earned more, a sliding scale of partial support applied. If one earned more than 3.65 million yen (about $33,000), then one was not eligible for the ben-

Notes to Pages 72–74    efit. The level of the Child Rearing Allowance payments was reduced slightly after 2005 (MHLW, 2005d, 2006d). 108.  JIL, 2003, p. 424. 109.  Ezawa, 2002, p. 58. 110.  “Community volunteer” does not fully catch the specific meaning of minsei iin. Goodman (2000, p. 212) gives the following definition: “quasi voluntary, semi­official community volunteers who act as a liaison between the community in which they live and local welfare offices and other community resources.” 111. This is not the first time this has been done. For a detailed discussion of the postwar changes in welfare provision for single mothers, see Ezawa, 2002. For a discussion specifically of the Child Rearing Allowance, see ibid., pp. 56–57. According to the amendment to the Welfare Law for Single Mothers and Widows (Boshi oyobi kafu fukushi hō ) passed in 2002, from April 2008 single-mother households raising children above 3 years of age and who have received the Child Rearing Allowance for five years were to have the amount of the allowance halved. Employment support policies for single mothers promoted in conjunction with this amendment have not, however, brought about significant changes in single mothers’ earning abilities. Single-mother groups lobbied the government stressing that a reduction in entitlement to the Child Rearing Allowance would severely undermine the already precarious standard of living of single-mother families. The lobbying was successful, and in February 2008 the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare legislated the suspension of the proposed reduction in the Child Rearing Allowance payments (Asahi Shinbun, 2008b). 112.  Until 1998 known as Mother and Child Homes (Boshiryō). 113.  Quite a few industrialized countries moved from cash to tax benefits for single-parent families (Bradshaw & Finch, 2002, pp. 37ff.), but this has not happened in Japan. 114.  www.nta.go.jp/taxanswer/shotoku/1170.htm (accessed 5.04.2008). Individual income tax rates Ordinary taxable income Under 1.95 million yen 1.95–3.3 million yen 3.3–6.95 million yen 6.95–9 million yen 9–18 million yen Over 18 million yen

1999–2006 10% 10% 20% 20% 30% 37%

2007–present 5% 10% 20% 23% 33% 40%

source:  Japan External Trade Organization, www.jetro.go.jp/en/invest/ setting_up/laws/section3/page7.html (accessed 17.07.2008).

115.  An exception are shelters for single unwed mothers that accept unmarried mothers late in their pregnancy and help them through the first months after childbirth. There are, however, only two of these shelters, one in Tokyo and one in Osaka, so they cannot affect general illegitimacy trends. Another technically available scheme is subsidized childbirth available to pregnant women struggling with poverty. This scheme, however, is badly publicized and few of my interviewees have used it.

   Notes to Pages 74–80 116.  Bradshaw & Finch, 2002. 117.  Lewis, 1997, pp. 7ff. 118.  Coleman, 1983; Wright, 2007;Yoshizumi, 1995.

Chapter 4

1.  Until 2005, legitimate children were recorded into their family register with information on their sex and birth order, while for illegitimate children only the information on their sex was provided. See below for more details. 2.  This chapter discusses the full version of the family register (koseki tōhon). In the full version of the register, it is the family rather than the individual that is the unit of description. There is also a limited version (koseki shohon), which provides information on an individual family member. 3.  Couples overwhelmingly choose the ancestral home address of the husband’s family (Wright, 2002, p. 43). In the case of an illegitimate child, the father’s details are noted only if he acknowledged the child. 4.  Ezawa, 2002, p. 104. 5.  All children born within marriage, including those whose parents later divorced, are registered automatically as the husband’s true biological children, so no additional actions are needed to establish a legally binding relationship between the father and child. 6.  Bryant, 1991; Fuess, 2004, pp. 11–15. The historical overview in this chapter relies heavily on these accounts. 7.  Family registers were first introduced in 1872. Shimazu argues that the government needed them as the “basic ledger for taxation and military conscription” (Shimazu, 1994, pp. 95–96). There is no doubt that the introduction of the family registry has simplified things for the government considerably, creating “a chain of accountability in which the head of the household had apparent control within the ie (household) and was, in turn, accountable to the government for the acts of ie members” (Bryant, 1995, p. 2). 8.  Ie can be translated as stem family; seido is a system. Lebra (1984, p. 20) quotes the two following definitions of ie: “a ‘vertically composite form of nuclear families, one from each generation’ (Morioka 1967, p. 597) or a ‘series of first sons, their wives and minor children’ (Johnson 1964, p. 839).” 9.  Fuess, 2004, p. 11. Civisca (1957, p. 26) gives very similar figures based on different sources. “The authoritative statistics were those of 1918 for the whole of Japan, where the percentage of naien appears as about 17% or 16% while other authoritative, though particular, statistics show that out of 346 cases of marriage 71, that is 20.52%, were naien.” 10.  Including a period when officially registered children of concubines were defined as legitimate. 11.  Norgren, 2001, p. 34. 12.  MHLW, 2005a. 13.  Brinton, 1993; Goodman, 2000; Schoppa, 2006. 14.  Bryant, 1992, p. 409. Fuess (2004, p. p. 150) documents in detail how this legal protection of marriage was consolidated in postwar Japan: “In a 1952 landmark

Notes to Pages 80–81    case, the Supreme Court ruled that a spouse at fault could not obtain the divorce over the objections of the other spouse. This decision marked the beginning of the most restrictive divorce regime in Japan since the seventeenth century. Two years before the inception of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party dominance, often called the 1955 system, the Supreme Court created a divorce system that essentially guaranteed lifetime marriage to any legally innocent spouse. This form of marriage guarantee probably reinforced the pronounced sexual division of labor among Japan’s new urban salaried middle class, which was accompanied by the guarantee of lifetime employment to male workers at large corporations, in the context of the ideology of ‘GNP nationalism.’ Wives were thus enabled to devote themselves entirely to household chores and child rearing.” 15.  West (2006, p. 265) writes that after 1987 “the courts allowed divorces after estrangements of 30 years, 22 years and 16 years, but after that it gets fuzzy; 8 years is sometimes enough and 10 sometimes is not.” For an account of the debates surrounding the introduction of no-fault judicial divorce, see Bryant, 1992, 1995; Fuess, 2004, pp. 162–63. 16.  The pre-2007 pension laws created an important incentive for separated wives with low income to stay married. A married wife was entitled to part of the husband’s pension, but she lost this entitlement with divorce. An April 2007 legal change reduced this financial incentive for a wife to stay in a marriage, even a failed one. A divorced wife is now entitled to a share of the husband’s pension calculated according to the years she spent married to the man. Bryant (1992) mentions avoiding discrimination against one’s children as another reason for women to strive to stay married, if only on paper. 17. Tsuyuki, 2007. 18. The Japanese state has supported two-parent families since the late nineteenth century. Among other things these families were believed to be particularly suitable for developing children’s potential because they made it possible for one parent, most commonly the mother, to specialize in childrearing. In postwar years, when the number of middle class families grew and role specialization within families became possible for many more people than ever before, acceptance of the superiority of two-parent families quickly became universal. See Chapter 6. 19.  Bryant, 1991, p. 135. 20.  Burakumin is an euphemistic term used in most Western language material to describe members of Japan’s outcaste class who were officially distinguished by their low-caste occupations until 1870” (Goodman, 2000, p. 210). In an attempt to modernize Japan, the Meiji government abolished castes, but prejudice against former outcastes and their descendants lingered into the modern era. As mentioned above, the family registry lists not one’s current address, which is noted in the household registry, but the ancestral home address. Burakumin originally lived in specific areas, and if a person’s ancestral address was from one of those areas, he or she was concluded to be likely of burakumin descent. There still are illegal lists with burakumin area addresses that are supposedly not hard to obtain for a determined person. 21.  In 1970 some details of one’s birth address were deleted from the family registry. In 1974 a notice that prohibited employers from asking prospective employees to show their family registry was released by the then Ministry of Health and

   Notes to Pages 81–82 Welfare. In 1975 one’s lineage name was deleted, and in 1976 access to the family registry was restricted. 22.  Amendment of section 10 of the Family Registration Law. 23.  It has been noted by previous researchers that “local registrars do not consistently enforce the prohibition” on showing family registers to unrelated individuals (Bryant, 1991, p. 121). My research suggests that this has gradually changed, and these days the heightened concern over privacy issues means that the prohibition over seeing unrelated people’s family registers is much better enforced. None of my interviewees was worried that their register may be viewed by a third party without their consent. 24.  The household registry used to contain information on gender and birth order for legitimate children (for example, “oldest son”), and illegitimate children were noted as just “a child.” 25.  Tanaka Sumiko is an activist living in a long-term cohabiting relationship who has one daughter by her partner. The daughter is technically illegitimate, as the parents never registered their marriage. 26.  Until 2005, legitimate children were recorded with information on their sex and birth order, while for illegitimate children only the information on their sex was provided. Historically, this way of recording offspring was needed for establishing entitlement to inheritance as well as hierarchy within a family. The postwar Civil Code abolished these distinctions between children, and now all legitimate children are entitled to the same inheritance irrespective of their birth order or gender. 27.  Asahi Shinbun, 2004. 28.  Changes in the family registers of illegitimate children who were already born by April 2005 are only to be made upon request by the child herself or the child’s guardian, not automatically, so those who do not know about the change cannot benefit from it. The change was reported in all the biggest newspapers, but only in small articles on the back pages. 29.  It records all major family-related changes, and only illegitimate children will not have the marriage of the parents registered before birth, a blank space instead of the father’s name if the father did not acknowledge paternity, and a note of the child’s acknowledgment (unnecessary when the parents are legally married) if the father did acknowledge the child. 30.  This decision was reached after a protracted controversy. In 1993 the Tokyo court found the difference in inheritance rights of illegitimate children to be in conflict with the constitution. However, other courts later on ruled that it does not contradict the constitution. In contrast, while a divorced wife loses her entitlement to the husband’s inheritance, her children do not. In the absence of a will, the Civil Code entitles them to equal shares of the inheritance. 31.  Similar systems exist in China and Vietnam. In the West there are also identification documents that may make it possible to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate children. Birth certificates in the UK and in Russia are an example. The important difference between birth certificates and the family registry, however, is that the use of birth certificates is much more limited compared to that of the family registers, and so they do not play a crucial role in sustaining discrimination. 32.  In this section I will only treat the family registry’s impact on women’s choices, as discrimination against illegitimate children in the household registry was

Notes to Pages 82–88    abolished in 1995, and the majority of my interviewees (forty-nine out of sixtyeight unwed mothers) gave birth to their children after that. 33.  Fuess, 2004, p. 148. 34.  See, for example, Asahi Shinbun, 1973a, 1973b; Mainichi Shinbun, 1973; Sankei Shinbun, 1973; Shūkan Asahi, 2004. For academic studies, see Bryant, 1991, pp. 136–37; Fuess, 2004, p. 52; Lebra, 1984, p. 190. 35.  I also heard anecdotes about couples who cohabit rather than marry, most of the time in order to maintain different surnames, but get married if they decide to have a child and then divorce after birth and return to different surnames. 36.  Any child born within 300 days after divorce is also recorded as the biological child of the ex-husband. 37.  For more details see Fuess, 2004; Shimazu, 1994;Yoshizumi, 1997. 38.  In this case the mother does not play any role in the process. If an illegitimate child is not acknowledged, any man can submit an acknowledgment form without the mother’s knowledge and the mother will have to go to court and prove that the child is not his offspring if she wants this acknowledgment to be nullified. 39.  The fee required for filing a petition is very low so access to mediation is not limited by one’s income (Bryant, 1995, p. 16). But see below for a discussion of lawyers’ fees. 40.  Fuess, 2004, p. 149. 41.  Bryant, 1995. 42.  Ibid., p. 9. 43.  www.courts.go.jp/saiban/zinbutu/tyoteiin.html (accessed 19.05.2007). Fuess (2004, p. 129) gives the average age of mediators as about sixty. One of the lawyers I interviewed suggested the same kind of figure, specifically pointing out that mediators in their forties are extremely rare. 44.  When a child is acknowledged, it is noted in the family registry whether it was a “forced acknowledgment” or not. It is believed that acknowledgment by mutual agreement is better for a woman’s family register; a forced acknowledgment implies that she is the type of a woman who would go to court to get what she wants. It is also believed that a child will get a strong shock if she sees from her family register her father had to be forced to acknowledge her. For a fuller discussion of different procedures and their relative prevalence, see Fuess, 2004, p. 149. 45.  Cf. Bryant, 1992, on the biased treatment of women seeking a divorce. 46.  Bryant, 1995. 47.  See, for example, the summary of a ruling by the Osaka High Court in 1954 (www.courts.go.jp/search/jhsp0030?action_id=dspDetail&hanreiSrchKbn=03&han reiNo=22778&hanreiKbn=02 [accessed 04.06.2008]). 48.  Before DNA testing was introduced, blood group comparison was used for establishing paternity. This procedure had a large margin of error. DNA testing based on the fact that each person has a unique set of genes can establish paternity with close to 99 percent certainty. In Japan in 1991, when DNA testing was introduced (by comparison, the UK introduced it in 1987), the majority of tests were still simple blood group tests. The number of DNA tests performed to establish parentchild relationships became larger than the number of blood group tests in 1993, and very soon DNA testing was used exclusively. The inaccuracy of blood tests and the

   Notes to Pages 88–91 superiority of DNA testing are becoming common knowledge. For example, in an episode of the TV series Onna no bengoshi (Female lawyer), the whole plot is based on the inaccuracy of the blood test. A biological father thinks that a child born to his lover is not his because the child has a blood type different from that of both him and the child’s mother. However, eventually it is established that he is the real father through DNA testing, which, as is explained, is much more accurate. 49.  As I was told on different occasions by single mothers, representatives of single-mother activist groups, and a former family court judge. 50.  There are schemes, including state-supported interest-free loan programs, that allow women to borrow the money for court expenses and then pay it back in installments. 51. The nationwide statistics on court cases of acknowledgment of paternity are comparably low. In 2006 there were only 835 cases of acknowledgment mediation brought to family courts in Japan, and out of these almost a third (268 cases) were withdrawn (www.courts.go.jp/sihotokei/nenpo/pdf/B18DKAJ04.pdf [accessed 04.12.2008]). 52.  Unfortunately, there are no official surveys with reasonable sample size that would allow us to gauge how often illegitimate children remain unacknowledged because their mothers do not particularly care about acknowledgment and do not believe it to be worth their effort and how often because the mothers are unable to make the fathers cooperate. 53.  Chapter 6 analyzes the perceived importance of having the father as a positive reference point. 54.  These norms and their influence on unwed mothers’ choices will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 6. 55.  By comparison, in eight European countries child support payments are guaranteed by the state (Bradshaw & Finch, 2002, p. 55). Moreover, many Western states are much more active than Japan in forcing fathers to honor their obligation to provide child support payments. In the UK, for example, the Child Support Agency can go through courts and garnishee earnings, seize assets, cancel driving licenses, affect credit ratings and membership in professional organizations, and impose prison terms if necessary. In the United States the Office of Child Support Enforcement aims to “assure that assistance in obtaining support (both financial and medical) is available to children through locating parents, establishing paternity and support obligations, and enforcing those obligations.” Apart from its other activities, the office assists with collecting child support from noncustodial parents; 69 percent of child support is paid through it (www.acf.hhs.gov/opa/fact_sheets/ cse_factsheet.html [accessed 06.06.2008]). 56.  By comparison, in 2005 in United States 49 percent of unwed mothers had a child support payment agreement or legal award of child support. Of these women, only 21 percent did not receive any payments (Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division, 2005). 57.  Excluding widows. 58.  JIL, 2003, p. 426. This small differential suggests that there is probably little difference in the commitment of fathers to children with whom they do not coreside, irrespective of whether they were ever married to the mother or not. It also

Notes to Pages 91–97    may reflect the fact that with the introduction of DNA paternity testing, nevermarried mothers’ claim for child support has become almost as strong as that of previously married women. 59.  MHLW, 2006e. Unfortunately the MHLW does not release information on child support payments received by unwed mothers. By comparison, the mean amount of child support payments received in the United States by custodial mothers was $660 (Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division, 2005). 60. The principle is very similar to that in the UK and the United States. 61.  Single-mother support groups typically advise women who are considering divorce to obtain copies of documents certifying their husbands’ income while they have access to them as spouses. 62.  Eighty percent of employed men are in full-time jobs (MHLW, 2004b). 63.  Ginsburg & Hoetker, 2006; Hill, 2003, pp. 262, 264. 64.  Hill, 2003, p. 264. The training system that led to the very small numbers of practicing lawyers has been changing since 1991, and it remains to be seen whether the growing numbers of lawyers may make litigation more affordable and accessible to single mothers. 65.  Although there are no general statistics, I heard this time and again from members of single-mother groups. 66.  Proving adultery can be difficult and expensive, but Japanese unwed mothers are commonly cautioned that a husband’s acknowledgment of his mistress’s child is the best possible evidence to support a wife’s suit. In such a case, the least amount the mistress is likely to be sued for is reportedly 2,000,000 yen (about $18,200) (Tsuyuki, 2007, pp. 92ff.). 67.  Bryant, 1992.

Chapter 5

1.  JIL, 2003, pp. 296–491. 2.  For the history of the appearance and quickly established domination of the consensus model, see Ryang, 2004. 3.  Mouer & Sugimoto, 1990, p. 22. 4.  It is important to note that shame as a mechanism upholding conformity operates on the level of social groups rather than society as whole, as it relies on others’ knowledge about one’s shameful act to be effective. 5.  Elster, 1999, p. 152. See Chapter 6 for more discussion of Elster’s definition of guilt. 6.  Benedict, 1947, pp. 222–25. 7.  Ibid., p. 224. Some studies in behavioral psychology challenged the supremacy of shame in Japan as early as the 1960s (De Vos, 1996, p. 51). 8.  Mouer & Sugimoto, 1990, p. 10. A good summary of the criticism is offered, for example, in ibid., pp. 10ff. 9.  Indeed a recent study argues that informal social control is the main source of social order in contemporary Japan (Miller & Kanazawa, 2000). This study puts a new spin on the consensus theory, arguing that behavioral conformity in Japan is not so much a result of individual choices but rather is an unavoidable result of the ubiquity and importance of close-knit small groups in Japan.

   Notes to Pages 97–102 10.  Elster, 1999. 11.  According to research on UK data, for example, how lonely grandparents feel depends less on the hours they spend with their relatives and more on how much time they believe other grandparents spend with their families (Dench, Ogg, & Thompson, 1999, p. 148ff). See also Offer, 2006, ch. 12. 12.  Such differentiation in welfare provision by types of single mothers has been present most of the time in postwar Japan. Many specific provisions for single mothers were originally introduced for war widows. See Chapter 3 for a detailed discussion of welfare differences. 13.  In fact one does not even have to be a single mother to become a member; one just needs to be interested in and supportive of the single-mothers’ cause. 14.  As noted in Ezawa, 2002, p. 65. 15.  Goffman, 1968, p. 130. 16.  Ibid., p. 131. 17.  Apart from single-mother organizations and informal communities that specialize in unwed mothers. 18.  According to Freeman (2000, p. 17), in 1992 there were 2,341 monthly magazines (with an estimated monthly circulation of 2.8 million) and 83 weekly magazines (with a weekly circulation of 1.9 million) in Japan. Hence locating and reading all articles in all magazines to find those mentioning single mothers over even a very short time was impossible, and I chose a different way of sampling articles. I have searched through the Ōya Sōichi Bunko (hereafter Ōya Library) digital catalogue for articles that contained mikon no haha (never-married mother) and rikon no haha (divorced mother) in the title or subtitle. These articles in most cases were stories of single mothers and their families. Most of them concentrated either on the causes of parental separation or the effects of being part of the broken family on its members. 19. The Ōya Library holds the biggest collection of popular magazines in Japan. It was established in the Meiji period (1868–1912) and has been continuously adding to its collection ever since. As of March 2006, the collection included 10,000 magazine titles represented in 660,000 issues (the exact titles and other relevant details can be checked at www.oya-bunko.or.jp/sakuin0.htm). New issues are acquired at the rate of about 20,000 a year. Comparing these figures with the total number of magazine publications suggests that the library collects copies of the majority of magazines published today.The sample of magazines acquired by the Ōya Library is likely to be biased toward those with greater circulation rates. However, since I am interested in analyzing the way media representations affect readers, the relative absence of minor magazines is not a serious concern. The existence of a digital catalogue allows sampling from the widest variety of contemporary popular magazines; searching manually through a comparable variety of magazines would have been impossible. 20.  In this group I also included articles about separated couples that were described as on their way to a divorce. 21.  Such information is by no means inaccessible. A determined person could find it on the internet, in books and pamphlets published by grassroots organizations, and through government welfare offices. Popular media, however, do not devote much attention to it, thus eliminating at least one passive route of acquiring this information.

Notes to Pages 104–111    22.  My interviewees who had a divorce experience themselves or whose close relatives had a divorce also found out that families tended to look upon divorce in a much more relaxed way than upon childbearing outside marriage. 23.  In this book I am using the broad definition of stigma suggested by Goffman (1968, p. 12), who argued that stigma is an attribute incongruent with the other characteristics of a certain person in an undesired way. Such an attribute “justifies” contempt or disgust with this person and leads the person to experience shame. 24.  See, for example, an article about a woman who cut the genitals of her 4-month-old baby boy (Shūkan Bunshun, 2004). 25.  While Japan has long embraced sexual liberty, bearing a child by a married man is seen as a much more serious breach of social norms than simply having an affair with him. The perceived difference is likely to be the result of the continuous support of two-parent families coupled with a strong trend toward the separation of the everyday lives of husbands and wives. For a discussion of this separation, see Allison, 1994. 26.  Of course, as discussed in Chapter 4, legal protection of the institution of marriage also plays an important role. It is still very difficult to obtain divorce in Japan against the wishes of a non-guilty party. In addition, the legal wife can sue a mistress for breaking up the family and claim hefty damages. 27. While it is a common belief that concubinage was historically widespread in Japan, Fuess (2004, p. 55) shows this to be a myth: “In 1880, the ratio of concubines to male heads was 4:10 for the high nobility (kazoku), 4:1,000 for samurai (shizoku), and 5:10,000 for commoners (heimin).” 28.  Terms include omekake-san, nigō-san, and gosai (as opposed to honsai ). These words are deemed derogatory and so one only very rarely comes across them in the media, but they are still very much part of the common image of single mothers, especially among people who are in their fifties and older. 29.  For a discussion of possible additional reasons why unwed mothers were so reticent when it came to asking for support from their married lovers, see Chapter 4. 30.  Jun, a 54-year-old full-time employed childless woman with a university education. 31.  Cf. Helen Hardacre’s analysis of abortion advice in a popular newspaper column in the early postwar decades. The column typified women seeking advice about premarital pregnancies that could not be legitimized by marriage as fools who let themselves be deceived by callous men and prescribed abortions as the only possible solution for the sake of the child (Hardacre, 1997, pp. 63–68). 32.  In the next chapter I will analyze why growing up in a single-mother family is seen as so damaging. 33.  Steinhoff, 1984, p. 195. 34.  In Japan the term BBS (bulletin board system) is often used for online ­forums and message services. 35.  Steinhoff, 1984;Yoder, 2004. 36.  See Chapters 2 and 6. 37.  See also Chapter 2. 38.  Networks of progressive friends were also often a source of support, such as

   Notes to Pages 111–114 communal day care schemes and other strategies that helped single mothers combine work and childcare in practical and affordable ways. 39.  Goffman, 1968, p. 95. 40.  Ibid., ch. 2. 41.  In 2005, 24 percent of Japanese people aged 17–49 and 47 percent of those above 50 disapproved of women who want to have children alone and are unwilling to have stable relationships (www.worldvaluessurvey.org [accessed 20.12.2008]). As I had only very few older women in my sample, it is impossible to qualitatively assess with any degree of certainty the attitudinal differences between generations. However, numerous anecdotes reported in the literature and by my interviewees suggested that older generations held considerably more conservative attitudes to unwed motherhood. See also Hertog (forthcoming) for a more detailed discussion of generational differences. 42.  See Chapter 4. 43.  Cf. also the discussion in Chapter 4 of how the perceived importance of the family registry changed over time. 44.  In Japan it is still compulsory that a couple assume a common surname upon marriage. 45.  Elster, 1999, pp. 145ff. 46.  MHLW, 1999. 47.  Goffman, 1968, p. 117. 48. This suggestion is further substantiated in a recent study by Raymo and Iwasawa that found that for all women except those who did not complete high school, bridal pregnancy is associated with less favorable educational pairings (Raymo & Iwasawa, 2008, p. 855). This suggests that compromising to avoid illegitimacy may be widespread throughout the social spectrum. 49.  Iwasawa & Mita, 2008, p. 181. This study is based on A Longitudinal Survey of Childen Born in the Twentieth-first Century, an annual panel survey of mothers whose children were born in 2000. 50.  In that way validating the popular belief that unwed mothers are likely to have had children by an already-married man. Contrary to the popular image, however, the majority did not have a continuous relationship with the man and were not supported by him. 51. Three Western European men, two Americans, one Arab, and one Mexican. 52.  In Japan, only about 0.8 percent of all children born to Japanese women in 2005 were fathered by foreign men (www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/saikin/hw/jinkou/ suii06/brth8.html [accessed 8.06.2008]). 53.  It is of course also possible that women who had relationships with foreign men were more willing to talk about their experiences with me, a foreigner, than were average unwed mothers. 54. There was a considerable variation in my sample, however. Naomi, a 45-yearold high school graduate, had one of the longest relationships with the father of her child. They dated for nine years, and the man managed to secretly get married and still carry on with Naomi as a girlfriend. She only found out about the marriage when she got accidentally pregnant and the man had to explain why he could not marry her. On the opposite end of the spectrum were Naoko, a 36-year-old high

Notes to Pages 114–119    school graduate who worked as a prostitute and was impregnated by one of her clients, and Toshiko, a 26-year-old high school graduate, who got pregnant at eighteen after she broke up with her boyfriend and got drunk and slept with someone she picked up in a nightclub to drown her sorrow. 55. Twenty-two weeks in Japan. 56.  Unsurprisingly, in the majority of cases in my sample men’s attitudes were reported to vary from indifference to strongly negative. Fathers’ proclamations that they would provide child support were usually inflated, as is the case for absent fathers in other industrialized countries. See, for example, McLanahan et al., 2001, pp. 216ff. In Japan in 2006, 16 percent of divorced mothers had received child support in the past, but the fathers stopped paying after a while (MHLW, 2006e). 57.  Of course, my sample is a sample of less-responsible men as well as women who managed to carry their pregnancy to term. It could be that in society in general men participate more actively in pregnancy resolution either by marrying their girlfriends or by inducing them to have an abortion.Women with these experiences, however, will not show up in my sample, and so this study does not allow us to gauge how widespread they are. 58.  Marriage is so strongly associated with childbearing in Japan that most married men are likely to have at least one child. Reportedly, 58.7 percent of Japanese couples have a child within the first four years of marriage (NIPSSR, 2003, p. 53). 59. The subject is discussed in detail in the next chapter. 60.  All my conclusions about biological fathers are based on the mothers’ accounts, which may lead to serious bias, thus everything I report about the fathers’ views and actions should be seen as mothers’ perceptions about fathers’ views and actions (the same holds true for other groups of people discussed in this chapter). 61.  Legal joint custody of children is available in the United States as well as in most European countries. 62.  Though recently, especially with the rise of divorce, it has started to be debated in the media. See, for example, Sugiyama, 2004. Until 1998 the eligibility rules for the Child Rearing Allowance actively discouraged unwed mothers from having any contact with the fathers of their children. 63.  Fuess, 2004, pp. 131ff.; Lebra, 1984, pp. 141ff. 64.  Apart from the instances when a woman had to resolve a premarital pregnancy, in my interviews there were many other examples of parents having considerable leverage over their children’s personal lives. One woman mentioned how after dating her boyfriend for a long time she married him primarily because the parents on both sides insisted that it was high time they did so. Madoka, a 27-year-old high school graduate, told me that she had a very long relationship with a boyfriend whom she liked a great deal and whom she wished to marry but eventually it all fell apart because her parents were not enamored of him. Although the authors do not come to this conclusion explicitly, some instances of amazingly strong influence by parents on their adult children’s private decisions are also mentioned in Coleman, 1983, p. 190; Edwards, 1989; Iwao, 1993; Nakano & Wagatsuma, 2004. 65.  As opposed to women who grew up in single-parent families, as discussed in Chapter 6.

   Notes to Pages 119–124 66.  Japan is similar to other industrialized countries when it comes to reproduction of single motherhood. In my sample of interviewees, 20 percent of single unwed mothers themselves grew up in “nonstandard” families. Similarly, in a recent small study (sample size: twenty-eight women) of low-income Japanese single mothers, a significant proportion of the women (43 percent) were second-generation single mothers (Aoki, 2003, pp. 46ff.). 67.  See Chapter 2. 68.  In 2005, 41 percent of men compared to 31 percent of women said they disapproved of women who want to have children as a single parent but are unwilling to have stable relationships (www.worldvaluessurvey.org [accessed 08.08.2008]). 69.  Goffman, 1968. 70.  For a detailed discussion, see Chapter 6. 71.  Haruko’s plans to work in Cambodia were in reality abruptly cancelled because of her unexpected pregnancy. 72.  See the “parasite single” debate; for example,Yamada, 1999. In their late twenties, only about 50 percent of women consider themselves financially independent or rather more independent than dependent on their parents, and in their thirties, 46 percent of unmarried women continue receiving financial help from their parents (Miyamoto, Iwakami, & Yamada, 1997, pp. 64–68, 119). In 2005 on average 76 percent of unmarried women aged 18–34 and 70 percent aged 35–39 coresided with their parents (NIPSSR, 2005a). 73.  Like Italy, where the rate of children born outside wedlock also is one of the lowest in Europe. 74.  According to MHLW, 2003, 49 percent of families with 0- to 1.5-year-old children and full-time employed mothers rely on the support of grandmothers in childrearing (and if the mother was employed full time when the child was 6 months old, the figure jumps to 57.1 percent). See also the section on day care in Chapter 3. 75.  Casper & Bianchi, 2002, p. 158; MHLW, 2006e. A Longitudinal Survey of Children Born in the Twenty-first Century puts the figure even higher. According to this survey, in 2005 55.3 percent of all single never-married mother families with 5-year-old children coreside with the parents compared to 20 percent of two-parent families (Iwasawa & Mita, 2008, p. 178). The youth of the respondents’ children in the survey is likely to have contributed to the high coresidency rate when compared to MHLW survey findings. 76.  Goffman, 1968, p. 100. 77.  Hospital staff are a potential source of discrimination, since women have to note their marital status and are specifically asked to provide their husbands’ contact details in case there is an emergency during birth and such decisions as whether to save the child or the mother have to be made, for example. In spite of the potential knowledge about women’s status in hospitals, however, Asuka was the only one in my sample to report discrimination. 78.  If a woman has a full-time job she has to disclose that she is a single mother at least to the HR department because her child has to be registered into her medical insurance, and so on. She does not have to disclose that her child is illegitimate, however.

Notes to Pages 125–130    79.  On the contrary, quite a few women saw unwed motherhood as more widespread in society at large than in their immediate reference groups, and this did not seem to make the decision to have a child outside wedlock easier for them.This perception of the numerousness of unwed mothers was largely based on the common presence of unwed mothers in the media, especially in TV dramas. 80.  Elster, 1999, p. 152. 81. The legal reasons for this change are discussed in Chapter 4.

Chapter 6 Parts of this chapter previously appeared in Japan Forum, July 2008. 1.  And in this it is contrasted to Western families (Borovoy, 2005; Hamada, 2005; Nakane, 1970;Yoshizumi, 1995). 2.  MHLW, 2005b. 3.  Levitt & Dubner, 2005, p. 149. 4.  Elster, 1999, pp. 152ff. 5. The fear of the potential consequences of one’s childrearing-related decisions, namely whether to follow the traditions of foot-binding in China and infibulation in Africa, has been shown to outweigh parental understanding of the immediate health costs of these practices. Success in countering this fear in China and failure in Africa meant that foot-binding was successfully ended within one generation whereas infibulation still flourishes (Mackie, 1996). 6. When making choices about their children’s future, parents may be more susceptible to falling into what Elster calls a “belief trap”: a situation when a rational agent stays stuck with a false belief, because “the believed costs of testing the belief are too high” (Elster, 2007, p. 211). The effects of childrearing beliefs on parents’ actions have been documented in data on the United States and the Netherlands. For a description of the changes in childbearing norms and practices in the United States over the past one hundred years, see Hulbert, 2003. 7.  For a detailed discussion of the debate and the arguments surrounding it, see Harris, 1998; Pinker, 2002. 8.  In the word nurture here I include all environmental effects: parenting, the neighborhood, and so on. 9.  See, among others, Borovoy, 2005, ch. 5; Fujita, 1989; Ivry, 2006; Jolivet, 1997; White, 1993. 10.  At least on those who enroll in prenatal care—an “overwhelming majority” in Japan (Ivry, 2006, p. 446). 11.  Ibid., p. 459. 12.  The Japanese health care system tends to leave the decisions on informing expectant mothers about the probability of fetal complications and the possibility of testing to the doctors, who in turn have been found to be extremely reticent in these cases. This is in striking contrast with the United States, where prenatal diagnosis tests are routinized for pregnant women above thirty-five (ibid.). New guidelines of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend that all pregnant women irrespective of their age be screened for babies with Down syndrome (Economist, 2007).

   Notes to Pages 130–132 13. White, 1987, p. 19. 14.  Goodman, 2003, p. 17. 15.  Dore, 1965. 16.  Gordon, 2002, p. 116. 17.  Ibid. 18.  In later years this was to a large extent an ideological construction rather than reality. In contemporary Japan social mobility is not higher and may be even lower than in other industrial societies. For a discussion, see Ishida & Goldthorpe, 1993; Rebick, 2005, pp. 109–10. 19. White, 1987. 20. This pressure is worsened by the fact that educational success remains virtually uncontested as a route to achievement in life (Brinton, 1992; Miller & ­Kanazawa, 2000, p. 32). 21.  See, for example, Nakatani, 2006, p. 96. The lack of correct upbringing is seen as the root of many social problems. The mother-child relationship has been named as one of the causes of the problem of social withdrawal (hikikomori) and school refusal (Kaneko, 2006, p. 73), for example. Moreover, Burns mentions at least one trial for robbery and attempted rape where the sentence was affected by the evaluation of the character of the parents of the accused. “The prosecutor found the parents to be worried, apologetic and shocked, which convinced the prosecutor that rather than attempted rape, the lesser charge ‘bodily injury’ was more appropriate” (Burns, 2005, p. 60). 22.  See Sasagawa, 2006. 23.  Borovoy, 2005, p. 139. See also Hirao, 2007, p. 178. 24.  Elster, 1999, p. 163. 25.  Gordon, 2002. In a recent study Yuji Genda (2005) notes that although there is yet no evidence that income inequality has increased dramatically in the past decades, there is a clearly spreading sense of job insecurity. 26.  One indicator of the continuing concern with children’s educational performance is that the share of educational expenses among total consumption expenses has been growing continuously since mid-1970 (Hirao, 2007, p. 180). Although the falling birthrate has meant that today some second-rate universities are forced to accept most applicants, competition for the top universities has actually worsened over the past years (Goodman, 2008, p. 550). This is probably one of the reasons why the pressure on families, and especially mothers, to invest in childrearing has not decreased much. 27.  For a discussion, see Harris, 1998. 28.  Indeed, such evidence is very hard to obtain. “A central difficulty in interpreting the association between non-marital fertility and child outcomes is determining whether an observed association is causal or an artifact generated by unobserved factors that may predate the birth of a child” (Ni Brolchain, 2001). See also Wu & Wolfe, 2001, p. xxvii. For an analysis of the debate about the parents’ effect on children’s outcomes, see Harris, 1998. 29. The discussions on anonymous website chat rooms for unwed mothers also reflected the primary importance of guilt. Since in this case it is impossible to know who is writing, I decided not to incorporate an analysis of these discussions in this

Notes to Pages 132–135    book. However, following one of the most active chat rooms at the time of the fieldwork (Shinguru Mazā Kaigishitsu, http://mie-i.jp/) for a month in December 2004 made it clear that the topics of explaining illegitimacy to the child and inquiries about the potential ill-effects on the child of the status of illegitimacy were among the most commonly discussed. 30.  I mainly endeavored to interview women with young children as this ensured that their recollections about pregnancy were recent ones. This meant, however, that it is difficult for me to establish how much children might objectively suffer from their mothers’ choice. At the time of my interviews, the fear of discrimination and suffering reported by the mothers seemed to be well above the objective reality of their children’s experiences as far as the mothers knew about them. Hardly anyone, for example, answered affirmatively to the question of whether they thought their children had ever faced prejudice. 31.  Watashi no aoi sora (My blue sky) (NHK), Onna no bengoshi (Female lawyer, first episode of the TV series) (Fuji Terebi), Sekai no ichiban yasashii ongaku (The world’s sweetest music) (TBS). 32.  In one drama the father of the child died before they could get married, and in the two other dramas the mothers are deserted by the father of the child at a late stage of pregnancy. 33.  On single-mothers’ aspirations to two-parent families, see Edin & Kefalas, 2005; Nelson, 2006. 34.  When discussing the difficulties faced by mothers of drug abusers, Borovoy (2005) gives similar examples of mothers believing that they have to sacrifice everything for their children. 35.  For a long time now single-parent families have been associated with delinquency in Japan (Ezawa, 2002, p. 99). Nonetheless, there is no study I am aware of that at least attempts to disentangle, for example, the effects of poverty and of the absence of the father on the Japanese data. 36.  The importance ascribed to “faultless” family registers by employers in the past resulted from the belief that a “faultless” register certifies that an individual in question has been sufficiently exposed to such values as honesty and industriousness, which were seen as passed on much more efficiently and reliably in two-parent families. See, for example, Bryant, 1991, pp. 133ff.;Vogel, 1963, pp. 17–18. 37.  www.worldvaluessurvey.org (accessed 02.01.2009). 38.  The number of full-time housewives has decreased in Japan from 74.9 percent of wives of salaried men in 1955, to 62 percent in 1970, and 46.6 percent in 1995 (Sasagawa, 2004, pp. 183–84). For working-class women, the salaryman/housewife model is often simply unrealistic (Roberts, 1994). 39.  Imamura, 1996; Ishii-Kunz, 1993, p. 54; Iwao, 1993; Long, 1996, pp. 165–67. 40.  Satō & Takeishi, 2004, p. 38. 41.  By comparison, in the UK in 2003 men in households with children below 6 years of age spent on average 0.9 hours a day on childcare (compared with 1.6 hours a day for women employed full time) and 1.5 hours a day on other unpaid work (compared with 2.4 hours for women employed full time) (OECD, 2005, p. 201). In the United States in 2005 in households with a child under 6, employed men on average spent 1.16 hours caring for the child(ren) (compared to 1.88 hours for

   Notes to Pages 135–140 employed women) and 1.11 hours on household activities (compared to 2.1 hours for employed women) (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2006). 42.  Iwasawa & Mita, 2008, p. 183. 43.  Cf. Ishii-Kunz, 1993, p. 59. 44.  Ibid. 45.  Ibid. 46.  See ibid., p. 60, on how married fathers also understood their role in these terms. See also Nakatani, 2006, p. 96. 47.  Goodman, 2003, p. 17. 48.  These were mainly women, discussed below, from the unconventional minority less concerned with the effects of illegitimacy on the child. 49.  Even if a mother could ensure her child has little interest in accessing the register to find out his or her legitimacy, they are unlikely to be able to conceal the truth forever.Young people commonly handle their own family registers when getting a driving license, for example. 50.  Edin & Kefalas, 2005. 51.  On perceptions of the mother’s role, see Allison, 1996; Borovoy, 2005; Fujita, 1989; Jolivet, 1997; Masataka, 2004; Ohinata, 1995; Rosenberger, 1996; Sasagawa, 2004; White, 1987. A whole range of social phenomena is explained in terms of the presence or absence of suitable maternal care. 52.  This is a very recent development. Up until the 1960s fathers more often than mothers gained custody of the children in case of divorce. In 1950, 48.7 percent of fathers and 40.3 percent of mothers gained custody of all their children after divorce (11 percent had other arrangements). In 2006 the figures were 14.9 percent of fathers and 81.5 percent of mothers (3.6 percent had other arrangements) (MHLW, 2006a). 53.  Fuess, 2004, p. 157. 54. The following story shows how ambiguous the perceived responsibilities of the father are and how often financial considerations, clearly prescribed by social conventions, can come to the foreground in assessing one’s father. During the interview with Miwa, a 56-year-old high school graduate, I learned that her father was married and had a child within marriage, then met Miwa’s mother and lived with her for many years, fathering five children with her. Eventually, when my interviewee was about 10 years old, he met another woman and moved in with her, fathering yet another child. When I asked Miwa what kind of person her father was, she told me this: “My father was rather rich so we were very well off financially. We never had to think bitter thoughts because of money. The third woman was a divorcée and she had three children with her ex-husband. There was money for school fees for them and for us. Probably my father had a hard time. But still when my father died those boys, they were the same age as me, [cried] even earlier than me “Father!” even though they were not his children. Because he was there they could go to school. I could not cry. But they cried. . . . So probably he was a good person.” It is unlikely that this man was an attentive father with so many children to support in so many different families as well as probably a demanding job. Indeed, my interviewee did not recall him doing anything specific with her. Still he was remembered as “probably a good person.”

Notes to Pages 140–150    55.  Compare with the discussion of mothers with substance abusing children in Borovoy, 2005. 56.  Ogasawara, 1998, p. 125. 57.  Mizue, a 40-year-old unwed mother with a high school education. 58.  In 2004, 26.7 percent of all Japanese legitimate first-born children were conceived before their mothers got married (MHLW, 2005b). 59.  Elster, 1999, p. 153. 60. This figure is somewhat higher than the figure—28.1 percent—given in JIL, 2003, p. 460. 61.  This fear is in fact not substantiated by data: of all cases of child abuse recorded in 1996, 52.7 percent were perpetrated by biological mothers, 26.7 percent by biological fathers, and only 4 percent by stepfathers (Goodman, 2000, p. 166). 62.  For a detailed discussion of the “discovery” of child abuse in Japan in the 1990s, see Goodman, 2002, p. 8. 63.  Data on the West show that “children who experience parental divorce are more likely as adults to cohabit and to have children outside marriage” (Kiernan, 2004). According to Kiernan this result holds across nations with different cultural and welfare environments, for example, Sweden, Italy, and Hungary. This qualitative study suggests that there may also be a relationship between parental divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing in Japan. 64.  As we have seen from the examples throughout this book, sometimes even personal experience was not enough. 65.  The wife was the petitioner in 69 percent of all divorce cases brought to court in 2006 (“Family Cases [Kajihen],” Saikō Saibansho Jimu Sōkyoku [Supreme Court of Japan], www.courts.go.jp/sihotokei/nenpo/pdf/DKAJ1416.pdf [accessed 20.01.2007]). These figures, however, have to be taken with caution as divorces that involve courts in Japan are a small minority. “Mutual consent divorces constituted 91.5 percent of all divorces in 2000” (Fuess, 2004, p. 206 supranote 220). 66.  Numerous studies of single mothers in the West have attempted to establish whether children suffer more in unwed-mother families from never knowing their fathers or in families that broke down through divorce, where children had to witness the breakup of the family. There is no serious sociological study of Japanese material I know of that attempts to evaluate the exact effects of illegitimacy using the necessary fixed-effects models to control for unobserved effects (Korenman, Kaestner, & Joyce, 2001). The public just assumes illegitimacy has detrimental effects on children. 67.  Christian in one case and Buddhist in the other. Only the Christian believer told me her religion does not allow abortion and this had a direct effect on her decision to have an illegitimate child. 68.  Iwao, 1993, pp. 129–30, emphasis added. 69.  See Chapter 2 for a discussion. 70.  This attitude led to bitter disappointment in case of Yukiko, a 35-year-old high school graduate, the only unwed mother in my sample who got married ­several years after she had her first child outside wedlock. She felt almost cheated because a real marriage turned out to be very different from an imaginary one. 71.  Elster, 1999, p. 151, see also pp. 145–64.

   Notes to Page 152–156

Conclusion

1.  Ermisch, 2005. 2.  Raymo, Iwasawa, & Bumpass, 2007. 3.  Edin & Kefalas, 2005. 4.  Ibid., p. 210. 5.  A recent study has noted that people whose fathers are not of the managerial/ professional class are increasingly more likely to say that society is basically unfair (Rebick, 2005, p. 110). 6.  Given the recent findings that Japanese women marrying after getting pregnant tend to end up with less desirable partners than their non-pregnant counterparts (Raymo & Iwasawa, 2008) and that shotgun marriages are more prone to dissolution than other marriages (Iwasawa & Mita, 2008, p. 174), more research is needed on the effects of these suboptimal unions on children’s well-being.

Bibliography

The place of publication of works in Japanese is Tokyo, unless otherwise noted. Akerlof, G. A.,Yellen, J. L., & Katz, M. L. 1996. An analysis of out-of-wedlock childbearing in the United States. Quarterly Journal of Economics 111(2): 277–317. Allison, A. 1994. Nightwork: Sexuality, pleasure, and corporate masculinity in a Tokyo hostess club. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1996. Permitted and prohibited desires: Mothers, comics and censorship in Japan. Boulder, CO: Westview. Aoki, O. Ed. 2003. Gendai nihon no “mienai” hinkon (Unseen poverty in present-day Japan). Akasi Shoten. Asahi Shinbun. 1973a, Feb. 09. Kodomo no natsu no shiawase wa . . . (The child’s summer happiness is . . . ). Asahi Shinbun, p. 22. ———. 1973b, Feb. 04. Sodatetai waga ko kaeshite! (Return my child, I want to raise him!). Asahi Shinbun. ———. 2004, Mar. 03. Koseki zokugara, kongaishi sabetsu wa puraibashiiken shingai chisai, sashitome mitomezu (Regional court proclaims that koseki discriminates against illegitimate children and leads to privacy infringement. The prohibition, however, was not recognized). Asahi Shinbun. ———. 2006, Oct. 30. Dairi shusssan (Surrogate childbirth). Asahi Shinbun, p. 8. ———. 2007a, July 11. Josei no ketteiken, yaritama (A woman’s right to decide called into question). Asahi Shinbun, p. 25. ———. 2007b, May 17. Misetakunai bangumi, 14sai no haha ni sanhi, kodomo to media ni kansuru ishiki chōsa (Programs we do not want them to see: Approval and disapproval of A 14-year-old mother, children and media opinion poll results). Asahi Shinbun, p. 33. ———. 2007c, Oct. 24. “Omedeta kon” ni shouki (Sales services for shotgun marriage ceremonies). Asahi Shinbun, p. 25. ———. 2007d, Sept. 21. TV dorama saiyūshūshō, 14sai no haha ni Nihon Minkan Hōsōrenmei (The highest award for a TV drama from the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan went to A 14-year-old mother). Asahi Shinbun, p. 37. ———. 2007e, July 19. Zaisanpen: 3 Yuigonsho dou tsukuru? Kankeisha no nattoku,

   Bibliography taisetsu ni (How does one write a will? Understanding of all involved is very important). Asahi Shinbun, p. 28. ———. 2008a, May 21. Akachan mimoto hanmei 9nin. 17nin, Kantō kara mo Kumamoto: Jikei byouin “yurikago” 1nen (The origin of nine children becomes clear. One year of a “cradle” at Kumamoto’s Jikei hospital: seventeen children, some even from Kantō). Asahi Shinbun, p. 35. ———. 2008b, July 2. Jiritsu habamu hageshii genjitsu: Boshi katei 123 man setai, shinguru mazā wa ima (Hard reality blocking independence: 1,230,000 singlemother households, single mothers today). Asahi Shinbun, p. 35. ———. 2008c, Dec. 16. “Saiteigen no seikatsu” to wa? 25 nichi, seikatsu hogo no boshikasan haishi meguri shohanketsu (What is “the minimum standard of living”? The first court decision about the abolition of the single-mother subsidy for public assistance). Asahi Shinbun, p. 21. Barrett, D. B., Kurian, G. T., & Johnson, T. M. 2001. World Christian encyclopedia: A comparative survey of churches and religions in the modern world (2nd ed., vol. 1). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barrett, G. 2005. Unintended pregnancy. In A. Glasier, K.Wellings & H. O. D. Critchley (Eds.), Contraception and contraceptive use (pp. 19–32). London: Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, RCOG Press. Becker, G. S. 1991. A treatise on the family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ben-Ari, E. 1997. Japanese childcare: An interpretive study of culture and organization. ­London: Kegan Paul International. Benedict, R. 1947. The chrysanthemum and the sword: Patterns of Japanese culture. ­London: Secker and Warburg. Boling, P. 2007. Policies to support working mothers and children in Japan. In F. M. Rosenbluth (Ed.), The political economy of Japan’s low fertility (pp. 131–54). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Boonstra, H. D. 2007. The heart of the matter: Public funding of abortion for poor women in the United States. Guttmacher Policy Review 10: 12–16. Borovoy, A. B. 2005. The too-good wife: Alcohol, codependency, and the politics of nurturance in postwar Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bradshaw, J., & Finch, N. 2002. A comparison of child benefit packages in 22 countries (No. 174). London: Department for Work and Pensions. Brinton, M. 1992. Christmas cakes and wedding cakes. In T. S. Lebra (Ed.), Japanese Social Organization. Honolulu University of Hawai‘i Press. ———. 1993. Women and the economic miracle: Gender and work in postwar Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bryant, T. 1991. For the sake of the country, for the sake of the family: The oppressive impact of family registration on women and minorities in Japan. UCLA Law Review 39: 109–68. ———. 1992. “Responsible” husbands, “recalcitrant” wives, retributive judges: Judicial management of contested divorce in Japan. Journal of Japanese Studies 18: 407–43. ———. 1995. Family models, family dispute resolution and family law in Japan. UCLA Pacific Basin Law Journal 14: 1–27.

Bibliography    Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2006. American time use survey—2005 results. Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics, United States Department of Labor. Burns, C. 2005. Sexual violence and the law in Japan. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Buss, D. 1989. Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypothesis tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12: 1–49. Cabinet Office of the Japanese Government. 2006. Shōshika shakai ni kansuru kokusai ishiki hikaku chōsa hokokusho (Report on the international comparative survey on low fertility societies). Callahan, K. L. 2004. Dangerous devices, mysterious times: Men, women, and birth control in early twentieth-century Japan. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Cameron, L. M. 1996. Women and gender in the Japanese workplace and society. PhD dissertation, Columbia University. Carlson, M., McLanahan, S., & England, P. 2004. Union formation in fragile families. Demography 41(2): 237–61. Casper, L. M., & Bianchi, S. M. 2002. Continuity and change in the American family. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Castro-Vázquez, G. 2007. In the shadows: Sexuality, pedagogy, and gender among Japanese teenagers. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Chaplin, S. 2007. Japanese love hotels: A cultural history. London: Routledge. Christensen, H.T. 1966. Cultural relativism and premarital sex norms. In R.W. Roberts (Ed.), The unwed mother (pp. 61–77). New York: Harper & Row. Civisca, L. M. 1957. The validity of naien. Monumenta Nipponica Monographs no. 17. Tokyo: Sophia University. Coleman, S. 1983. Family planning in Japanese society:Traditional birth control in a modern urban culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. De Vos, G. A. 1996. Psychocultural continuities in Japanese social motivation. In D. W. Shwalb & B. J. Shwalb (Eds.), Japanese childrearing: Two generations of scholarship. New York: Guilford. Dench, G., Ogg, J., & Thompson, K. 1999. The role of grandparents. In R. Jowell et al. (Eds.), British social attitudes. The 16th report: Who shares New Labour values? National Centre for Social Research. Aldershot: Ashgate. Dore, R. P. 1965. Education in Tokugawa Japan. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Economist. 2007, July 5. Pre-natal testing. Wanted: Perfection. Economist. Edin, K., & Kefalas, M. 2005. Promises I can keep:Why poor women put motherhood before marriage. Berkeley: University of California Press. Edwards, W. 1989. Modern Japan through its weddings: Gender, person, and society in ritual portrayal. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Eichenberger, R. 2001. Marriage paradoxes. In B. S. Frey (Ed.), Inspiring economics: Human motivation in political economy (pp. 37–51). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Elster, J. 1999. Alchemies of mind: Rationality and emotions. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press ———. 2007. Explaining social behavior: More nuts and bolts for the social sciences. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press Ermisch, J. 2005. The puzzling rise of childbearing outside marriage. In A. F. Heath, J. Ermisch, & D. Gallie (Eds.), Understanding social change (pp. 23–54). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

   Bibliography Estévez-Abe, M. 2007. Gendering the varieties of capitalism: Gender bias in skills and social policies. In F. M. Rosenbluth (Ed.), The political economy of Japan’s low fertility (pp. 63–86). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 2008. Welfare and capitalism in postwar Japan. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Eurostat. 2008. Europe in figures—Eurostat statistical yearbook 2008. Luxembourg: ­European Commission. Ezawa, A. 2002. Motherhood, family, and inequality in contemporary Japan. PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ezawa, A., & Fujiwara, C. 2005. Lone mothers and welfare-to-work policies in Japan and the United States: Towards an alternative perspective. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 32(4): 41–63. Flanagan, N., & Richardson, V. 1992. Unmarried mothers: A social profile. Department of Social Policy & Social Work / Social Science Research Centre, University College, Dublin. Freeman, L. A. 2000. Closing the shop: Information cartels and Japan’s mass media. Prince­ ton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Frühstück, S. 2003. Colonizing sex: Sexology and social control in modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fuess, H. 2004. Divorce in Japan: Family, gender, and the state, 1600–2000. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Fujita, M. 1989. “It’s all mother’s fault”: Childcare and the socialization of working mothers in Japan. Journal of Japanese Studies 15(1): 67–91. Fujiwara, C. 2008. Single mothers and welfare restructuring in Japan: Gender and class dimensions of income and employment. Japan Focus (Jan. 2). www.japanfocus.org/_Fujiwara_Chisa-Single_Mothers_and_Welfare_Restructuring_in_­ Japan__Gender_and_Class_Dimensions_of_Income_and_Employment/ http:// japanfocus.org/products/details/2623. Garon, S. 1997. Molding Japanese minds:The state in everyday life. Princeton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press. Genda,Y. 2005. A nagging sense of job insecurity:The new reality facing Japanese youth (1st English ed.) Tokyo: International House of Japan. Ginsburg, T., & Hoetker, G. 2006. The unreluctant litigant? An empirical analysis of Japan’s turn to litigation. Journal of Legal Studies 35: 31–59. Goffman, E. 1968. Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Goldin, C., & Katz, L. F. 2002. The power of the pill: Oral contraceptives and women’s career and marriage decisions. Journal of Political Economy 110(4): 730–70. Goodman, R. 2000. Children of the Japanese state: The changing role of child protection institutions in contemporary Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2002. Child abuse in Japan: “Discovery” and the development of policy. In R. Goodman (Ed.), Family and social policy in Japan: Anthropological approaches (pp. 131–55). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2003. The why, what and how of educational reform in Japan. In R. Goodman & D. Phillips (Eds.), Can the Japanese change their education system? (pp. 7–30). Oxford: Symposium Books.

Bibliography    ———. 2008. Education in the aged society: The demographic challenge to Japanese education. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), The demographic challenge: A handbook about Japan (pp. 547–60). Leiden: Brill. Gordon, A. 2002. The short happy life of the Japanese middle class. In O. Zunz, L. J. Schoppa, & N. Hiwatari (Eds.), Social contracts under stress: The middle classes of America, Europe, and Japan at the turn of the century (pp. 108–29). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Goto, A., Fujiyama-Koriyama, C., Fukao, A., & Reich, M. R. 2000. Abortion trends in Japan, 1975–1995. Studies in Family Planning 31(4): 301–8. Goto, A.,Yasumura, S., Reich, M. R., & Fukao, A. 2002. Factors associated with unintended pregnancy in Yamagata, Japan. Social Science and Medicine 54(7): 1065–79. Guttmacher Institute (AGI). 1999. Sharing responsibility: Women, society and abortion worldwide. New York: AGI. Hamada, T. 2005. The anthropology of Japanese corporate management. In J. Robertson (Ed.), A companion to the anthropology of Japan (pp. 125–52). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Hara, J., & Katase, K. 2005. Seishōnen no sei kōdō zenkoku chōsa (A national survey of sexual behavior of youth). Japan Family Planning Association. Hardacre, H. 1997. Marketing the menacing fetus in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Harris, J. R. 1998. The nurture assumption: Why children turn out the way they do. London: Bloomsbury. Hayes, P., & Habu, T. 2006. Adoption in Japan: Comparing policies for children in need. London: Routledge. Hendry, J. 1993. The role of the professional housewife. In J. Hunter (Ed.), Japanese women working (pp. 223–40). London: Routledge. Henshaw, S. K., Singh, S., & Haas,T. 2001. Recent trends in abortion rates worldwide. In S. K. Henshaw, T. Haas, K. Berentsen, & E. Carbone (Eds.), Readings on induced abortion, volume 2: A world review 2000. New York: Alan Guttmacher Institute. Hertog, E. 2008. “The worst abuse against a child is the absence of a parent”: How Japanese unwed mothers evaluate their decision to have a child outside wedlock. Japan Forum 20(2): 193–217. ———. Forthcoming. “I did not know how to tell my parents so I thought I would have to have an abortion”: Experiences of unmarried mothers in Japan. In A. Alexy & R. Ronald (Eds.), The fragile house: Shifting frames and changing shapes of home and family in Japan. London: Routledge. Hill, P. B. E. 2003. The Japanese mafia:Yakuza, law, and the state. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hirao, K. 2007.The privatized education market and maternal employment in Japan. In F. M. Rosenbluth (Ed.), The political economy of Japan’s low fertility (pp. 170–97). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ho, S. L. 2008. Private love in public spaces: Love hotels and the transformation of intimacy in contemporary Japan. Asian Studies Review 32(1): 31–56. Hodge, R.W., & Ogawa, N. 1991. Fertility change in contemporary Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Holthus, B. 2008. Day care reforms. DIJ Newsletter, p. 3.

   Bibliography Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division. 2005. Custodial mothers and fathers and their child support. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. Hulbert, A. 2003. Raising America: Experts, parents, and a century of advice about children (1st ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Imamura, A. E. 1996. Introduction. In A. E. Imamura (Ed.), Re-imaging Japanese women (pp. 1–11). Berkeley: University of California Press. International Planned Parenthood Federation. 2008. Directory of hormonal contraceptives. Retrieved 22.12.2008, from International Planned Parenthood Federation, http://contraceptive.ippf.org. Ishida, H., & Goldthorpe, J. H. 1993. Social mobility in contemporary Japan: Educational credentials, class and the labour market in a cross-national perspective. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Ishii-Kunz, M. 1993. Japanese fathers: Work demands and family roles. In J. C. Hood (Ed.), Men, work, and family (pp. 45–67). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Ivry, T. 2006. At the back stage of prenatal care: Japanese ob-gyns negotiating pre­ natal diagnosis. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 20(4): 441–68. Iwao, S. 1993. The Japanese woman: Traditional image and changing reality. New York: Free Press. Iwasawa, M. 2000.The transformation of partnerships of Japanese women in the 1990s. Working Paper, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. Iwasawa, M., & Mita, F. 2008. Shusseiji jūdan chōsa ni miru boshi hitorioya kazoku no hassei jijo (Circumstances in which single-mother families originate as seen through a longitudinal survey of children). In R. Kaneko (Ed.), Kōsei rōdō kagaku kenkyūhi “Paneru chōsa (jūdan chōsa) ni kansuru sōgōteki bunseki sisutemu no kanpatsu kenkyū” Heisei 18–19 nendo sōgō kenkyū hōkokusho (MHLW research grant “Longitudinal survey research” 2006–2007 general research report) (pp. 435–58). Izuhara, M. 2000. Family change and housing in post-war Japanese society: The experiences of older women. Aldershot: Ashgate. JIL. 2003. Boshi setai no haha e no shūgyō shien ni kansuru kenkyū (A study of labor market support to single mothers) (No. 156). Nihon Rōdō Kenkyū Kikō (Japan Institute of Labor and Policy Training). Jolivet, M. 1997. Japan:The childless society? London: Routledge. Kajimura Taichi. 1997. Kasai jitsumu ni okeru DNA kantei (On the handling of DNA tests in the Tokyo Family Court). Kazoku: Shakai to Hō (Socio-legal studies on family law) 13: 128–42. Kaneko, S. 2006. Hikikomori and cultural debates about Japanese personhood: An anthropological study of Japan’s so-called “socially withdrawn youth.” D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, Oxford. Kelly, W. 1993. Finding a place in metropolitan Japan: Ideologies, institutions and everyday life. In A. Gordon (Ed.), Postwar Japan as history (pp. 189–238). Berkeley: University of California Press. Kiernan, K. 2004. Redrawing the boundaries of marriage. Journal of Marriage and Family 66(4): 980–87. Killik, S. R. 2005. Patterns of contraceptive use: Cross-sectional surveys. In A. Glasier, K.Wellings, & H. O. D. Critchley (Eds.), Contraception and contraceptive use (pp. 88– 97). London: Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, RCOG Press.

Bibliography    Konsakai. 2004. Hikon no oya to kongaishi: Sabetsu naki ashita ni mukatte (Unmarried parents and illegitimate children: Toward a future with no discrimination). Aoki Shoten. Korenman, S., Kaestner, R., & Joyce, T. J. 2001. Unintended pregnancy and the consequences of nonmarital childbearing. In L. Wu & B. L. Wolfe (Eds.), Out of wedlock: Causes and consequences of nonmarital fertility (pp. 259–86). New York: Russell Sage. Kushner, B. 2005. The thought war: Japanese imperial propaganda. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Lam, A. 1993. Equal employment opportunities for Japanese women: Changing company practice. In J. Hunter (Ed.), Japanese women working (pp. 197–222). London: Routledge. Lebra, T. S. 1984. Japanese women. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Lee, R. M. 1993. Doing research on sensitive topics. London: Sage. Lefleur, W. 1992. Liquid life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lesthaeghe, R. J. L. 1995. The second demographic transition in Western countries: An interpretation. In K. O. Mason & A.-M. Jensen (Eds.), Gender and family change in industrialized countries (pp. 17–62). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lesthaeghe, R. J. L., & Meekers, D. 1986. Value Changes and the dimensions of familism in the European community. European Journal of Population 2(3/4): 225– 68. Levitt, S. D., & Dubner, S. J. 2005. Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything (1st ed.). London: Allen Lane. Lewis, J. 1997. Lone mothers in European welfare regimes: Shifting policy logics. London: J. Kingsley. Lo, J. 1990. Office ladies, factory women: Life and work at a Japanese company. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Long, S. O. 1996. Nurturing and femininity:The ideal of caregiving in postwar ­Japan. In A. E. Imamura (Ed.), Re-imaging Japanese women (pp. 156–76). Berkeley: University of California Press. Macintyre, S. 1977. Single and pregnant. London, New York: Croom Helm, Prodist. Mackie, G. 1996. Ending footbinding and infibulation: A convention account. American Sociological Review 61(6): 999–1017. Mainichi Shinbun. 1973, May 07. Kyōin no mikon jitsubo (The real mother, an unmarried teacher). Mainichi Shinbun. Mainichi Shinbunsha (Ed.). 2000. Nihon no jinkō. Sengō 50nen no kiseki (Japanese population: Trajectory of the fifty postwar years). Mainichi Shinbunsha Jinkō Mondai Chōsakai Pen (A publication of the Population Problems Survey Research Section, Mainichi Newspaper Company). ———. 2005. Chōshoshika jidai no kazoku ishiki. Dai ikkai jinkō, kazoku, yoron chōsa hōkokusho (Family views in the era of very low fertility. First national survey on population, families, and opinions). Mainichi Shinbunsha Jinkō Mondai Chōsakai Pen (A publication of the Population Problems Survey Research Section, Mainichi Newspaper Company).

   Bibliography Mansour, D. 2005. Overview of contraceptive methods: A providers perspective. In A. Glasier, K. Wellings, & H. O. D. Critchley (Eds.), Contraception and contraceptive use (pp. 44–77). London: Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, RCOG Press. Masataka, N. 2004. Nihonjin ga “saruka” shita koto ga shōshika no gen’in nan desu (The cause of the low birth rate is that the Japanese people have been “monkeyed”). Rosetta Sutōn: 38–39. Matsubara,Y.,Yuzawa, N., Murata, N., & Yamada,Y. 1999. Boshi seikatsu shien shisetsu (Mother and child support facilities ). Eideru Kenkyūsho. Matsuyama, E. 1988. Kakkoku ni okeru jinkō ninshin chūzetsu no jittai (The reality of abortions in different countries). Sanfujinka no Jissai (Obstetrical and gynecological practice) 37(9): 1249–56. McLanahan, S., Garfinkel, I., Reichman, N. E., & Teiter, J. O. 2001. Unwed parents or fragile families? Implications for welfare and child support policy. In L. Wu & B. L. Wolfe (Eds.), Out of wedlock: Causes and consequences of nonmarital fertility (pp. 202–28). New York: Russell Sage. McLanahan, S., & Sandefur, G. 1994. Growing up with a single parent: What hurts, what helps? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University press. Meguro, Y., & Nishioka, H. (Eds.). 2004. Shoshika no jendā bunseki (Analysis of the gender issues behind the low birth rate). Keisōshobō. MHLW. 1998a. Heisei 10 nen shakai fukushi shisetsu tō chōsa (A survey of social welfare facilities, 1998). Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 1998b. Heisei 10 nendo zenkoku boshi setai tō chōsa kekka hōkoku (Results of the national survey on single-mother and other households, 1998). Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 1999. Dokushin seinensō no kekkonkan to kodomokan (Attitudes toward marriage and children among unmarried youth). Kōsei Rōdōshō Jinkō Kenkyūjo Kōsei Tōkei Kyōkai (Population Research, Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 2003. Dainikai nijūisseki shusseiji jūdan chōsa no gaikyō (Overview of the Second nationwide survey in the twenty-first century about new-born children). Retrieved 18.04.2006, from Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare), www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/saikin/hw/syusseiji/02/index.html. ———. 2004a. Eisei gyōsei hōkoku rei (Cases from [public] health administrative reports). Retrieved 8.05.2006, from Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare), wwwdbtk.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/data/130/2004/toukeihyou/0005365/ t0114246/HAR0610_001.html. ———. 2004b. Heisei 15 nen shūgyō keitai no tayōka ni kansuru sōgō jittai chōsa kekka no gaikyō (An overview of a general survey of the diversification of state employment forms, 2003). Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 2004c. Heisei 16 nen jinkō dōtai chōsa (A survey of population trends, 2004). Retrieved 20.05.2006, from Kōsei Rōdōshō Jinkō Kenkyūjo (Population Research Unit, Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare), wwwdbtk.mhlw.go.jp/ toukei/data/012/2005/toukeihyou/0005482/t0118957/h13_001.html. ———. 2004d. Jidō yōgo shisetsu nyūsho jidō tō chōsa kekka no gaikyō (An overview of a survey of children admitted into orphanages). Kōsei Rōdōshō Koyōkin tō Jidō

Bibliography    Katei Kyoku (Employment Equality, Children and Families Bureau, Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 2004e. Josei koyō kanri kihon chōsa (A basic survey of female employment). Retrieved 03.06.2007, from Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare), wwwdbtk.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/kouhyo/indexkr_17_3_1.html. ———. 2004f. Kokumin seikatsu kisō chōsa (National basic survey of life). Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 2005a. Heisei 17 nen jinkō dōtai chōsa (A survey of population trends, 2005). Retrieved 07.05.2006, from Kōsei Rōdōshō Tokeihyō Dētabēsu (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare Statistics Database), wwwdbtk.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/ data/010/2005/toukeihyou/0005626/t0124555/MH110000_001.html. ———. 2005b. Heisei 17 nendō “Shussei ni kansuru tōkei” no gaikyō: Jinkō dōtai tōkei tokushu hōkoku (A special report of the population trends 2005: Overview of statistics on childbirth). Kōsei Rōdōshō Daijin Kanbō Tōkei Jōhōbu (Minister’s Secretariat, Statistical Information Bureau, Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 2005c. Heisei 17 nendo kokumin seikatsu kisō chōsa (National basic survey of life, 2005). Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 2005d. Heisei 17 nendo ni okeru boshikatei no haha no shūgyō shien shisaku no jisshi no jōkyō (2005 report on the implementation of the single-mothers’ employment support policy). Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 2005e. Seikansenshō hōkokusū (Diagnosed sexually transmitted infections: Figures). Kōsei Rōdōshō Kenkōkyoku (Health Department, Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 2005f. Shakai fukushi: Seikatsu hogo (Social welfare: Livelihood protection). Retrieved 23.07.2007, from Kōsei Rōdōshō Kenkōkyoku (Health Department, Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare), wwwdbtk.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/youran/ indexyk_3_1.html. ———. 2006a. Heisei 18 nen jinkō dōtai chōsa (A survey of population trends, 2006). Retrieved 24.12.2008, from Kōsei Rōdōshō Tokeihyō Dētabēsu (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare Statistics Database). ———. 2006b. Heisei 18 nen shakai fukushi shisetsu tō chōsa (A survey of social welfare facilities, 2006). Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 2006c. Heisei 18 nendo eisei gyōsei hōkoku rei (Cases from the 2006 [public] health administrative reports). Retrieved 3.04.2008, from Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare), wwwdbtk.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/data/130/2006/ toukeihyou/0006097/t0135958/HAR0600_001.html. ———. 2006d. Heisei 18 nendo ni okeru boshikatei no haha no shūgyō no shien ni kansuru shisaku jisshi no jōkyō hōkoku (2006 report on the implementation of the singlemothers’ employment support policy). Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 2006e. Heisei 18 nendo zenkoku boshi setai tō chōsa kekka hōkoku (Results of the national survey on single-mother and other households, 2006). Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). ———. 2006f. Hoikusho no jōkyō (Heisei 18 nen 4gatsu tsuitachi) tō ni tsuite (On the state of day care as of April 1, 2006). Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare).

   Bibliography ———. 2006g. Kodomo, kosodate ōen puran (Childrearing support plan). Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare). Miller, A. S., & Kanazawa, S. 2000. Order by accident: The origins and consequences of conformity in contemporary Japan. Boulder, CO: Westview. Miyamoto, M., Iwakami, M., & Yamada, M. 1997. Mikonka shakai no oyakokankei: Okane to aijō ni miru kazoku no yukue (Parent-child relationships in a society with a trend toward no marriage: The future of the family seen through money and love).Yūhikaku. Moffitt, R. 1992. Incentive effects of the U.S. welfare system: A review. Journal of Economic Literature 30(1): 1–61. Molony, B. 1993. Equality versus difference: The Japanese debate over “motherhood protection,” 1915–1950. In J. Hunter (Ed.), Japanese women working (pp. 122–29). London: Routledge. Monbukagakushō. 2005. Heisei nendo 17 gakkō kihon chōsa (Basic survey of education, 2005). Monbukagakushō (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, and Technology). ———. 2006. Heisei 18 nendo gakkō kihon chōsa (Basic survey of schools, 2006). Monbukagakushō (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology). ———. 2007. Monbu tōkei yōran (An overview of statistics on education). Monbukagakushō (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, and Technology). Mouer, R., & Sugimoto,Y. 1990. Images of Japanese society: A study in the social construction of reality. London: Kegan Paul International. Murray, C. A. 1984. Losing ground: American social policy, 1950–1980. New York: Basic Books. Nakane, C. 1970. Japanese society. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Nakano, L., & Wagatsuma, M. 2004. Mothers and their unmarried daughters: An intimate look at generational change. In G. Mathews & B. White (Eds.), Japan’s changing generations: Are young people creating a new society? (pp. 137–54). London: RoutledgeCurzon. Nakatani, A. 2006. The emergence of “nurturing fathers”: Discourses and practices of fatherhood in contemporary Japan. In M. Rebick & A. Takenaka (Eds.), The changing Japanese family (pp. 94–108). London: Routledge. Nelson, M. K. 2006. Single mothers “do” family. Journal of Marriage and Family 68(4): 781–95. Ni Brolchain, M. 2001. “Divorce effects” and causality in the social sciences. European Sociological Review 17(1): 33–57. NIPSSR. 2003. Waga kuni fūfu no kekkon katei to shussanryoku (Marriage process and the fertility of Japanese married couples). Kokuritsu Shakai Hoshō Jinkō Mondai Kenkyūkai (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research). ———. 2005a. Dai 13kai shussei dōkō kihon chōsa. Kekkon to shussan ni kansuru zenkoku chōsa: Dokushinsha chōsa to kekka gaikyō (The thirteenth basic survey of birth trends. National survey of marriage and childbearing: A survey of singles, overview). Kokuritsu Shakai Hoshō Jinkō Mondai Kenkyūkai (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research). ———. 2005b. Dai 13kai shussei dōkō kihon chōsa. Kekkon to shussan ni kansuru ­zenkoku

Bibliography    chōsa: Fūfu chōsa to kekka gaikyō (The thirteenth basic survey of birth trends. National survey of marriage and childbearing: A survey of married couples, overview). Kokuritsu Shakai Hoshō Jinkō Mondai Kenkyūkai (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research). Niwa, A. 1993. The formation of the myth of motherhood in Japan. U.S. Japan Women’s Journal, English Supplement 4: 70–82. Nolte, H. S., & Hastings, S. A. 1991. The Meiji state’s policy toward women, 1890– 1910. In G. L. Bernstein (Ed.), Recreating Japanese women, 1600–1945 (pp. 151–74). Berkeley: University of California Press. Norgren, C. A. E. 2001. Abortion before birth control:The politics of reproduction in postwar Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. NPO Hōjin Shinguru Mazā Fōramu. 2004. Boshikatei shigoto to kurashi (Work and life for single-mother families). NPO Hōjin Shinguru Mazā Fōramu (NPO Single Mothers Forum). OECD. n.d. Social expenditures database. Retrieved 26.04.2008, from Economic and Social Data Service, http://esds.mcc.ac.uk/wds_oecd/ReportFolders/­Report Folders.aspx?CS_referer=&CS_ChosenLang=en ———. 2005. Babies and bosses: Reconciling work and family life. Canada, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom (vol. 4). Paris: OECD Publishing. Offer, A. 2006. The challenge of affluence: Self-control and well-being in the United States and Britain since 1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ogasawara, Y. 1998. Office ladies and salaried men: Power, gender, and work in Japanese companies. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ogawa, N. 2003. Japan’s changing fertility mechanisms and its policy responses. Journal of Population Research, 20(1): 89–106. Ohinata, M. 1995. The mystique of motherhood: A key to understanding social change and family problems in Japan. In K. Fujimura-Fanselow (Ed.), Japanese women: New feminist perspectives on the past, present, and future (pp. 199–212). New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York. Oishi, A. S. 2008. Child care in a low birth society. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), The demographic challenge: A handbook about Japan (pp. 277–92). Leiden: Brill. ONS. 2006a. Live births: 1938–2004 Age of a mother in 5 year age-groups. Newport: ­Office for National Statistics. ———. 2006b. Results from the general household survey. Newport: Office for National Statistics. Osaka Shinbun. 1973, Oct. 10. Sodate haha ni kaese (Return [the child] to the mother who raised him!). Osaka Shinbun, p. 1. Osawa, M. 2002. Twelve million full-time housewives: The gender consequences of Japan’s postwar social contract. In O. Zunz, L. J. Schoppa, & N. Hiwatari (Eds.), Social contracts under stress: The middle classes of America, Europe, and Japan at the turn of the century (pp. 255–77). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. ———. 2005. Comparative social policy systems from a gender perspective. Social Science Japan Journal 31: 9–13. Parke, M. 2003. Are married parents really better for children? What research says about the effects of family structure on child well-being. Washington, DC: Center for Law and Social Policy.

   Bibliography Peng, I. 1997. Boshi katei: A theoretical and case analysis of Japanese lone mothers and their relationship to the state, the labor market, and the family with reference to Britain and Canada. PhD dissertation, London School of Economics. Phoenix, A. 1996. Social construction of lone motherhood: A case of competing discourses. In E. B. Silva (Ed.), Good enough mothering? London and New York: Routledge. Pinker, S. 2002. The blank slate:The modern denial of human nature. London: Allen Lane. Preston, S. H. 1987. Changing values and falling birth rates. In K. Davis, M. S. Bernstam, & R. Ricardo-Campbell (Eds.), Below-replacement fertility in industrial societies: Causes, consequences, policies (pp. 176–200). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Rains, P. 1971. Becoming an unwed mother: A sociological account. Chicago: Aldine Atherton. Raymo, J. 2000. Spouse selection and marriage timing in Japan. PhD dissertation, University of Michigan. Raymo, J., & Iwasawa, M. 2008. Bridal pregnancy and spouse pairing patterns in Japan. Journal of Marriage and Family 70: 847–860. Raymo, J., Iwasawa, M., & Bumpass, L. 2004. Marital dissolution in Japan: Recent trends and patterns. Demographic Research 11(14): 395–420. ———. 2007. Cohabitation and first marriage in Japan. Unpublished CDE Working Paper. Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Rebick, M. 2005. The Japanese employment system: Adapting to a new economic environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2006. Changes in the workplace and their impact on the family. In M. ­Rebick & A. Takenaka (Eds.), The Changing Japanese family (pp. 75–93). London: Routledge. Retherford, R. D., Ogawa, N., & Matsukura, R. 2001. Late marriage and less marriage in Japan. Population and Development Review 27(1): 65–102. Rindfuss, R. R., Guzzo, K. B., & Morgan, P. S. 2003.The changing institutional context of low fertility. Population Research and Policy Review 22: 411–38. Roberts, G. S. 1994. Staying on the line: Blue-collar women in contemporary Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. ———. 2002. Pinning hopes on angels: Reflections from an aging Japan’s urban landscape. In R. Goodman (Ed.), Family and social policy in Japan (pp. 54–91). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2005a. Balancing work and life: Whose work? Whose life? Whose balance? Asian Perspective 29(1): 175–211. ———. 2005b. Shifting contours of class and status. In J. Robertson (Ed.), A companion to the anthropology of Japan. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Rosenberger, N. R. 1996. Fragile resistance, signs of status:Women between state and media in Japan. In A. E. Imamura (Ed.), Re-imaging Japanese women (pp. 13–45). Berkeley: University of California Press. Rosenbluth, F. M. 2007. The political economy of Japan’s low fertility. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ryang, S. 2004. Japan and national anthropology: A critique. London: Routledge­ Curzon.

Bibliography    Sakai, J. 2004. Makeinu no tōboe (Excuses of a loser dog). Kōdansha. Sankei Shinbun. 1973, Sept. 05. Umi no haha ga uttae torisage (Appeal of the biological mother withdrawn). Sankei Shinbun. Sasagawa, A. 2004. Centered selves and life choices: Changing attitudes of young educated mothers. In G. Mathews & B. White (Eds.), Japan’s changing generations: Are young people creating a new society? (pp. 171–88). London: RoutledgeCurzon. Sasagawa, A. 2006. Mother-rearing: The social world of mothers in a Japanese suburb. In M. Rebick & A. Takenaka (Eds.), The changing Japanese family. London: Routledge. Satō, H., & Takeishi, M. 2004. Dansei no ikuji kyūgyō (Childcare leave for men). Chūkō Shinsho. Sato, R., & Iwasawa, M. 2006. Contraceptive use and induced abortion in Japan: How is it so unique among the developed countries? Japanese Journal of Population 4(1): 33–54. Schoppa, L. J. 2006. Race for the exits: The unraveling of Japan’s system of social protection. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Shakai Fukushi Hōjin Onshi Zaidan Boshi Aiiku Kai Nihon Kodomo Katei Sōgō Kenkyūsho. 2004. Nihon kodomo shiryō nenkan (Almanac of data on Japanese children). KTC Chuō Shuppan. Shimazu,Y. 1994. Unmarried mothers and their children in Japan. U.S. Japan Women’s Journal, English Supplement 6: 83–110. Shimoebisu, M. 2008. Yōikuhi seisaku ni miru kokka to kazoku (Family, state, and child support policy). Keisōshobō. Shinguru Mazā Fōramu. 1998. Boshikatei ni kanpai! Rikon, hikon wo kodomo to tomo ni ikiru anata e (Cheers to the single mothers! To divorced and never married mothers who are living together with their children!). Gendai Shokan. ———. 2001. Boshikatei ni kanpai! Rikon, hikon wo kodomo to tomo ni (Cheers to the single mothers! To divorced and never married mothers together with their children). Gendai Shokan. Shūkan Asahi. 2004, July 16. Sawada Ayako no negai: Hitori musume wo jisshi toshite mitomete (Sawada Ayako’s wish: Please recognize my only daughter as my biological child). Shūkan Asahi, p, 150. Shūkan Bunshun. 2004, April 22. Aijin ga 4nin mo ita. 24sai shinguru mazā no fūhyō (She had four lovers: Rumors about a 24-year-old single mother). Shūkan ­Bunshun, pp. 144–45. Shūkan Shinchō. 1991, Dec. 26. Konfidensharu Tōkyō johō (Confidential Tokyo information). Shūkan Shinchō, p. 112. Smith, R. J., & Wiswell, E. L. 1982. The women of Suye mura. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sōmushō Tōkeikyoku. 2000. Kokusei chōsa hōkoku (Census survey report). Sōmushō Tōkeikyoku (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications). ———. 2002. Heisei 14 nendo shūgyō kōzō kihon chōsa (Basic survey of employment, 2002). Sōmushō Tōkeikyoku (Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications). ———. 2005. Heisei 17 nen kokusei chōsa (2005 census). Sōmushō Tōkeikyoku (Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications).

   Bibliography Steinhoff, P. G. 1984. Student conflict. In E. S. Krauss, T. P. Rohlen, P. G. Steinhoff, Joint Committee on Japanese Studies, & Social Science Research Council (U.S.) (Eds.), Conflict in Japan (pp. 174–213). Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Sugiyama, M. 2004, Nov. 1. Kodomo ubaiai no sōzetsu (A battle for the child). AERA, pp. 38–40. Thomson, E. 2005. Partnerships and parenthood: A comparative view of cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing. In A. Booth & A. C. Crouter (Eds.), The new population problem: Why families in developed countries are shrinking and what it means (pp. 129–49). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Tsuya, N. O., Mason, K. O., & Bumpass, L. L. 2004.Views of marriage among nevermarried young adults. In N. O. Tsuya & L. L. Bumpass (Eds.), Marriage, work and family life in comparative perspective: Japan, South Korea, and the United States (pp. 39–53). Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Tsuyuki,Y. 2007. Shinguru mazā no tame no ninchi, yōikuhi, isharyō (Acknowledgment, child maintenance, and damage payments for single mothers). Kyūtensha. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Current population survey—June 2004. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Studies. 2008. World contraceptive use 2007. New York: United Nations Publications. United Nations Population Division. 2002. Abortion policies: A global review. New York: United Nations Population Division. Uno, K. S. 1993.The death of “good wife, wise mother”? In A. Gordon (Ed.), Postwar Japan as history. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1999. Passages to modernity: Motherhood, childhood, and social reform in early twentieth century Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. van de Kaa, D. J. 1996. Anchored narratives: The story and findings of half a century of research into the determinants of fertility. Population Studies 50(3): 389–432. Vogel, E. F. 1963. Japan’s new middle class:The salary man and his family in a Tokyo suburb. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wada, J. 2007. The political economy of day care centers in Japan. In F. M. Rosenbluth (Ed.), The political economy of Japan’s low fertility (pp. 155–69). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Wellings, K. 2005. Trends in sexual behaviors. In A. Glasier, K. Wellings, & H. O. D. Critchley (Eds.), Contraception and contraceptive use (pp. 12–18). London: Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, RCOG Press. West, M. D. 2005. Law in everyday Japan: Sumo, suicide and statutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2006. Secrets, sex, and spectacle: The rules of scandal in Japan and the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. White, M. 1987. The Japanese educational challenge: A commitment to children. New York: Free Press. ———. 1993. The material child: Coming of age in Japan and America. New York: Free Press. Wilson, W. J. 1999. When work disappears: The world of the new urban poor. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Bibliography    Wright, C. 2002. Single mothers by choice? The gendered subjective careers of unmarried single mothers in Japan. PhD dissertation, Ritsumeikan University. ———. 2007. Single mothers by choice? Unmarried single mothers in Japan. Osaka: Osaka Kyōiku Tosho. Wu, L., & Wolfe, B. 2001. Out of wedlock: Causes and consequences of nonmarital fertility. New York: Russell Sage. Yamada, M. 1996. Kekkon no shakaigaku: Mikonka, bankonka tsuzuku no ka? (The sociology of marriage: Will late marriages and non-marriages continue?). Maruzen. ———. 1999. Parasaito shinguru no jidai (The age of parasite singles). Chikuma Shobō. Yamamoto, B. A. 1999. A gendered analysis of the teenage pregnancy ‘problem’ in Japan: Pushing the limits of ‘Good Girl’ behaviour. PhD dissertation, University of Sheffield. ———. 2005. Good policy, poor practice? Unpublished working paper. Waseda University, Japan. Yoder, R. S. 2004. Youth deviance in Japan: Class reproduction of non-conformity. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Yoshizumi, K. 1995. Marriage and family: Past and present. In K. Fujimura-Fanselow (Ed.), Japanese women: New feminist perspectives on the past, present, and future (pp. 183–97). New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York. ———. 1997. Kindai kazoku wo koeru (Going beyond the contemporary family). Aoki Shoten. ———. (Ed.). 2000. Kekkon to patonā kankei:Toinaosareru fūfu (Marriage and partnership: Changing couples). Minerva. Zenbokyō. 2006. Heisei 18 nendō zenkoku boshi seikatsu shien shisetsu jittai chōsa (National survey of the state of mother and child living support facilities, 2006). Zenkoku Boshi Seikatsu Shien Shisetsu Kyōgikai (National Assembly of Mother and Child Living Support Facilities).

Index

abortion: as a solution to a premarital pregnancy, 7, 8, 9, 18, 19, 25, 27, 29, 32, 33, 35, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 47, 77, 107, 114, 117, 127, 141, 149, 175n50, 180n107, 181n118, 197n31; attitudes to in Japan, 8, 27, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 47, 107, 141, 147, 153, 178n78, 179n94, 180n109, 205n67; attitudes to in the West, 37–38, 153–54, 179n94; availability of in Japan, 2, 16, 19, 35–36, 38, 147, 180n103; availability of in the West, 35, 175n50, 176n65, 180n102; availability of information about, 22–23, 36, 37, 107; child father’s insistence on, 27, 31, 37, 115, 116, 138, 141, 142; contraception and, 33, 36, 37, 180n108; decision, 141, 147, 153, 199n57; law and, 35– 36, 171n2, 178n78, 179nn92,93,94,95,97; parents’ insistence on, 1, 37, 43, 109, 117, 118, 119, 121, 178n78; price of, 37, 180n100; rates, 23, 35, 156, 168n28, 176n69, 178nn89,90, 180n105; reporting of, 179n90 adoption: agencies, 32–33, 178nn85,86; as a solution to a premarital pregnancy, 32–34, 178n87, 187n77; attitudes to, 34, 177nn74,78; in the West, 32, 176n65; of adults, 32; ordinary adoption (yōshi engumi), 32–34, 177nn74,75; orphanages vs., 34, 35, 178nn84,87; special adoption (tokubetsu yōshi engumi), 32–34, 177nn70,75, 178n86. See also foster care; father, stepfather adultery (see marriage, adultery) after-school clubs (gakudō kurabu), 55, 185n46 AIDS, 173n24 Akachan posuto (see Baby post)

Angel Plan, 54, 55. See also New Angel Plan Baby post (Akachan posuto), 177n74 Becker, Gary, 5 Benedict, Ruth, 96, 97 birth control (see contraception) Borovoy, Amy, 203n34 Boshi Fukushi Shikin (see Mother and Child Welfare Loan Fund) Boshi Hogo Hō (see Maternal Protection Law) Boshi Katei nado Shūgyō Jiritsu Shien Sentā (see Single-Mother Employment and Independence Support Centers) Boshi oyobi Kafu Fukushi Hō (see Welfare Law for Single Mothers and Widows) Boshi Seikatsu Shien Shisetsu (see Mother and Child Living Support Facilities) boshi sōdanin (see single-mother advisors) boshiryō (see Mother and Child Living Support Facilities) Buddhism, 205n67 Bumpass, Larry, 31 Bursaries Promoting Professional Skills Training (Kōtō Ginō Kunren Sokushinhi), 58 Canada, 50 Census (Kokusei Chōsa), 79, 168n18 child abuse, 104, 106, 127, 143, 205n62; stepfathers and, 143, 144, 205n61 Child Allowance, 74, 187n85 child consultation centers (jidōsōdanjo), 34, 178nn85,86 Child Rearing Allowance, 66, 70, 71, 72–73, 74, 75, 90, 186n56, 188nn105,106, 189nn107,111, 199n62; eligibility for, 188nn106,107 child support, 10, 75, 77, 78, 87, 93–94,

   Index 194nn55,56, 195nn58,59, 199n56; law and, 86, 90, 91–93; payment avoidance, 90–91, 92, 199n56; welfare and, 91 Child Welfare Law, 54 childbearing, West, 201n6; outside marriage, 4, 175n50 childbearing outside marriage, Japan: occurrence, 2, 15, 103, 128, 181n117; reasons for, 40–42; theories, 5–7, 49, 83, 97, 151–55. See also illegitimacy childcare leave (ikuji kyūka): Childcare and Family Leave Law (Ikuji Kaigo Kyūgyō Hō), 183n28; Childcare Leave Law (Ikuji Kyūgyō Hō), 54; consequences of taking, 63–64; entitlement to, 54, 59, 60, 62, 183n29, 184n33; importance for single mothers, 54. See also maternity leave childrearing, other countries, 176n57, 201nn5,6; nature vs. nurture debate, 201n7 childrearing, Japan: advice on, 131, 136; beliefs and norms associated with, 2, 38, 47, 153, 154, 167n13; children’s malleability, 129–31, 140, 149, 154; father’s and, 135; magazines on, 101; mother’s and, 30, 68, 131, 135, 149, 202n26; support, 12, 56, 66, 197n38, 200n74; within marriage norm, 95, 128, 136, 146, 149, 151, 191n18 China, 174n43, 192n31, 201n5 Christianity, 37, 179n94, 180n104, 205n67 Civil Code, 79, 82, 84, 86, 177n70, 192n30 cohabitation, 7, 31, 39–40, 152, 176n61, 176n62 Coleman, Samuel, 19, 20, 24, 174n32 contraception, 19; adoption of, 20, 23, 24, 36, 42, 127, 172n9; attitudes to, 36, 147, 169n30, 175n49, 181n120; availability of, 20–21, 38, 172nn16,17; knowledge about, 21–23, 24, 33, 36, 37, 173nn28,31, 174nn32,43,44; methods, 24, 172nn16,17, 173n20, 174n43, 174n44; price of, 37; rates of, 175n44. See also abortion, contraception and Criminal Abortion Law, 35–36 day care, 102, 133, 139, 140, 148, 184nn35,40; attitudes to, 38, 55, 56, 108, 185n49; availability of, 54–55, 62, 66, 67, 184nn34,43; fees, 54, 61, 64, 74, 187n84 dekichatta kekkon (see shotgun marriage) divorce: attitudes to, 6, 7, 28, 30, 45, 105, 116, 119, 197n22; child custody after, 33, 116, 140, 199n61, 204n52; consequences of, 33, 36, 44, 102, 103, 105, 192n30, 205n63; existing research on, 2; in media (see single

mothers, in media); law and, 50, 78, 80–81, 84–85, 93, 105, 116, 190n5, 190–91n14, 191nn15,16, 192n30, 193nn35,36,45, 195n61, 197n26, 199n62, 204n52, 205nn65,66; rate of, 168n15, 171n4, 181n123, 187n90, 188n96; theories of, 5–7, 53, 68. See also childbearing outside marriage, Japan divorced mothers: descriptives, 2, 3, 4, 7, 52, 68, 70, 91, 101, 114, 182n2; labor market for, 59–60, 68, 69; perceptions of, 69, 103–8, 168n29, 197n22; sample characteristics, 10–11, 13, 16; vs. unwed mothers (see unwed mothers, vs. divorced mothers). See also divorce; single mothers; welfare, schemes for single mothers DNA testing, 87–90, 193–94n48 domestic violence, 107, 209n5 Durex Global Sex Survey, 172n9 Edin, Kathryn, 139 education, 2, 30, 51, 57, 75, 130–131, 145, 171n4; sex, 21–22, 36, 172n7, 173nn24,27,31, 174n40 Education and Training Independence Support Benefit (Jiritsu Shien Kyouiku Kunren Kyūfukin), 57 Eichenberger, Reiner, 8 Elster, Jon, 97, 128–29, 131, 143, 149, 155, 201n6 employment, Japan, 131, 191n14; female, 38, 50–56, 62–64, 80, 140–42, 183n12, 191n14, 200n74; full-time, regular, 38, 50–60, 62–67, 66, 80, 92, 183n12, 186nn60,68, 195n62, 200nn74,78; non-regular, 51–52, 54, 65, 66, 67, 170n52, 183nn12,15, 186n68; single mothers’, 49, 51–68, 80, 102, 123–25, 170n52, 183n22, 186n60, 189n111, 200n78. See also divorced mothers, labor market for; unwed mothers, labor market for equality, 49, 50, 155, 183n18, 202n25 Ermisch, John, 6, 7, 152 Eugenic Protection Committee, 35, 36, 179n93 Eugenic Protection Law, 35, 36 European Union, 50, 167n10 Ezawa, Aya, 185n52 family, Japanese, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5–8, 69, 100, 128, 171n57, 176n60, 181n123; attitudes to different family forms, 3, 25–32, 43–45, 47–48, 81, 100–101, 103, 104, 105–6, 107, 111, 142, 147–49, 155–56, 197n22, 203n36; roles, 43, 52–53, 80, 106, 117, 130, 134–37, 139–42, 147, 154, 191n14; strong influence of parents

Index    in, 116, 117, 120, 121. See also family norms, Japan; family register; family registry; stem family family court, 77, 86, 88–89, 177n75, 194nn49,51 family norms, Japan, 105, 181n114; associated with marriage, 4, 26, 39–40, 44–47, 104, 110, 119; associated with motherhood, 39–43, 52–53, 88–89, 98, 106, 119, 154; association of childbearing with marriage, 4, 26–28, 31, 46, 47, 48, 97, 107, 109, 114, 125, 146, 151, 152, 155, 167n13, 169n30, 181n119, 199n58; idealization of a two-parent family, 27, 38, 48, 81, 100, 105, 106, 110, 114, 132–37, 139– 42, 143, 148–49, 152, 155; importance of age, 41; premarital chastity, 19, 20, 101, 171nn4,5. See also childrearing, Japan, within marriage norm family planning (see abortion; contraception) family register (koseki), 32–33, 35, 77–78, 79, 81–84, 86–88, 93, 111, 116, 124, 133, 138–39, 177nn71,74,75, 190nn1,2,7, 192nn23,28,31, 193n44, 203n36, 204n49 family registry (koseki), 9, 77–79, 81–84, 86, 90, 94, 111, 138, 190n7, 191nn20,21, 192nn31,32, 193n44, 198n43 father: law and, 72, 77, 78, 80, 83, 84–94, 176n61, 190nn3,5, 192n29, 193n44, 194nn48,55, 204n52; of an illegitimate child, 31, 28, 37, 64, 67, 90, 105, 113–17, 138, 194nn52,58, 199nn56,60; role of, 46, 123, 135–37, 139–45, 147, 148, 204nn46,54; stepfather, 143–45, 176n61, 205n61. See also paternity feminists, 29, 31, 45, 83, 145–46, 152 fertility rate, 3, 156 financial independence, female, 28, 51, 52, 63, 104, 121 foster care, 34, 176n66. See also adoption Frühstück, Sabine, 178n90 Fuess, Harald, 84, 171n4, 190n14, 193n43, 197n27 full-time employment (see employment, fulltime) Full-time Employment Award (Jōyō Koyō Tenkan Shōgakukin), 58 Garon, Sheldon, 171n4 Genda,Yuji, 202n25 gender, 49–52, 82, 118, 134, 183n18, 192nn24,26 Germany, 2, 3, 172n9, 174nn43,44, 179nn94,97, 182nn6,8 Goffman, Erving, 97, 111, 112, 113, 119, 121, 155, 197n23

good wife, wise mother ideology (ryōsai kenbo ideology), 183n18 Goodman, Roger, 69, 130, 176n66, 178nn79,87, 189n110 Goto, Aya, 175n48 guilt, 28, 42, 47, 55, 56, 96–97, 116, 120, 125, 126, 129, 132, 134, 140, 143, 146–48, 149, 150, 153–55, 185n49, 202n29. See also guilt associated with illegitimacy Hardacre, Helen, 197n31 Harō Wāku (see Hello Work) health insurance, 21, 37, 183n29 Hello Work (Harō Wāku), 58, 61 hikikomori (see social withdrawal) Ho, Swee Lin, 23 hoikuen (see day care) household register (jūminhyō), 78 household registry (jūminhyō), 77–78, 81, 82, 191n20, 192n24, 193n32 housewife, Japanese, 80, 87, 134, 141, 145, 185n49, 203n38 ideational theory of fertility, 6, 149, 151, 168n23 ie (see stem family) Ikuji Kaigo Kyūgyō Hō (see childcare; Childcare and Family Leave Law) Ikuji Kyūgyō Hō (see child care; Childcare Leave Law) illegitimacy: alternatives to (see abortion; adoption; marriage; orphanages); attitudes to, 8, 32, 37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 47, 83–85, 97, 98, 112, 114, 118, 119–22, 124–25, 133, 134, 137–39, 145–46, 180n104, 197n22, 205n67; explanations of illegitimacy trends, 5–8, 19–20, 22, 37–38, 49, 50, 60, 67, 70–71, 74, 76, 96–97, 126, 128, 146, 149–55, 198n48; generational differences in attitudes to, 83–84, 112, 119–22, 133, 198n41; law and, 5, 9, 49, 28, 77–95, 116, 138–39, 190nn1,3,10, 192nn24,26,28,29,30,31, 193nn32,38, 204n49; legitimacy vs., 28, 77, 79, 81–82, 86, 105–6, 176n61, 190n10; trends, 2, 3, 4, 5–8, 32, 33–34, 50, 53, 55, 128, 169n35, 171n4, 177n74, 180n103, 194n52; urban vs. rural differences and, 15, 55, 83, 118, 170–71n57. See also unwed mothers inequality (see equality) infertility, 42, 122, 181n119 inheritance rights, 40, 78, 82, 86, 192nn26,30 Ishii-Kunz, Masako, 136 Israel, 50

   Index Italy, 3, 4, 70, 172n9, 174nn43,44, 179nn94,97, 182nn6,8, 200n73, 205n63 Ivry, Tsipy, 130 Iwasawa, Miho, 15, 31, 37, 60, 135, 180nn103,106, 198n48 Japan Family Planning Association, 179n90 Japan Institute of Labor Survey, 11, 14, 91, 169nn37,38, 170nn52,53, 181n117, 186nn65,76 Japan, prewar, 20–21, 79, 86, 147, 171n4, 183n18, 190nn7,9, 190–91n14, 191n20, 197n27 jidōsōdanjo (see child consultation centers) Jiritsu Shien Kyouiku Kunren Kyūfukin (see Education and Training Independence Support Benefit) Jōyō Koyō Tenkan Shōgakukin (see Full-time Employment Award) jūminhyō (see household register; household registry) Kefalas, Maria, 139, 153, 154 Kikuta, Noboru, 177n70 kodomo-en (see day care) Kokusei Chōsa (see Census) Kokusei Seikatsu Kisō Chōsa (see National ­Basic Survey of Life) Kōryūkai (see Nakusō Koseki to Kongaishi Sabetsu Kōryūkai) koseki (see family register; family registry) Kōtō Ginō Kunren Sokushinhi (see Bursaries Promoting Professional Skills Training) labor market (see employment) Labor Standards Act, 53 legitimacy (see illegitimacy) Livelihood Protection (Seikatsu Hogo), 70, 72, 76, 159, 188nn97,100,101,102,104,105 local governments, 56–58, 61, 74, 77, 84, 86, 186nn57,62,63, 188n100 Longitudinal Survey of Children Born in the Twenty-first Century (21 Seki Shusseiji Jūdan Chōsa), 15, 60, 169n38, 181n117, 186n76, 198n49, 200n75 love: childbearing and, 39, 43, 44, 181n122; sexual relationships and, 43 Love and Body Book, 22 love hotel, 20, 172nn11,13 M-curve, 50 Mainichi Survey on Family Planning, 24 marriage: adultery and, 64, 80, 93, 105, 110,

195n66; as a solution to premarital pregnancy (see shotgun marriage); attitudes to, 4, 8, 9, 25–31, 37–40, 43–48, 63, 81, 85, 88–89, 98, 100, 101, 104, 105, 107, 109, 110, 113, 116, 118–19, 123, 124, 133–34, 142–46, 148, 150–54, 169n30, 180n109, 182n27, 205n70; descriptives of, 3, 47, 146, 167n10, 168nn15,28, 190n9, 199n58; law and, 78–80, 84, 176n61, 177n75, 190nn5,14, 191n15, 192n29, 197n26, 198n44; paper marriage, 84–85, 114; protection of an institution of, 31, 67, 80, 81, 176n60, 181n119, 190n14, 191nn15,16, 197n26; theories of, 5–8, 52, 175n50. See also cohabitation; divorce; family norms, Japan Maternal Protection Law, 179nn91,95 maternity leave (shussan kyūka), 53–54, 62, 184nn31,33 Matsuyama, Eikichi, 178n90 mediation, 86–88, 93, 94; associated fees, 193n39; instances, 194n51; mediator profile, 87, 193n43 meritocracy, 131, 155 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (Ministry of Education), 21, 173n27, 184n34 Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (Ministry of Health and Welfare), 3, 4, 22, 54, 56, 57, 70, 172n16, 179nn90,97, 180n105, 184n34, 186n59, 189n111, 191n21, 195n59, 200nn74,75 Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 51, 82, 168n18 minsei iin (local community volunteer), 72 Mita, Fusami, 15, 60, 135, 167n13, 180n103 mother (see family, Japanese, roles; family norms, Japan, associated with motherhood) Mother and Child Living Support Facilities (Boshi Seikatsu Shien Shisetsu), 12–13, 66, 70, 71, 73, 170n48, 189n112 Mother and Child Welfare Loan Fund (Boshi Fukushi Shikin), 71, 73 Nakusō Koseki to Kongaishi Sabetsu Kōryūkai (Kōryūkai), 11, 12 National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan, 1–2 National Association of Single Mothers’ and Widows’ Welfare (Zenkoku Boshi Kafu Fukushi Dantai Kyōgikai), 61, 100 National Basic Survey of Life (Kokusei Seikatsu Kisō Chōsa), 168n18

Index    National Congress of Parents and Teachers ­Association of Japan, 1 National Fertility Survey, 24 National Health Service (UK), 172n16 National Institute of Population and Social ­Security Research, 175 National Survey on Lone Mother and Other Households (Zenkoku Boshi Setai tō Chōsa), 168n18 never-married mothers (see unwed mothers) New Angel Plan, 54. See also Angel Plan Norway, 50 nyūjiin (see infant orphanages) OECD, 5, 54, 187n93 Ogasawara,Yuko, 50, 141 orphanages, 34–35, 178nn78,80,84,87; infant orphanages (nyūjiin), 34–35, 178nn80,84; orphanages for older children (yōgoshisetsu), 178nn80,84 parental rights, 34, 116, 117, 176n61, 178n88 paternity, 72, 78, 86, 87–90, 94, 139, 192n29, 193n48, 194n55, 195n58. See also child support; parental rights Plus One Plan, 54 Professional Women’s Coalition for Sexuality and Health, 24 Public Assistance (see Livelihood Protection) public housing, 71, 73 Raymo, James, 31, 198n48 Rebick, Marcus, 50 religion, 147, 153, 205n67. See also Buddhism; Christianity Russia, 192 ryōsai kenbo ideology (see good wife, wise mother ideology) salaryman, 134, 185n49, 203n38 school refusal, 202n21 Seikatsu Hogo (see Livelihood Protection) sex education (see education, sex) sexually transmitted infections, 20–22, 172n13 shame, 9, 43, 47, 55, 96–97, 109, 111, 112, 113, 119, 120, 122–26, 128, 129, 133, 143, 149–50, 152, 153, 155, 195nn4,5, 197n23 shelter, 74, 189n115 Shinguru Mazā Kaigishitsu, 12, 203n29 shotgun marriage (dekichatta kekkon), 7, 8, 15, 85, 104, 110, 114, 116, 119, 128, 168n28, 175n50, 176n69, 198n48, 205n58, 206n6

shussan kyūka (see maternity leave) single mother independence supporters (boshi jiritsu shien’in), 57, 186n59 single mothers, 3–4, 168n18, 170nn51,52, 171n61, 187n85, 196n12, 200n66; as careers, 38, 121, 187n83, 197n38; as workers, 38, 49, 51–69, 71, 76, 106–9, 123, 140–41, 183n23, 186nn60,72, 187n91, 188n105, 197n38, 200n78; children of, 2, 119, 131–47, 168n14, 185n52, 197nn32,32, 203n35, 205nn66,66; hierarchy of, 76, 100–101, 110, 147; in media, 1, 26, 28, 68–69, 75, 76, 101–5, 107, 132, 167n8, 177n78, 194n48, 201n79, 203n31; law and, 90–91, 93, 192nn28,30, 194n50, 195nn61,64; perceptions of, 68–69, 103–9, 143, 145–147, 153, 168n29, 197n28; poverty and, 68–69, 146; support groups for, 11, 16, 61, 69, 75, 101, 127, 137, 169nn40,41, 183n24, 188n105, 189n111, 195n61, 196n13. See also divorced mothers; employment, Japan, single mothers’; Mother and Child Living Support Facilities; unwed mothers; welfare Single Mothers’ Forum (Shinguru Mazā Foramu), 11–12 single-mother advisor (boshi sōdanin), 186n59 Single-Mother Employment and Independence Support Centers (Boshi Katei nado Shūgyō Jiritsu Shien Sentā), 57 social contagion theory, 5–7, 47, 149, 151, 152, 168n25 social withdrawal (hikikomori), 202n21 socialization (see childrearing) South Korea, 173n17, 174n43 Spain, 3, 4, 174nn43,44, 179n94, 182nn6,8 Steinhoff, Patricia G., 110 stem family (ie), 43, 79, 190n8 stigma, 7, 9, 31–34, 37, 47, 71, 72, 73, 82, 96–97, 101, 104–8, 111–14, 119–23, 125, 126, 128, 132, 146, 149, 152, 153, 155, 169n38, 170n57, 177nn74,75, 184n37, 185n49, 187n87, 188n105, 197n23 Strategy for Reducing the Number of Children Waiting for Nursery Spaces to Zero (Taiki Jidō Zero Sakusen), 54 Sweden, 2, 3, 179nn94,97, 182nn6,8, 205n63 Taiki Jidō ZeroSakusen (see Strategy for Reducing the Number of Children Waiting for Nursery Spaces to Zero) Tanaka, Sumiko, 12, 82, 169n45, 192n25 teenage pregnancy, 1, 33, 37, 176n69

   Index tokubetsu yōshi engumi (see adoption, special adoption) Tokutei Kyūshokusha Koyō Kaihatsu Joseikin (see Wage Subsidy to Advance Employment of Special Applicants) Toraiaru Koyō Shōreikin (see Trial Employment Incentive Scheme) Total Fertility Rate (see fertility rate) Trial Employment Incentive Scheme (see ­Toraiaru Koyō Shōreikin), 58 TV dramas, 1, 23, 28, 68, 101, 103, 132, 167n8, 177n78, 201n79; 14sai no Haha (A 14-YearOld Mother), 1; Onna no bengoshi (Female lawyer), 194n48, 203n31; San nen B-gumi Kinpachi-sensei (Third Year B Class’s Teacher Kinpachi), 177n78; Sekai no ichiban yasashii ongaku (The world’s sweetest music), 203n31; Watashi no aoi sora (My blue sky), 203n31 unemployment benefits, 57, 67 United Kingdom, 1, 2, 3, 4, 167n6, 172nn9,16, 173n31, 174nn4,44, 175n48, 178n89, 179n97, 179nn93,94, 182nn6,8, 183n12, 187n93, 192n31, 193n48, 194n55, 195n60, 196n11, 203n41 United States of America, 2, 3, 4, 21, 31, 32, 54, 70, 97, 121, 139, 153, 154, 167n6, 172nn9,16, 174n43, 175nn48,50, 176nn57,65, 179n94, 180n102, 182nn6,8, 183n12, 194nn55,56, 195nn59,60, 199n61, 201nn6,12, 203n41 unwed mothers: attitudes to, 19, 26, 28–31, 37, 39, 45–47, 98, 100–110, 112, 122–24, 140–42, 146, 149, 153, 155, 176n61, 182n124, 197n31; by choice, 8, 26, 29–31, 39, 45, 107, 181n119; child custody and, 32, 116; consequences of unwed motherhood, 8, 9, 38, 97–99, 102, 103, 114, 116, 129, 131–34, 137–39, 140–42, 153, 185n52, 187n77, 203n29, 204n48, 205n66; decision to become one, 8–9, 19, 24, 25, 26, 28, 46–47, 67, 69, 73, 74, 76, 93, 113, 117–19, 123, 125, 127–28, 151, 155, 169n30, 180n109; descriptives, 1–4, 101, 169n38, 170nn52,53,57, 181n117, 198n50, 200n66; guilt associated with unwed motherhood, 28, 42, 47, 116, 120, 125, 126, 132, 134, 136, 137, 140, 143, 146–48, 150, 153, 154, 202n29; in media, 1, 26, 75, 76, 101–5, 107, 132, 167n8, 177n78, 194n48, 201n79, 203n31; labor market for, 49, 52–53, 55–56, 59–69, 71, 100n79, 187nn77,80; reaction

to associated perceptions, 26, 39–45, 99, 110–11; sample characteristics, 9–17, 176n62, 182n3; stigmatization and shame associated with unwed motherhood, 7, 9, 33, 43, 76, 82, 85, 96–97, 104–9, 110, 111–26, 133, 138, 146, 197n28; vs. divorced mother, 2–7, 9, 49, 50, 53, 59, 69, 70–71, 74, 75, 76–77, 82, 85, 93, 96, 101, 103–8, 110, 111, 146–48, 152–53, 197n22, 205n63; welfare and, 5, 49, 69–76, 90, 100, 189n115. See also contraception; family norms, Japan, premarital chastity; illegitimacy; shotgun marriage; single mothers; welfare Vietnam, 192n31 Wa no Kai, 33 Wage Subsidy to Advance Employment of Special Applicants (Tokutei Kyūshokusha Koyō Kaihatsu Joseikin), 58 welfare: bureaucrats, 53, 61, 71, 74; knowledge about, 74–75, 102; living on, 5, 67, 75, 76, 83, 183n21; local differences, 56–58, 61, 74, 84, 186nn57,63, 188n100; schemes for single mothers, 5, 49, 69–76, 90, 100, 188m101, 187n85, 188nn100,102,104,105,106,107, 189nn111,112,113, 196n12; stigmatization of, 69–72, 76, 188n105; tax benefits for single mothers, 54, 61, 65, 71, 73–74, 80, 102, 189nn113,114 Welfare Law for Single Mothers and Widows (Boshi oyobi Kafu Fukushi Hō), 189n111 White, Merry, 20, 23 widows, 49, 59, 61, 68, 74, 76, 78, 100, 102, 104, 136, 137, 138, 168n14, 185n53, 189n111, 194n57, 196n12; widows’ pension, 72–73 World Values Survey, 6, 134 Yamamoto, Beverly Anne, 21, 22, 173nn23,27,31 yōchien (see day care) Yoder, Robert Stuart, 110 yōshi engumi (see adoption) Zenkoku Boshi Kafu Fukushi Dantai Kyōgikai (see National Association of Single Mothers’ and Widows’ Welfare) Zenkoku Boshi Setai tō Chōsa (see National Survey on Lone Mother and Other Households)