Leaving the West,rejoining the East? Gender and family in Japan’s semi-compressed modernity

Abstract

Japan has moved in a different direction from the West since the 1970s in terms of family and gender role changes. The purpose of this article is to place Japan’s path in a global context and to clarify the factors that made it diverge from the Western path, and to consider if it is becoming closer to the path taken by other Asian countries. A characteristic shared by Japan and other Asian countries is that, even though dramatic demographic changes have occurred, the institution of marriage remains intact. Nevertheless, in contrast to the other Asian countries, which had experienced a compressed modernity and developed liberal familialism in response to the pressures of globalization, Japan had leeway in its semi-compressed modernity to carry out familialist reforms in the 1980s that solidified the family system of the first modernity. It is too simple to say that Japan has rejoined Asia.