Overview. As in the prewar and wartime period, marriage and family in Occupied Japan was more about ceremony, ritual, and law than about love and romance. Above all, it was about survival and reunion in the immediate aftermath of total war. The final months of the Asia/Pacific War were devastating. Fire bomb raids and atomic attacks on the home front had killed over 330,000 civilians, by one estimate, and injured many more. The dead included parents, children, relatives, and friends. Survivors were ill, homeless, or barely surviving with one or two family members. Their dwellings were shacks or hastily improvised shelters. In addition, households were shattered. Families lost husbands, sons, brothers, uncles and cousins on the battlefield. Veterans returned home wounded or maimed and often unable to care for themselves or their families. There were numerous single parent households, usually headed by women. Young and older women alike were desperate for income from almost any kind of work. Nevertheless in the midst of chaos, families were reunited, couples mated, and Japan would experience a baby boom until the late 1950s.

1898 Civil Code. Under the 1898 Civil Code, the wartime and early postwar family had remained in law the household or the ie, headed by a male patriarch, usually the eldest adult son. The Code reflected the strength of Neo-Confucian norms in modern Japanese society, in particular the celebration of loyalty to authority and filial piety within the family. It also reflected the newly coined slogan for all women, whether rural or urban in background: ry?sai kembo or good wife/wise mother. Under the provisions of the 1898 Code, married women lost their legal identity. They did not have full rights to inheritance, property, or income. Usually, they left their birth parents behind and were enrolled in the koseki (family register) of their husband and were expected to look after his parents as well as bear and nurture her own children. More than likely, the marriage had been arranged by a go-between, with little thought given to the preferences of the couple or even a meeting before the marriage day. Dating was not a common practice. Except for the modern boy and modern girl of the 1920s, public shows of emotion, such as hand-holding, kissing, or close dancing, were rare. Although consensual divorce was possible, a divorced woman was stigmatized. Contested divorces went handled in a courtroom. In law, children belonged to the husband. For men, sexual desire could be satisfied outside of marriage; for women, adultery was a punishable offense. Nevertheless, the notion of romantic love and companionate marriage had made some progress among Japan’s younger urban and better educated generation. In actual practice, arrangements were less strict, especially among commoners whose lives and sexuality were not accurately mirrored in late Meiji law. The marriage ceremony was a matter of Shinto ritual. The bride brought a trousseau, some might call it a dowry, to her new home.

1947 Civil Code. After 1945, Japanese marriage laws and customs seemed outmoded, even uncivilized, to Occupation officials. Reform of family law became an important goal in the overall attempts to transform or re-engineer Japanese society. In addition, the Japanese women’s movement had long worked for such ends, and individual Japanese women and women’s organizations exerted considerable influence in shaping reforms. Subsequently, the new Constitution of 1947 banned forced marriage. The revised Civil Code of 1947 (effective the following year) abolished the ie and extended equal inheritance rights to widows and second sons. Under the new marriage law, husband and wife were equal and technically the couple replaced the single patriarch. As before, consensual divorce could be arranged. The revised Criminal Code of 1947 decriminalized adultery for men and women. Home and school were expected to cooperate in the molding of peaceful and democratic Japanese youth.

In short, Occupation officials and like-minded Japanese men and women worked together to promote freer and more equitable gender and family relations. But huge problems undermined the well-being of postwar family life, especially the lack of adequate welfare provisions for widows, disabled veterans, and orphans. Moreover, laws might change, but norms and customs did not. Within the new family, dual notions about gendered roles tended to remain in place: the housewife at home and the husband at work. The husband was still perceived as the head of the nuclear household or, as newly conceptualized, the married couple. Textbooks continued to present older gendered images of boys and girls. Social change was slow. To keep small properties intact, rural women often went to the new family courts to give up their rights to the eldest male. Family courts were kept busy with resolution of domestic disputes or contested divorces.

War Widows. There were many war widows among the 3,000,000 civilians repatriated back to Japan in the aftermath of war, as well as among the numerous who lost spouses in battles or in home-front bombings. The Women’s Repatriation Association is an example of an organization for group-help. According to the main English language newspaper in Japan, Nippon Times, February 27, 1947, “most of the war widows are aged between 30 and 40 years and they usually have at least two children to support.” Although the Finance Ministry had offered pensions, the sums were pitifully small. Orphans too got very little. To live, said the report, it was imperative to find some kind of work, any kind at all. “Forced to live with relatives in most cases, many of the women work at home, making dolls or paper bags, but their profit is small.” Even to set up a noodle stand required more money, about $20.00, than most could muster. The article came to a dismal conclusion: “Desperate women have drifted into prostitution. No one has come forward with a solution for the problem.” In addition, wives and relatives of the tens of thousands of Japanese prisoners detained in forced labor camps in the Soviet Union organized to press for help as did relatives of condemned and imprisoned Japanese war criminals.

Marriage Rites and Practices. How did Japanese get married? What were the formalities once the arrangement had been made by families and go-betweens? Even in impoverished times, a wedding was a special occasion. If her family could afford it, the bride dressed in an elaborate kimono, probably rented, and wore a headdress. Grooms, too, were in formal attire, either a suit or kimono. In the countryside, there were village bridal processions; in the cities, guests joined the couple in a marriage hall. As before, the wedding rites were Shinto. The priest pronounced the necessary formula, followed by sips of sake from a special cup. If at all possible, the ceremony was recorded for posterity by photographs. Since times were so desperate, there were also many couples co-habiting without marriage vows. It would be many years before newly-wed Japanese couples had the luxury of spending honeymoons in Hawaii; or making a choice between a Christian ceremony or a combined Western/Shinto ceremony in an expensive hall.

The New Japanese Family. The new family made its debut after 1947 when the married couple took the place of the patriarch in the legal reconstruction of the family. To what extent did ideological change accompany structural change? Did the ideal of good wife/wise mother persist? We gain some idea from the covers of a popular women’s magazine, Shufu no tomo (Friend of the Housewives), which unfailingly featured drawings of young single women or happy new brides. Few seem to be urban working women, although if so, they doubled as homemakers. They appear variously in ordinary dress or kimono. The pages of the magazine are filled with recipes, sewing tips, light fiction, and occasional political and social commentary. This and other women’s magazines of the early postwar period have been neglected in media and gender studies and offer a wonderful opportunity for research (visit the Prange Collection, Maryland Libraries). Women’s and children’s magazines underwent censorship, usually light. Nevertheless, pictorials of GIs and WACs soon disappeared, as in Shufu no tomo, even those representing the Occupiers in a positive light. On at least one occasion, censors stopped a magazine from carrying drawings of a comfortable American family home in Japan. By 1950, artists, photographers, and novelists would be freer to portray the passing scene.

Physical reconstruction and a poor economy remained shaping forces in family life. This may help to explain why, in the midst of debris, there was also an enshrinement of Mother within the family. This is beautifully reflected in Naruse Mikio’s 1952 film, Mother, the story of a woman from the urban middle class who helps her husband, a repatriated veteran, revive a mom and pop laundry business. She loses her husband to overwork, her son to TB, and her younger daughter to adoption by a well-off couple. As a widow, she takes charge of the family business after learning to do hard chores from a temporary male employee. In a touch of the new, the older daughter, who is of marriageable age, attracts the attention of a romantically inclined baker’s son. Another film which captures the pathos of ordinary lives in early postwar Tokyo postwar scene is Kurosawa Akira’s One Wonderful Sunday, 1947, which reflects the struggle of a young engaged couple, with little money between them, to enjoy a day off together and find free entertainment. Kurosawa’s later film, Stray Dog, 1949, though often touted as a mirror of Occupied Japan, is primarily a tale of two demobilized soldiers, one a detective and the other a criminal. The detective’s search for his stolen gun takes him through the bleak back streets of Tokyo’s underworld and features women of the demi-monde. In none of these films, not so incidentally, is there a glimpse of a single American, although there is Western popular and classical music on the soundtracks.

The American Family. American family life was on review in Occupied Japan. The American model too was a product of prewar life as well as changing wartime mores and military culture. Jean MacArthur, General MacArthus’s second wife, was the Occupation’s first lady. While the general rarely traveled out his official Tokyo headquarters and residence, she was often photographed in wifely or womanly activities, whether appearing at social events, looking after her son, or attending church services. In a sense, she was a peripatetic good wife/wise mother. Margery Ridgway, third wife of General Matthew Ridgeway, performed in much the same public manner when she arrived in Japan, early 1951. Although egalitarianism within the family was honored and American wives (the word “housewives” was rarely employed) enjoyed activities outside the home, there was a clear demarcation of male and female roles within the family among Americans too in the early postwar era. By 1946, Occupation personnel were allowed to send for wives and to set up house in Japan. American families retreated to Washington Heights or Grant Heights, large tracts of land in Tokyo set aside for their use, and proceeded to reproduce the American way of life in closed enclaves. J. Malcolm Morris, civilian manager of the Imperial Hotel, described Washington Heights as “typically American. If it had not been for the Japanese servants, Washington Heights would have looked like any middle-class suburb in the United States.” It had all that he and his new wife needed: “the super-market commissary, movie theatre, medical dispensary, gas station, tennis courts, golf-driving range and other recreational facilities.” Here, Japanese maids and chauffeurs employed by resident senior officers had an inside glimpse of American family and community life. The same was true of Japanese servants employed in houses confiscated for American or Allied use or working in the Imperial Hotel and other billets for senior officers and their wives.

Sexual fraternization was not exclusively a matter of the lonely or rougish GIs seeking out available Japanese women. Americans too met each other and fell in love in Japan. Caucasian women serving as secretaries and clerks, social workers, or WACs and WAVEs dated and married young army officers, civilian personnel, or sons of diplomats. Wives of senior American officials wrote columns in the newspapers, promoted reforms such as the New Family Center, or published help books, such as The American Way of Housekeeping (1948), which was compiled by American Occupation wives and appeared in both Japanese and English. The title page explained that it was “of the Women of the Occupation, by the Women of the Occupation, for the Women of the Occupation.” Input came from the American Women’s Guild, Cavalry Officers’ Wives, Christian Women’s Association, GHQ Officers’ Wives, and Navy Officers’ Wives. The book, said the foreword, was “designed to meet the everyday needs of the women who are maintaining Western households here in the East” and not to be a “gem of literature.” In a meeting perhaps of Occupation and Japanese women’s minds, it continued:

The book’s topics ranged from cleaning the house and the care of electric equipment, clothing, and children to home nursing, kitchen duties, and recipes (including tuna fish loaf).

Mrs. Mogi’s Discontent. Middle class Japanese housewives sometimes took offense at what they perceived to be the condescension of American and Allied wives. In May 1949, Mrs. Mogi Teru wrote a letter to famous author, editor, and winner of a Nobel Prize in literature, Pearl Buck, expressing discontent with the wife of an American army officer who lived next door to her (in Hayama, Kanagawa prefecture). The letter and replies from Buck and other notable American women, such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Senator Margaret Chase Smith, were picked up in the Asahi newspaper and republished in the magazine section of the English Language Nippon Times the following November.

The original Japanese house next door, said Mrs. Mogi, had been transformed. To enter it for the first time was to step into “a new civilization.” She was overwhelmed by the beautiful new kitchen appliances, “the shining wall of white paint,” and the “scrubbed floor.” There was not a single stain on the dining room table-cloth. The amount of soap required to attain such cleanliness was unimaginable; for Japanese housewives, one bar of soap was a precious treasure. Not only did the officer’s wife have great housekeeping ability but she was also “pretty and well-dressed.” Her wardrobe was filled with “new dresses” for cocktail parties, bridge club meetings, and dances. Moreover, in the living room there were lovely Japanese vases, pieces of ivory and cloisonné, porcelain, brocades and kimonos. Mrs. Mogi confessed that she could not help but feel envious. However, to her amazement and disappointment, the officer’s wife could discuss only superficial things, such as Mt. Fuji or cherry blossoms, but not feudalism and democracy. She seemed bored by literature or painting. Were not Americans taught these things? “They pride themselves on their motorcars and motor highways, but we have not come across a single American who prides him or herself on Allen Poe, or Eugene O’Neill or Pearl Buck.” Mrs. Mogi wondered why a “higher intelligence” had not been produced among “such abundant resources.” In her view, it was a “serious weakness for America that the moral and spiritual civilization is not in parallel with the material and mechanical civilization.” Whether Mrs. Mogi realized it or not, she had retreated to a dualism first promoted by 19th century East Asian intellectuals: Eastern spirituality and Western technology.

In essence, Mrs. Mogi complained that Americans in the Occupation did not understand Japan or even try to do so; that they did not “possess high American culture.” American women in particular “would not move a finger to try to understand Japan.” Perhaps it was the language barrier. Perhaps it was a sense of superiority toward “yellow-skinned Japanese women.” Underneath, said Mrs Mogi to Mrs. Buck, Japanese women had “internal depth,” they had “self-control.” Though she dismissed Americans in general, she nevertheless prescribed a “spiritual blood transfusion by Americans of intelligence” as the best way to elevate defeated Japan.

Pearl Buck answered and seemed to agree. “Our American women are excellent housekeepers and cooks but few of them have much interest beyond their daily tasks.” But at home, most American women did not have servants. They worked hard and did not have time to indulge in reading. That was unfortunate, of course, and American schools had not done well in teaching children (not just girls) to have an intelligent life or to read books.” Buck accepted Mrs. Mogi’s description of an American home in Japan which was materially “beautiful” but spiritually “empty.” Yet, there were many American women, the “best” women, who lived a “deeper life.” Buck offered to send Mrs. Mogi food, clothing, or books if she needed them, and spoke of her love and admiration for Japan. Eleanor Roosevelt believed there were many American wives in Japan who would have been interested in Japan and able to converse intelligently with Mrs. Mogi. However, she also suggested that the barrier Mrs. Mogi sensed might have had something to do with recent memory of Pearl Harbor and the war. As in a democracy, the Japanese might wish to consider taking some responsibility for the actions of their government.

The letter stirred up a furor, and the Nippon Times received more letters to the editor on this topic than any other up to this point and decided to declare a cease fire. Moreover, it stirred up curiosity in the woman’s columnist for the newspaper about Mrs. Mogi herself. It turned out that she had a businessman husband, three children, two servants, and lived in a large house. Her own attitudes toward other peoples in eastern Asia were themselves patronizing. Outraged letters pointed out that Mrs. Mogi seemed older and more highly educated than the American wife she disparaged. For the sake of understanding, she should have made a greater effort to find common ground and perhaps had even exaggerated her own poverty. Another respondent wondered if Mrs. Mogi knew that 70 American women had volunteered to help teach English conversation without remuneration in Tokyo high schools. A German medical doctor married to a Japanese man argued that Mrs. Mogi had been superficial. “You cannot expect the average American woman to occupy herself with the study of the Japanese soul and culture.” Moreover, culture consisted not only of “formal knowledge of art, literature, etc., but in many human qualities, such as sincerity, social responsibility, capability of decision and efficiency in daily life.” She asked an embarrassing question: how did Japanese women who lived in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation behave? Or in Korea? Did Japanese women cultivate friendships with foreign women? And so it went, letter after letter. The harshest note was from a male reader who took Mrs. Mogi apart for “hypocrisy, smugness, and self adulation.” Was she herself, he asked, a representative of democracy?

Signs of Change. The idealized suburban housewife and her corporate or salaryman husband began to make their appearance in greater numbers by the mid 1950s. The continued rise of Japan’s new middle class was an important social phenomenon, but the separation of work and family was not as great. There were images everywhere of domesticity. Both the economy and the housewife benefited from the acquisition of the three treasures: dishwasher, refrigerator, and television. Perhaps we should see the culmination of a trend toward romance, or the legitimation of romance, in the marriage of Crown Prince Akihito and commoner Shoda Michiko in 1959. Michiko became very popular with the public, especially women. She had met her husband-to-be during a tennis match; she was deferential and modest but dignified and would give birth to two sons and a daughter, allowing the perpetuation of the throne through the male line. Otherwise, according to sociologist Merry White, the two-generation family was still an exception in the 1950s, and the separation of work and family was not nearly as great as it would become in the 1970s. Despite the popularity of American comics in Occupied Japan, Japanese couples and families were not replicas of smart “Blondie” and bumbling Dagwood (married with a son and daughter) or of the American radio and television couple of the late 1940s and 1950s, “Ozzie and Harriet” (married with two sons). Perhaps they were also not quite like the gently humorous family in the home-grown comic strip, “Sazae-san” (an unmarried elder daughter with indulgent parents when the story begins in 1948, but in time safely married).