Introduction. In recent years, scholars have defined childhood and aging as special fields of study. Both ends of the life cycle are also important for public policy and civil society. In Japan, traditional ethics and mores have long dictated veneration for the elderly. Today's Japan is a graying society, and the first among post-industrialized nations to confront the issues of large numbers of older citizens and a declining birth rate. Since it is extremely expensive today to educate children and many younger wives or unmarried women wish to engage in professions or careers, the birth rate has declined from the ideal of three children in the 1950s to one or none.

Defeat and Occupation. In 1945, as war ended and the Allied Occupation began, widows and middle aged women faced overwhelming problems of caring for the elderly and children. They were without husbands, or without brothers, uncles, or other male relatives. In many cases, their husbands returned home either physically maimed or psychologically unable to live normal lives. Everyone had to work, or, if necessary, beg for a livelihood. Nevertheless, documentary and visual evidence show that the Japanese, though living in a shattered economy and close to starvation, made every effort to show traditional respect for the elderly and to protect and nourish children.

The Elderly. In modern Japan, fifty-five was the general retirement age and sixty the beginning of old age. Although the elderly were not as large a part of the early postwar population as they are today, their numbers had been greatly reduced by death on the homefront from incendiary and atomic bombs or from malnutrition. Artists and photographers have recorded poignant scenes of older people suffering from injury, mourning for sons lost in war, or living alone in hovels. Writers, too, have portrayed the elderly in stories and poems. Although the countryside was largely spared massive bombardment, rural people lived close to poverty, often as tenants before land reform took effect. In normal times, in both urban and rural Japan, wives were expected to defer to mothers-in-law and look after their husband's aging parents. In the abnormal times of post-defeat Japan, the elderly continued to take their turn at household tasks or looking after children while younger household members worked in outside jobs. They helped in the fields, scavenged for food, prepared meals, carried heavy burdens, and sold goods on the street. They were instrumental in holding the generations together and in tending to family altars. Yet, many Japanese were often unable to cope with the infirmities of the elderly or with signs of senility. One famous Japanese writer, Niwa Kunio, characterized old age as “the hateful age.” In Japan's dire economy, elderly minority women, such as burakumin or outcastes and Koreans, were especially in distress.

As the economy began to improve in the early 1950s, there was more time and money to make life less demanding for the aging population. Since social welfare services were poorly developed for this age group, older people tended to live with their families or adult children and to depend on daughters-in-law. Senior centers and old age homes were set up to for those without relatives or income but were as austere and cheerless as elsewhere in the world. Passage of the Law for the Welfare of the Aged lay years ahead--in 1963. A day of Respect for the Aged, September 15, had already been designated in many places and became a national holiday, also in 1963.

Children. Death rates for children, too, were high on the home front. Photographs, drawings, and paintings are filled with images of charred bodies of infants, children, and parents and children. Malnutrition would also take its toll. Lost children and orphans roamed the streets or lived in train stations and parks. Yet newsreels of Japanese families in line for food or other rations often show children as better dressed than adults. Japanese were slow to build orphanages, and in many cases were helped by gifts from GIs stationed in Japan or wives of Occupation personnel. Sawada Miki, granddaughter of the founder of Mitsubishi enterprises and a well-connected upper class woman married to a diplomat, became famous for her work in aiding orphans. Her charges were primarily the unwanted, out-of-wedlock children of GI fathers and Japanese mothers whom the Japanese called konketsujin or mixed blood offspring (mixed blood person is the exact and somewhat derogatory translation). In 1948, she founded the Elizabeth Sander's Home in Oiso, Kanagawa Prefecture. On a trip to Japan in 1953, African American Josephine Baker, who had won great fame in 1920s Paris as a dancer with the Folies Bergere, took in the first two of her adopted twelve children from around the world. To her, Sawada seemed to be a racist who really wanted to rid Japan of mixed blood people or hide them in obscure places.

Children's Literature. In prewar Japan, children's literature, much of it beautifully illustrated, was a major field of publication and attracted many fine writers and illustrators. One of the best youth magazines was Kodomo no kuni (World of Children), founded in 1922 and continuing to 1949. In Occupied Japan, the Japanese once again gave considerable attention to children's books and magazines. In addition to a children's newspaper, Kodomo no shinbun, several magazines appeared which catered separately to boys or to girls. Translations were made of popular Western children's classics, such as Tom Sawyer and Pinocchio. This was done iwth the blessing of Occupation information officials who helped to arrange translation rights for approved books. The Gordon W. Prange Collection, University of Maryland Libraries, has a large collection of Japanese children's literature from the early postwar years. Among the 9000 volumes are comic books, folk stories, picture books, and foreign classics. Japanese children enjoyed the antics of Sazae-san, the creation of a woman manga artist, Hasegawa Michiko, but also followed—as did their parents—the adventures of American comic strip characters, in particular Superman, Batman, and Blondie.

Pre-Collegiate Education. Until the war years disrupted primary schooling, children received at least six years of compulsory co-education, and in some cases up to seven or eight years. At the beginning of the Occupation, elementary education once again became a high priority both to the Japanese and the victors. However, conditions were poor. Children often had to attend classes in deteriorating buildings, or in some cases even meet outdoors. Not all brought lunches from home. They were confronted with the confusing task of blackening textbooks. First, the Ministry of Education on its own, soon reinforced by even stricter Occupation directives, ordered teachers and students to remove references to guns, tanks, ships, and planes—to anything that smacked of militarism or ultra-nationalism. Prewar ethics textbooks were banned as overly loyalist or Confucian and lacking in individualism. For over a year, starting in January 1946, students were without history textbooks while committees of Japanese specialists labored to write new ones under the supervision of American authorities in the Civil Information and Education Section of MacArthur's General Headquarters. New texts included the CI&E backed Primer for Democracy. These new texts, however, including language texts, did little to question existing and highly gendered roles for boys and girls.

In 1947, the Occupation backed a new 6-3-3 pre-collegiate system based on American models: six years of primary school, three of junior high, and three of senior high. Under the new Constitution, Japanese youth had the right to nine years of free education. Special five year preparatory schools, primarily for boys and known as higher schools or kōtōgakkō, were closed. One of the most controversial education reforms backed by the Occupation was co-education at the age of puberty. Since the late 19th century, boys and girls had studied together at the primary level; after 1947, they were also brought together in junior high school classrooms. The Emperor's portrait was removed from schools, and the ceremonial reading of the 1890 Imperial Rescript for Education was officially ended in 1948, though in practice it had stopped earlier. In most schools, English language courses were introduced by age thirteen, though other languages were also studied. More emphasis than before was given to the social sciences. But examination hell continued to bedevil the lives of students, especially those who wanted to enter good high schools and go on to higher education at prestigious colleges and universities.

Children and Work. Japanese children, poor and otherwise, were used to work, starting at an early age. Boys and girls helped with chores on the farms. In the cities, they picked up rubble in the streets and parks or, especially the girls, performed household tasks. Everywhere, girls, either in training for motherhood or helping out working parents, carried baby sisters or brothers on their backs even while playing. They and the elderly were the family babysitters. New labor laws in 1946 ended exploitation of child labor at age fifteen and under in mines and factories. Teenage girls over fifteen looked for work in Tokyo as maids, waitresses, bar girls, and dance hall hostesses. If lucky, they sold food and goods from carts but were sometimes forced into the streets as unlicensed prostitutes or pan pan girls.

Games and Entertainment. Children found many ways to have fun. Deprived of costly family outings at the movies, they scrambled into the streets to watch kamishibai, literally paper theater, a form of story telling by itinerant performers who flashed a series of pictures inside a wooden frame. Even these simple stories were monitored by Occupation censors for signs of militarism or ultra-nationalism. Most existing photos show more boys than girls in the crowds. Perhaps girls hung back, or were outside the camera angle. Children were ingenious in inventing their own games. For boys, more so than for girls, there were school swim meets and field and track competitions. Baseball was, by far, the most popular team sport. The martial arts, at first banned by the Occupation, made a comeback, in part because GIs were attracted to the sport. Since a healthy body for girls as well as for boys was promoted by Japanese and Occupation officials, young women became increasingly active in playing basketball, volleyball, and tennis, or trying their hand at softball. They also cycled and hiked with friends and family.

Everyone, children and adults, looked forward to special holidays. One of Japan's most colorful and festive modern celebrations was dedicated to the welfare and prosperity of children and celebrated at Shinto shrines on November 15. It was called shichi-go-san, meaning ages seven, five, and three. Boys of five were dressed up in adult outfits, often as samurai, or they donned their first suits. Girls of three and seven wore colorful kimono, elaborate headdresses, and makeup. In Tokyo, the holiday was celebrated at the great though war damaged shrine to the Meiji Emperor. Crowds were huge as fathers took the day off to join their families in a gala outing. Even in the midst of rubble, shichi-go-san was quickly restored to Japanese life. Otherwise, although whole communities might participate in local Shinto festivals as worshippers, the major bearers of portable shrines, the pullers and haulers of floats, and the musicians and dancers were primarily young and adult men. Another major holiday took place in early August, when, again, Japanese of all ages participated in obon, a Buddhist festival commemorating dead ancestors. They joined in neighborhood dances, hung lanterns, visited graves, and, if possible, made good offerings.

Additional long-standing modern Japanese holidays were Boys' Day, May 5, and Girls' Day, March 3. Kites decorated with carp designsfor longevity) were flown on Boys' Day; doll collections were displayed on Girls' day. Although Occupation officials successfully urged the creation in 1948 of a single Children's Day, the date selected for this important new holiday was May 5, once again giving priority to boys. Despite legal reforms, change was slow to come into the gendered cultural worlds and daily lives of boys and girls. What, we might wonder, given the lack of extensive research, was newly planted in the minds of those who were born in the early and mid-1930s, militarized in Japan's primary schools, and democratized during the Occupation years?