Families at Risk

Iki wa yoi, yoi; kaeri wa kowai [Leaving is good, but it's frightening to return]. —Japanese children's game chant

This chant, which accompanies a playground circle game, conveys some of the costs borne by Japanese who venture abroad. The children unclasp their hands and raise their arms to signal that the one who is "it" may leave freely. Then they grab hands and move together again quickly to prevent the child from getting back inside. The tight closed circle may be taken as a symbol of the exclusion often felt by families returning to Japan.

Japanese families who have gone overseas are caught in a paradoxical culture warp—agents of Japanese international economic growth, they themselves have derived little domestic benefit from their sojourns away from Japan. In fact, these fathers, mothers, and children must bear the brunt of a cultural ambivalence about foreigners that belies Japan's success in the international market.

When these families come home to Japan, they suffer the "crisis of return," a well-publicized and constantly analyzed reentry problem. The crisis—experienced by children in schools, mothers in the community, and fathers in the workplace—requires conscious adjustment and strategizing by individuals and by families. This book is about the people who must negotiate this difficult return from an outward-looking economy to an inward-looking culture.

Rapid modernization has caused a breakdown of traditional social structures and values in many cultures. But—despite perhaps the most dramatically swift rise to industrial success the world has ever seen—Japan does not give much evidence of such a breakdown. Indeed, even as the world expects the costs of modernization to catch up with Japan, few significant rents have yet been spotted in the country's social fabric. One key to the mystery may lie in the fact that Japanese groups—among the most important, the family, community, and workplace—are both adaptive and self-protective. Accordingly, Japan is a "survival culture" whose success is based on the capacity of such groups to ensure their own perpetuation.

The governing concept, the core, of a Japanese group is the idea of the uchi (home, inside), a primary place of affiliation. The uchi is where one is taken care of, where one receives support and encouragement, and where one owes one's central commitment and effort. It is where one comes from and where one returns. Although a family home is the central and archetypal uchi, other groups assume the characteristics of an uchi as well, notably the company or place of work. When, for example, a person introduces him- or herself, it is frequently by company name, as in, "I am Tanaka of Mitsubishi."

The uchi protects itself in various ways, most notably by its privacy and exclusivity. Families, communities, and companies monitor members' behavior and performance, and although permanent membership guarantees that only extreme cases of deviation will be openly punished, the rewards of acceptance and the threat of banishment encourage conformity. Especially in times of rapid and turbulent change, the predictability of one's identity in an uchi environment offers essential security and comfort.

There are threats to the individual and to the personal uchi, however. Returnees, for example, may be marked as different, or as having been away too long to be trusted, and may be subtly isolated or directly confronted by the results of their "apostasy." While returnees are not absolutely abandoned by most uchis, they may nonetheless find themselves with permanently flawed identities or isolated within the group as functional but problematic or marginal members. The existence of this cordon sanitaire of Japanese domestic institutions encourages growth and change in the international arena but marks those who implement the desirable as themselves less than fully desirable.

The reentry shock experienced by Japanese overseas employees is a complex object of inquiry. Observers charting Japan's continuing "modernization," in which Japanese organizations are seen as moving awkwardly toward Western models of development, may see it as of ephemeral historical interest. Alternatively, the existence of this shock may signify basic cultural differences that can influence what "modern" means in the world today.

My perspective on the returnees is strongly influenced by an active view of "culture." I do not think that we can regard "culture" as merely exotic manifestations that lend diverse color to the world's societies and provide some local flavor on the menus of a Hilton or Holiday Inn in Frankfurt or Samoa. Instead of such a superficial view, this study affirms the centrality and active power of cultural meaning even in one of the most "modern" societies in the world, Japan. We need to understand basic cultural values and principles of organization to facilitate communication and to improve the uneasy workings of a global economy.

The specific Japanese problems documented will be looked at from several perspectives. First, it offers a way to consider Japanese identity. One can also observe changes in contemporary family structure, corporate organizational dynamics, and cultural conceptions of individual virtues and life chances. All these aspects of life are brought into high relief by the threats to identity created and implied by the internationalization of Japanese people and work.

We will look at the many contexts in which families experience the results of their international sojourn. Chapter 2 outlines the historical experiences of Japanese foreign sojourners, gives an overview of the contemporary setting, and provides a description of a family on the verge of departure from Japan. Chapter 3 paints portraits of three returnee families. Chapter 4 looks at the returnee child in school and Chapter 5 at mothers and fathers in the community and workplace. Finally, Chapter 6 analyzes the broad role of the "border broker" in Japanese organizations and considers the state and prospects of internationalization in Japan.

The Japanese Family Today

A few years ago there was a "movement," both engendered and encouraged by the media and commercial interests, called maihomushugi (my-homeism). This called for making the family the emotional center of activity and consumption. In this "ideal" family the children happily played electronic games, the father practiced putting on a small, artificial indoor green, and the mother demonstrated her cooking skills in elaborate meals that the family ate together. Although my-homeism sold many toys, do-it-yourself kits, and gourmet cooking utensils, the home itself could never compete with the company and school as arenas of activity. Most of a man's waking hours are spent at work or with colleagues, and most of a child's are...