The Modern Family in Japan: Its Rise and Fall

This award-winning book brings together Chizuko Ueno’s groundbreaking essays on the rise and fall of the modern family in Japan. Combining historical, sociological, anthropological, and journalistic methodologies, Ueno - who is arguably the foremost feminist theoretician in Japan - delineates in vivid detail how the family has been changing in form and function in the last hundred years.

In each chapter, Ueno introduces the reader to a different facet of modern Japanese family life, ranging from children who fantasise about being orphans to the elderly who confront ‘pre-senescence’. The central focus is on the housewife - her history, her ever-changing responsibilities, her ways of surviving mid-life crisis.

This is an indispensable book for students and scholars seeking to understand modern Japan.