Japan's New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (10 page)

It happens that Mamachi's elementary school is known as a fairly good school so that some parents in nearby school districts enroll their children in the Mamachi elementary school, but some Mamachi mothers similarly enroll their children in such a public junior high school in Tokyo. Even though the differences between these local schools may be minor, they are treated as if they were major since just such small differences may determine whether a student passes or fails a later examination. It is rare for a family to move to one of these school districts, but it is common for the mother and child to register as living at the home of some friend, relative, or acquaintance in that school district.

Many school officials and teachers feel sympathy for the earnest young children desiring to get ahead and are reluctant to raise objection to illegal crossing of school districts. In contrast to the city officials, school officials may be pleased about the desirability of their school and willing to take these ambitious children, so long as city

officials raise no objections. At times, city officials concerned about the heavy school expenditures will carry out an investigation and ungraciously send the child back to his own school district.

Although most people are aware of the problem of crossing of school districts, and although high registration rates of mothers and children of certain ages in well-known school districts are sufficient evidence of the problem, investigations are relatively rare. If there were to be a search, the mother would probably explain that due to domestic quarrels or illness, she and her child have in fact taken up residence apart from the husband in that particular school district. The family will have left clothing, a school uniform, and some school supplies with friends and relatives whose address they are using in case a law officer came to investigate. While this practice makes it more difficult to prove violations, many potential violators are caught at the time of registration, and many run the risk of being thrown out and then having difficult entering another school.

At the college level the only alternative for a student who fails his examinations is to become a
ronin
for a year or so. It is not especially embarrassing to be a
ronin
for one year, and many famous universities have stories of students who entered on their fifth, sixth, or even tenth attempt. But because the typical salary-man family has difficulty supporting the student for the extra year while studying for examinations, some
ronin
must compromise by working part-time while preparing for examinations. The status of a
ronin
is filled with anxiety. The student who has already failed one entrance examination generally feels somewhat more desperate, and doubt about success overshadows the entire period of
ronin
ship. Many families will take a second failure as clear indication that a child will not make a first-rate university, so that a first-year
ronin
may feel that he has only one more try. As a consequence, few families are able to tolerate and afford more than one year of
ronin
ship, and a student reluctantly may enroll in the university which was his second or third choice rather than become a second-year
ronin
.

It should be clear, then, that it is difficult for a salaried family to escape entirely from judgment by examination. A higher-status family, by wealth and community prestige, can often manage to pave the way to success for a child who does not perform well on examinations. But the typical salaried family lacks the resources to

command these alternatives. At best it can use its savings and personal contacts to enable the child to attend an institution slightly better than he would by relying solely on examinations. The salaried family is more likely to concentrate its most valuable resources, the mother's time and the family's savings on helping to prepare the child more adequately for examinations.

From an analysis of the various institutions and practices associated with entrance examinations, it is possible to understand why entrance examinations should receive such emphasis. Yet Mamachi residents feel that it has gone entirely too far and that they have become enslaved to the system. They feel sorry for the child who is forced to lead a restricted life deprived of jovial fellowship, music appreciation, sports, hobbies, movies, television, and pleasure reading. One girl, for example, a year before taking a college entrance examination, said that her leisure time activities consisted of occasionally stopping off at a department store for a few minutes on the way home from school. This asceticism, so closely associated with the traditional peasant's outlook, is endured because of the hope of living an easier life later. Preparation for examinations is painful not only because one must make such sacrifices but also because until one has finally passed entrance examinations there is always the anxiety and fear that one may not make the grade.

There is no question that during this period of asceticism these students absorb an amazing amount of facts. Not only do they master their own language, literature, and history, but they also learn to read English and become familiar with the history and culture of Europe and America. Course requirements in mathematics and science are at a higher level than those of comparable American schools.

But at the same time, students must sacrifice types of scholarship not measured by entrance examinations. For example, since the examination is written and not oral, a pupil studying English does not practice ordinary conversation, but concentrates on reading, on fine points of grammar, and, in some cases, on pedantic expressions which are likely to appear on the examination. High-school teachers

complain that they cannot get students interested in laboratory work connected with science because the examinations measure only what can be read and answered. Since examinations cover a full range of subjects, a child who begins to show a strong interest in one field usually will be encouraged by his teacher and his parents to broaden his interests so that he can get fully prepared also in other subjects. Since multiple-choice examinations cannot measure original and creative thought, the emphasis is placed on memorization.

Even if the students who do not take entrance examinations imitate the study patterns of examinees, they feel relatively deprived—falling behind their peers in preparation for success in life and neglected by the teachers at school. Since no students are failed, poorer students are supposed to be given special supplementary classes. The poor students often complain that, instead, supplementary classes are given to good students preparing for difficult examinations. While the schools are supposed to help students who wish to get part-time jobs and to help them find employment after the ninth grade, those students likewise feel that they are slighted because the school is more interested in placing the continuing students. Even those who do not complain are distressed that their children will not have such good chances of becoming salary men.

In most modern societies, the task of educating the youth is performed not in the home but in the school system. For these salaried families, however, education is performed by the school
and
the home. In a sense, parents become assistant teachers, checking frequently with the regular teachers about the work the parents should be doing to help educate and train their children. Therefore to a large extent the parent-child relationship is the relationship of teacher and student. The mother must supervise her child, give him assignments, check the work, and impose necessary sanctions to see that he performs the work adequately. Whereas, in some industrialized societies, the mother-child relationship is more strictly limited to primary socialization and to providing affection, among these salaried families it must also take on in addition a task orientation in which the mother and the child prepare for examinations.

The prominence of examinations in the life of Mamachi salaried families reflects an acceptance of the principle that success should be determined by competence as judged by a universal standard. The path of success is not determined primarily by birth or connections but by superior capacity as demonstrated by performance. While Japan is sometimes described as a particularistic society, at the time of examinations particularistic relations clearly give way to these universalistic standards. One of the dangers of open competition, however, is that rivalry may prove disruptive to groups.

Yet the extent of disruption is very limited in groups to which Mamachi residents belong because within the group competition is carefully controlled. Once a child is admitted to a school, grades are not given great importance, and there is a strong feeling of group solidarity which serves to inhibit competitiveness between the students.
^[8]
Once in the firm, one's success has been assured, and rivalry is kept in bounds by the primacy of seniority which is non-competitive and the common interest in the success of the firm. Since schools and firms do not drop members for poor achievement records, there is no feeling that one's remaining in the group depends on another's leaving.

Even in taking entrance examinations, a person plays down competition with friends. A person ordinarily hopes that all in his group of friends will be among those who pass. Even if friends are separated and pursue different paths as a result of examinations, there usually is no feeling of acrimony. In a sense, the one who did not get in feels that the position he hoped for was filled not by his friend but by a stranger.

Achievement patterns also do not disrupt family solidarity. In the United States, for example, where achievement is defined as an individual matter, the child who goes beyond his parents in achievement level often feels that his parents have difficulty understanding the kind of world in which he lives. Among the Mamachi families,

[8] This pattern appears to begin at an early age. Miss Kazuko Yoshinaga who taught in middle-class kindergartens in both Japan and the United States reported that in kindergartens American children are much more openly competitive than Japanese children. Even about matters of age and size, Japanese kindergarten children rarely engage in comparisons and are less interested in who is bigger and older.

however, the child's success is more directly a family success. The mother continually keeps close to the child and his work. Even if the child does not need his family's introductions, he will require the family's help in preparing for the examinations. While disparities between achievement of siblings may create some problems, brothers and sisters are also so involved in each other's success and share in the community respect awarded to a family that examinations serve usually to unite siblings as well as other members of the nuclear family.

Under conditions of competing with strangers the achievement pressures are least controlled. Just as considerations of politeness do not prevent the shoving of strangers getting on a subway, so competitiveness is accepted as natural at the time of entrance examinations. In this way, the entrance-examination system operates to preserve the distinction between friends and strangers because blatant competition is concentrated at the time of admission when one competes with strangers. Once admitted, competition is subordinated to loyalty and friendship within the group. Thus the phenomenon of entrance examinations operates to maintain universalistic standards in such a way that it minimizes the threat to group solidarity. The cost to the individual is the anxiety and pressure which he must endure at the crucial point of admission.

For the rest of Japan the people who have been able to become salary men are symbols of the
akarui seikatsu
(bright new life), the life with leisure time, travel and recreation, and few binding obligations and formalities. Because he has security from the firm he may steadily acquire the new consumer goods without fear of being without income and going into debt. For the person who aspires to be a salary man, the bright new life is indeed a rosy picture. For the salaried family each glamorous new purchase is the result of careful planning and many sacrifices. To an affluent American, the bright new life appears orderly but ascetic, and he finds it hard to share the anticipation with which the Japanese salaried family awaits each new acquisition.

Before the war, electricity, the sewing machine, irons, and the radio were already widespread, but all other electric equipment, like refrigerators, heaters, toasters, washing machines, fans, and the like, which had spread through the United States and Europe in prewar days, have become common in Japan only in the last decade. In the immediate postwar period, Mamachi residents, like other Japanese, were concerned with getting the barest necessities of food and shelter. They were accustomed to great economic deprivations, to long food lines, to trips to the country for food. Even their beloved small flower beds and rock gardens were turned into vegetable patches. In the last decade, this picture has changed drastically. Large numbers of machines which formerly they had seen only in foreign films were imported, and later, as Japanese business began to recognize the importance of the consumer market, they were produced at home. The excitement of the consumer has been enormous. These new goods were at first available only to the wealthy, but now

they are within the reach of the average salary man. Mamachi residents relate with pleasure how they first saw the machines and how they heard about them. They still tell funny stories about the mistakes and misunderstandings in their first attempts to use them, and they talk with great delight of their most recent purchases.