Diaries, the Individual, and the Family
By Anne Walthall

In western literary traditions, the diary is the ultimate expression of the individual self. Many diarists would feel violated were someone to steal a look at their most intimate secrets. With few exceptions, diaries are seldom read by others while their authors are still living. After death is another matter. Great diarists are assiduously read for insight into their personalities and their perspective on their times; other diaries become fodder for historians seeking clues to past practices. Japanese diaries, in contrast, have almost always presumed an audience. In Makiko's Diary, the audience is not just the author herself but her family and descendants.

Diaries constitute an important component of the Japanese literary tradition. As in the case of Makiko's diary and in contrast to the West, most were written by women. Within the confines of the imperial court of the tenth century and later, these diaries became a kind of public record. Because there was no formal mechanism for registering marriages and couples did not necessarily live together, diaries might provide a history of a relationship, perhaps even evidence of paternity, that had no other documentation. They were meant to be read by other people who copied them and circulated the copies.

Most diaries fall outside the literary tradition. In the eighteenth century wealthy rural entrepreneurs began to keep family diaries. Some were little more than glorified account books; others listed important events in a family's life and described the yearly round of ceremonies that marked the family's history. Many of these household heads were deliberately creating precedents for their family members. They kept diaries precisely in order to instruct their descendants in how family practices had been carried out in the past. Until recently these were ignored by historians because they were considered too particular to a single family to reflect larger historical trends. Makiko's diary belongs to this category. Like those written by men, it ignores events in the outside world unless these impinge directly on the family. Had the Pacific War not brought an end to the Nakano family business, she might have used it as evidence of the family's traditions in teaching a daughter-in-law the ways of the house.

About the time Makiko kept her diary, the major publishing company Hakubunkan started producing diaries targeted at housewives. Before the twentieth century, people made their own diaries out of scraps of paper sewn together. By the 1920s, publishers had taken over, selling different styles for different types of people. One provided a place for the commuting white collar worker to record what time he took the train every day. One called a "diary for beauties" listed movie theaters and restaurants to inform the young modern women of the cities where to go to be seen and what to see. The housewife's diary becomes further specialized into an infant's diary where the mother can record what she feeds the baby every day, when baby takes her first step, and what are baby's first words. There are school girls' diaries different in color, form and content from school boys' diaries. The habit of keeping a diary peaks around 1935. Makiko's diary is thus an early example of a major trend in modern Japan.

Diaries continue to be kept in Japan today. Teachers may require school children to keep a diary over the summer vacation to record their homework. In one bank, trainees keep diaries of their activities, not so much as an aid to remembering what they have learned as a spur to reflection and self-criticism. As Thomas Rohlen points out, "Self Reflection (hansei) is nothing unusual as part of moral education in Japan, and the use of a diary for this purpose is also common." (1) Makiko's occasional comments that she must learn to do better fit within this tradition. For her, keeping a diary becomes a form of self-discipline, a means by which she can polish her image as a model wife. Some teenage girls today will keep what is called an "exchange" (kokan) diary, in which each expects to read what the other has written according to predetermined categories such as "what I want to buy when I go shopping." (2) In the interests of deepening friendship, each partner is encouraged to expose her most intimate thoughts and feelings to the other's gaze.

People unused to getting information from a diary may be put off by its format. There is no plot; there is no narrative. Instead the repetition of categories such as the weather, correspondence in, correspondence out, produces a rhythm or a cadence of daily trivia underpinning against an occasional outburst of extraordinary events. There is no character development. There is nothing to lead the reader deeper into Makiko's psyche. The few glimpses we gain of her personality and the people around her remain just that. Nonetheless, by recording her daily activities and interactions, Makiko inadvertently exposes a great deal about herself and these others as well, although never so much as the curious might like. The diary presents a slice of life, leaving paths unexplored, questions unanswered, and edges untidy.

Makiko's Diary presents a window on the world we have lost. By excavating the nuggets of information it conceals on individual expectations, personal relationships and family life, we can begin to understand the way people lived their lives in 1910, the changes then occurring, and the differences between that lifestyle and urban lifestyles even fifteen years later. Vestiges of Makiko's world remain in Japan today, but they are disappearing so quickly that soon nothing will be left except written records.


Individual roles and human feelings
Makiko is a young woman of limited education. She is a wife, but she is not yet a mother. In that sense she is unrepresentative because she lacks the most important dimension generally considered essential to a woman of her time in her position. She has married because two families decided that uniting in this way would be an appropriate arrangement, beneficial to them and expected of her. Although she is not completely uninvolved in this decision, neither she nor her husband Chuhachi initiated it, nor did she have her choice of spouses. From her diary it appears that she feels no need to offer resistance to this system; instead she deals with the institution that dominates her life by performing spontaneous acts of pleasure.

In the romantic ideals regarding marriage common in the United States, the stereotypical assumption is always that only one person in the world can be the perfect mate, it is the individual's responsibility to find that person, and true love (preferably at first sight), is essential for a happy marriage. While friends may be helpful in performing introductions, a parent's approval is well nigh irrelevant and may even suffice to damn a potential spouse irredeemable. Most Japanese see things differently. Even today when the line between arranged (miai) and love (ren'ai) marriages has been substantially blurred through the use of company introductions and match-making services with each member of the couple possessing a much wider range of choices and stronger right of rejection that was the norm in prewar days, the opinion of parents is still important. After all, they are older and wiser in the ways of the world. Because marriage is supposed to last a lifetime, it is considered entirely appropriate for love to develop over the history of the relationship. Regardless of whether Makiko loved Chuhachi when she wrote the diary, by the time they had grown old together, she would have certainly developed a deep and abiding affection for him indistinguishable from love.

By keeping a diary, Makiko demonstrates that she expects to fulfill certain expectations concerning the role of a housewife. In many ways she is training herself to be a good wife and wise mother. It could be said that she is participating in her own oppression under the prewar family system. On the other hand, becoming fully vested in this system gives her standing in her community and an ikigai, a reason for living. Not for her is the aimless freedom enjoyed by so many women in their twenties today. She finds it strange, for example, that her brother's fiancee commits a social gaffe of not visiting her in-laws before the wedding. Makiko herself would never have missed such an appointment important to her future and to the future of her household. She understands how important it is to take her responsibilities seriously, to meet her obligations because in doing so she builds a good reputation.

The two most important people in Makiko's life are her husband and her mother-in-law. Because she is attempting to record what is important for her to remember as the future female head of the household, she focuses on what they do more than her personal feelings. For this reason, she seldom speaks of them with any particular warmth, and this is particularly true when it comes to her husband. She is grateful for an unexpected kindness, she is angry when she is crossed, but because the diary is a place to record the household's activities, she says nothing about the couple's most intimate moments.

Even though we see 1910 Japan through the eyes of a woman, we learn a great deal about what men did at the time, in guises in which they would never think to portray themselves. How many men would make a note of buying dolls, for example? Partly because of Chuhachi's position as head of an old and well-established firm, it is natural for him, given his interests, to take the lead in organizing new activities for his friends and exploring the latest technologies. Despite the heavy responsibility of rebuilding the family business, not for him is the unrelenting drudgery of the full-time job. Instead, he finds the time to enjoy himself at all hours of the day or night and not necessarily just on weekends. He shares the fun with everyone around him. From the diary it would almost appear as though he sees Makiko as an indulged younger sister rather than a wife.

Although the diary shows Chuhachi at play and alludes to his work, it says nothing about his politics. It mentions that he was extremely active in the neighborhood association, he played a leading role in the pharmacy club and promoted the folktales club. He went to vote in an election, but which party did he vote for? Men of his class were often conservative and extremely nationalistic. Did the intransigence of the great powers in Asia make him angry? Evidence for a pro-western attitude is not hard to find in the diary, but whether it was confined to the arts and material culture is unknown.

Makiko receives her education in domestic science (also known as home economics) from her mother-in-law who teaches her the family's customary practices. In this she differs from the new middle class housewife who without a teacher in the house learns the scientific approach to nutrition and managing a budget by reading the household columns in women journals. Rather than the ogre stereotypically portrayed in folktales and TV dramas, Mine turns out to be kind and considerate. She teaches through example, she seldom scolds her daughter-in-law or harasses her by forcing her to rise exceptionally early, and she encourages Makiko to explore her own interests so long as these benefit the family. Having recently lost her own mother, Makiko is well aware of that women may die at a relatively early age. Demographers could have told her that her apprenticeship would last only five to seven years. Given this limited time span, it behooves her to treat Mine with respect and learn as much from her as she can. In today's world, by contrast, a bride who moves in with her mother-in-law can expect to spend the first thirty years of marriage with her, a daunting prospect no matter how delightful the individual.


The Family
Prewar Japanese society was characterized by a particular form of family structure known as the ie. The individuals who happened to inhabit an ie at any one time were simply its caretakers. They were expected to maintain if not increase its property, preserve if not enhance its name, worship the generations who had come before and provide progeny to make sure more would come later. In the case of the Nakano family, seven generations structured their lives around maintaining a pharmacy. The head of the ie was expected to be male. He had the right and the obligation to make all major decisions for the family members" how much education they would receive and where, what kind of work they would perform, who they would marry, when they would go out. If he failed in his duty to regulate the household, its reputation would suffer, and it might well fail to carry out its mission to perpetuate itself. His was a heavy burden. His wife assisted him by managing the household, maintaining good relations with the neighbors, supporting his decisions and, if possible, having children. Sometimes, as with Mine, she was her parents' only surviving child and her husband was brought in as an adopted son-in-law. He, not she, represented the household to the outside world. In each generation there could only be one head of household. His brothers like his sisters would have to leave the house to get married; neither would expect to receive any of the family's major assets. Even today the imperative of ie continuity mandates consideration when there is property to inherit.

Makiko's family belongs to the old middle class of shopkeepers and merchants. In 1910 it contained long-established, relatively stable enterprises, some of which were to adapt and survive the vicissitudes of modern times while others did not. A multiplicity of roles for men and women, plus role sharing characterizes this type of family. It is different from the new middle class with its roots in the 1920s that comes to dominate the urban landscape in the postwar period. It is also distinctly different from the former samurai, farm family, and academic households, although as the Nakano family demonstrates, members of these different types of households often exchanged partners. Its remnants today may be found in the mom-and-pop stores that have earned the scorn of American economists for their inefficiency while continuing to provide daily necessities to neighborhood housewives.

The new middle class is characterized by a split between home and work, as demonstrated in the case of the Tanii family. Chuhachi's sister Yae and her husband Senjiro inhabit two complementary but largely separate spheres with a clear demarcation between her domestic realm and his publicly recognized activities. Each would have his or her own circle of friends often unknown to the other. In this type of family, the wife knows little about her husband's work and his associates, nor does she share his interests either at work or play. He meets his friends outside the house, often at a bar or restaurant near the train station, participating in what is known as "terminal culture." He may get home so late and rise so early that his wife sees him only while serving him breakfast or a late-night snack. He leaves the entire running of the household to her, including the household budget, repairs to the house, and its interactions with neighbors and relatives. His career is chosen for him not on the basis of what his father did but the education that he himself has attained. His income comes in the form of a salary. It increases as he gets older; it is not supposed to fluctuate owing to a downturn in the economy or a mistake in gauging the market. This kind of financial security was foreign to the old middle class.

In Makiko's case as in other shopkeeper households, the husband and wife spend considerable time in each other's company. The store being an extension of the house, she knows a great deal about his work, even though she herself is not normally involved in the shop's day to day operations. She knows his friends because he often entertains at home. Chuhachi knows as much about her life as she does about his. He helps with pickle-making; he performs household repairs in what today would be seen as a confusion of gender roles. They go out together. In this setting, the interdependence of husband and wife is manifested by frequent interactions over the course of each day.

Another distinguishing mark of the old middle class is the constant coming and going of the extended family plus friends and neighbors at all hours of the day and night. Women in the new middle class lead much more isolated lives. They may set out the dolls for Girl's Day on the third of March and invite a relative or two to come to see them. But they are not going to have a steady stream of visitors, nor do family members generally live close enough to pay frequent visits. To entertain guests and demonstrate her suitability as the wife of the family head, Makiko has to pay a great deal of attention to festive observances. The preparations she makes to mark the New Year begin much earlier that they would for a wife in the new middle class. The celebrations continue much longer, they involve many more people, and they include an elaboration of food and rituals that requires time and space unavailable to a middle class household.

The relationship between couples in the old middle class resembles the patterns of life in farm family households. In both cases, men spend much more time in their wives' company than is true for the new middle class. Nevertheless, there are differences. The Nakano's Nishimura relatives had to get up with the dawn to take advantage of every hour of daylight. Even after electrification came to rural areas in the 1920s (and Japan led the world in bringing the electric lights to households exclaimed over by Makiko)(3), farmers continued to retire early. Only in urban areas would people stay up so late as Makiko's husband. Women are likely to take a much more active role in the business of farming; they are chiefly responsible for transplanting rice seedlings, and once the men have finished the harvest, women work with them in threshing and then drying the grains. At the same time women may have their own money-making enterprises, especially if the family raises silk worms. Even though Makiko knows generally what is going on in the pharmacy, the store's operation is left to managers who would resent her interference. In a family business with an old and well-established reputation, for a wife to seek ways to earn her own money would be tantamount to an admission of bankruptcy.

Women in the former samurai households, vividly depicted in Ishimoto Shidzue's autobiography, experience much greater restrictions on their daily activities than did Makiko (4). Makiko's mother came from such a family. When people disparage the prewar family for its oppression of individuals and especially women, this is the model that they usually have in mind. Ishimoto describes the isolation of a young bride, brought into a household of strangers, discouraged from even thinking about her parents and cut off from her friends. A common word for "wife" in Japan is okusan, the person of the interior. The more a samurai woman remains inside the family compound, the more respectable she becomes. The same is true of women who have the misfortune to marry high status families in small towns. In his memoir of small town life, Saga Jun'ichi relates how the wife of the town's leading citizen never ventures outside during the day. On those rare occasions when she leaves the house, she times her departure for dusk and she is accompanied by a male servant running along beside the rickshaw. So seldom does she appear that people will gather around the gate to watch for her to come out and she becomes an object of great curiosity (5).

In contrast to samurai women or those for whom female seclusion is a mark of family status, Makiko goes out whenever necessary, at all hours of the day or night, and she goes out alone. She keeps up a lively correspondence with her friends, and her diary provides a glimpse of women's networks, parallel to those for men. She remains close to her natal family; perhaps because her widower father needs the help of his eldest daughter, more likely because it is expected. A woman's bilateral connections served both her and her in-laws; otherwise what would be the point of making a marriage alliance in the first place? The famous scenes in which her husband or her mother-in-law forbid Makiko to leave the house or go to Manchuria should not be allowed to obscure her many opportunities to get out, whether to go to cooking class or see a spectacle. The same is true for the other women she knew, married and unmarried. They all led busy, engaged lives.

Academics and other professionals in the prewar period constituting such a small and relatively elite portion of the population, their family structure has largely gone unstudied. Nevertheless, they are vividly depicted in famous novels of the early twentieth century, most notably in Natsume Soseki's Kokoro. As in the old middle class, the men perform most of their work at home, in a study or, in the case of doctors, a consulting room attached to the main building, which they hope to pass on to a son or an adopted son-in-law. While their wives may be ignorant in their spouse's specialty, they are always aware of where he is and what he is doing. At the same time, the husband will spend time outside, at a university, hospital, or law court which may require a long commute and in any case constitutes an all-male domain. Their income is much more secure than that of the old middle class. They thus span two worlds. In such settings students and other apprentices become almost part of the family; they know the wife as well as the husband and treat his residence as their second home, participating in festivities in much the same way that the shop assistants join in the Nakano family's celebrations.

Despite the insecurities of running a family business, insofar as Chuhachi and Makiko exemplify the old middle class, they have a good life. Neither has to spend his or her strength on the grueling hours of labor it takes to keep a farm going. They can afford to stay up late, and they spend many evenings at home together. They live in a stable, safe neighborhood with other families of similar status. Their community of friends and relatives provides them with a dense network to call upon in time of need. Makiko was not of such high status that she had to stay inside; she was not of such low status that she led a hand-to-mouth existence. She lived in a world that is fast disappearing as the maw of modern capitalism swallows up old family businesses, leaving chain stores in its wake.


Notes
1. Thomas P. Rohlen, For Harmony and Strength: Japanese WhiteCollar Organizations in Anthropological Perspective (University of California Press, 1974) pp.197-98.

2. Merry White, "The Marketing of Adolescence in Japan: Buying and Dreaming." Women, Media and Consumption in Japan, edited by Lise Skov and Brian Moeran (University of Hawai'i Press, 1995) pp. 262.

3. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Technological Transformation of Japan from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-first Century, p. 129 (Cambridge University Press, 1994).

4. Baroness Shidzue Ishimoto (Hirota), Facing Two Ways: The Story of My Life (New York: Farrar & Rhinehart, 1935); also published under the name Kato Shidzue with an introduction and afterward by Barbara Molony (Stanford University Press, 1984).

5. Jun'ichi Saga, Memories of Silk and Straw: A Self-Portrait of Small-Town Japan, translated by Garry O. Evans (Tokyo; New York: Kodansha International.


Suggested Readings
Gail L. Bernstein's Haruko's World: A Japanese Farm Woman and Her Community (Stanford University Press, 1983, new edition, 1996), provides an in-depth look at a postwar woman, her activities and her relations with her neighbors and relatives.

Nishikawa Yuko, "Diaries as Gendered Texts," Women and Class in Japanese History ed. by Hitomi Tonomura, Anne Walthall and Wakita Haruko (University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, 1999), has many insights into the differences between Japanese and Western diaries as well as the history of the diary in Japan.

Inouye Jukichi's, Home Life in Tokyo (London; Boston: KPI, 1985) first printed in Tokyo in 1910, offers perhaps the first English-language guide to urban life in modern Japan.

Anne Walthall, "The Family Ideology of Rural Entrepreneurs in Early Nineteenth Century Japan" Journal of Social History 23.3 (Spring 1990): 463-483, discusses the household diaries kept by household heads and sometimes their wives.