FURUKAWA, Japan — Two years ago, unable to stand it any longer, Fumi
Sasaki moved her family out of her mother-in-law's house. "It wasn't anything
in particular, just an accumulation of a lot of little things that suddenly
exploded," she said. "I just thought, this is my own life and I have to
live it before it's crushed."
Those are bold words from a daughter-in-law, yome in Japanese, or more
politely, oyome-san. But even her mother-in-law, Shizuko Sasaki, 64, while
acknowledging that the decision stunned her at first, said she could understand.
Her daughter- in-law, after all, was going bald under the strain of living
together.
"I had been saying whatever I wanted, and maybe that caused some stress,"
said Shizuko Sasaki, who is herself a yome to her own 87- year-old mother-in-law.
"Of course, I am troubled that my oyome-san doesn't listen to me, but then,
I wasn't a model oyome-san, either."
The yome is a dying breed in Japan, where a daughter-in-law once had
to sing out, "Ittekimasu," roughly the equivalent of "I'll be back," if
she wanted to leave the house — and could not if her mother-in-law did
not answer.
"I had to be deferential to my in- laws all the time when I was a yome,"
said Mihoko Sugawara, 67, who lives her with her son Kanichi, his wife,
Yuko, 41, and their children. "I was in a position to say nothing. My opinion
never counted. I had no money of my own."
In farming communities like this one 185 miles north of Tokyo, in Miyagi
Prefecture, where generations labor together tending fields and livestock,
women like Fumi Sasaki, 36, are still in many ways the exception. But the
tradition of parents and children — sometimes three generations at a time
— living together has all but disappeared in urban parts of Japan.
And as young couples have left home, the number of elderly people living
on their own has skyrocketed, generating a trend with big implications
for the Japanese government.
People age 65 and older living on their own or as couples accounted
for almost 46 percent of households in Japan in 1999, compared with less
than 20 percent in 1972, the first year the Ministry of Health, Labor and
Welfare began compiling such statistics.
Over the same period, the number of three-generation families like the
Sasakis and the Sugawaras who live together under one roof has declined
to 29.7 percent of all households, from 55.8 percent. Most of the remaining
extended families live in farm regions like this one, but even here, they
are rapidly dwindling.
The will of young people to leave their parents' home has been driven
by many things — the lure of cities, the desire of more women to work outside
the house and the independence for both young and old that comes with greater
wealth — but one motivator seems stronger than all the others.
"The main reason for this is that young women don't want to be oyome-san
any more," said Shiro Yamazaki, who oversees government programs for the
elderly at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
So, increasingly, the government has become oyome-san instead, and the
burden of caring for the elderly has fallen more and more on it.
To Japan's credit, the country offers a huge menu of health-care services
for older people in their homes. The government will dispatch workers to
cook meals, workers to bathe elderly family members and nurses to administer
injections, although applying for such services can be cumbersome.
Additionally, there are social barriers to taking advantage of them.
Officials tell stories about families in rural communities that continue
to hang out laundry belonging to their elderly parents long after they
have been dispatched to a nursing home, ashamed that their neighbors might
think they have abandoned them.
But the practice of extended families living under a single roof is
actually a relatively new and artificial one, said Emiko Ochiai, a specialist
in family sociology at the International Center for Japanese Studies in
Kyoto. Before the Meiji era, from 1868 to 1912, she said, most Japanese
couples lived apart from their parents.
As people's life spans increased, the government found it more beneficial
for the family to care for the elderly. "The Meiji government wanted the
household to become a unit of welfare, in which younger people were responsible
for the care of their elders, so they made it a legal obligation," Ms.
Ochiai said. "The system continued after the war, but the ideology, which
was not so deeply rooted in tradition, became weaker and weaker in the
1960's and 1970's."
Whereas the government could once count on the daughter-in-law to care
for her husband's parents, today it is scrambling to build a public system
that can take her place, as young people move out and into tiny apartments
and a younger generation of women has become more self- sufficient and,
sometimes, assertive.
A 1993 study by Kiyoshi Hiroshima, a demographer at Shimane University,
showed that even though falling birthrates give younger people greater
opportunity to live with their parents, the number of young people opting
to do so has been declining since the mid-1980's. "Among people who can
live with their parents," he said, "the propensity to choose to live with
their parents is constantly decreasing."
The pension system has also played a role, giving older people the support
to live independently. "The most influential factor in the increase in
independent living is improvements in the economic situation," Professor
Hiroshima said. "Over the last two decades, older people have gotten better
and better support from their pensions, so they can afford an independent
life."
Their children, however, are not likely to enjoy the same degree of
security. Economists and financial analysts estimate that public and private
pension plans are underfinanced by as much as 80 trillion yen, meaning
that the government will have to step in and bridge the gap once filled
by family. Longer life spans place a bigger burden on the younger generation
than ever before.
"It's hard work to care for the aged," said Masanao Sasaki, 44, a rice
farmer (who is not related to Fumi Sasaki). "I think we would all like
to care for them in our homes," he said, "but I see in our neighborhood
that more and more people are asking for public help."
Mr. Sasaki and his wife, Akemi, and their three children live with his
mother and father and his 92-year- old grandfather and 88-year-old grandmother.
Akemi Sasaki, who is 39, and her mother-in-law, Satsuki, who is 66, have
had remarkably different lives as two different generations of yome.
"When my mother was young, yome were counted as part of the labor force
for the family," Mr. Sasaki explained.
The mother-in-law remembers using charcoal to heat the home and cook,
while Akemi has the latest in home appliances. "These electronic gadgets
have made things much easier," she said, as she produced hot water for
green tea with the push of a button.
Her mother-in-law raised her children while she worked in the fields,
and she never thought about asking her in-laws to watch the children so
she could go out with friends. "They made all the decisions and controlled
all the money," she said. "We even had to ask our children to ask my father-in-law
to pay for their school because we had nothing."
The two women insist that they have few differences. "Of course, the
relationship is always in my mind, but not in the same way as it would
have been in old times," said Akemi Sasaki. "I feel like she's half my
mother, and maybe I'm being a little impolite, but I think of her as a
friend, too, because I sometimes consult with her."
They have enough differences, however, to have made Mr. Sasaki the family
arbitrator. "I'm a very weak referee," he said. "The differences between
the three generations are very wide, which makes it difficult to side with
anyone."
When Yoko Nasuno got married about 25 years ago, she came to live with
her in-laws. "I sort of knew what it would be like when I got married,
but it was still different from my expectations," she said quietly. "It
was really hard work. I couldn't even find time to read a newspaper."
In the summer, she rose at 4 a.m. to drive to the fields to make sure
they were supplied with enough water, and then she came home to make breakfast
for the family and do the laundry, by hand. She then headed for the fields
for a few hours' work before coming back to the house to prepare lunch
and then going back to the fields. She cooked dinner, got her two children
in bed, washed the dishes and fell into bed at sometime around 11 p.m.
Life was a little easier in the winter, when the fields were fallow:
she could get up one hour later. "They told me to greet anyone visiting
the house, even if I had to stop my work in the fields to do so," said
Mrs. Nasuno, who is now 51. "And I always had to tell my parents-in-law
where I was, even if I was only out in the garden. They had to know where
I was every minute."
Her mother-in-law died recently, but for a decade before her death,
Mrs. Nasuno took her back and forth to the hospital for care, sometimes
trekking from hospital to hospital for treatment. She bathed her and fed
her, preparing special foods, but she is not eager to see the same task
fall to her children. "I worry I will be destroying my children's life,"
she said.
Would her life have been better or happier if she had lived separately
from her in-laws?
"Rather than choosing to live together or apart, if I were reborn, I
would never get married," she said.
