Intimate dependence and its risks in neoliberal Japan

Abstract This paper examines how contemporary Japanese women are negotiating neoliberal standards for independence in relation to cultural norms and personal desires that encourage dependence in romantic relationships. In recent decades, neoliberal standards of maturity have become increasingly visible in Japan, and many marital counselors offer advice suggesting that independent, atomized selves are a key to happiness. Yet many women express ambivalence at this formula and instead find romantic possibility in dependent relationships. I examine how women are contesting these opposing standards by focusing on advice surrounding naming practices between spouses. [Keywords: Japan, divorce, intimacy, neoliberalism, dependence] (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) Introduction 100 Reasons for Later-Life Divorce, a marital advice book published in Tokyo in 2006, offers more than just a list of the most common reasons for divorce among people over 60 years of age. After enumerating the "top 10" reasons for divorce given in a television program on the topic, the authors ask the reader to identify spouses' mistakes in a narrative scenario. Following popular understandings of gendered responsibility, this task mostly consists of figuring out what the husband is doing wrong. In a section including a script of a middle-aged husband's return from work one evening, the text recommends keeping an eye out for the "reasons for divorce" (rikon riyu) and then provides a quiz about what isn't working in this marriage. In this opening to a longer scenario, the husband manages to do three things that are presented as both entirely typical for a man of his age, and as dangerous risks for his marriage. First, this husband doesn't return his wife's greetings (aisatsu) when she welcomes him home. Second, he pulls off his clothes to lounge around in his underwear. And finally, when asking for a cold beer, he calls her "mother" (TBS bangumi seisaku sutaffu [TBS Broadcast Staff] 2006:72). This guidebook is one of many contemporary sources that suggest spouses are creating tectonic risks in marriages when they call each other "mother" and "father." Yet this has long been a very common practice in Japanese families. I argue that, in popular representations, these common denotational practices are now seen as dangerous because they enable a dependence that conflicts with burgeoning neoliberal ideals of independent autonomy. The Japanese divorce rate's rise to over 30 percent coincided with public policies and private rhetorics that increasingly privilege neoliberal ethics of private ownership, individual responsibility, self-reliance, and reduced dependence on social structures like families or the nation-state. Such recent shifts have been particularly visible in Japan because through the 1980s state policies continued to construct families, rather than individuals, as the smallest social unit. For instance, during that time, all family members' pensions were released to the family as a unit, which often meant that a woman's pension was paid in her husband's name (Rosenberger 1991). Conversely, legal changes in 2007 made it possible for divorced wives to claim part of their husbands' future pension payments, constructing housewives as independent wage-earners entitled to cash out the benefits marriage accorded them (Alexy 2007). Although such newer laws are premised on neoliberal ideals of independent selves, simultaneous policies, such as those requiring all family members to share one last name, suggest the ongoing negotiation between ethics of individual responsibility and cultural ideals of interdependence. For many people, the problems with a husband who calls his wife "mother" hinge directly on dependency. In their views, this practice contributes to marital problems because of the cluster of behaviors associated with it and the dependent intimacy it constructs. Like the fictional husband mentioned above, popular representations describe men who call their wives "mother" as old-fashioned, selfish, and satisfied with their dependence on the very wives they take for granted. …