Off to Market
I bumped into Isomoto-san in the supermarket
yesterday. Her family lives upstairs in our 'mansion', and like us,
they are one of the few 'originals' still living here nine years
after moving into this then brand new building. We were both carrying
shopping baskets, standing somewhat aimlessly in the middle of the
produce section, and consulting similar ragged slips of paper ...
notes on possible menus for the evening dinner. I frequently bump
into local housewives in such a fashion, and the comments they make
to me are invariably of the same sort, just as hers was this time ...
"Buru-san wa erai desune
...!" They think I am pretty 'special',
because I go shopping ... because I make dinner every day ... do all
the laundry ... keep my house clean ... etc. etc. When I laugh and
reply with words to the effect that they must be 'special' too,
because they are doing exactly the same things for their own
families, their answer is of course very predictable ... "But you're
a man!"
Thinking and writing about this kind of topic
poses an interesting question. I am just a man going through a simple
daily routine taking care of his family (I was divorced a couple of
years ago, and live with my two elementary school age daughters), and
to my mind, there is nothing particularly 'good' or 'bad' about these
housework chores, but to many of the people around me, my activities
carry quite a large 'meaning'. And this 'meaning' differs hugely from
person to person. I am thinking in particular of four particular
groups of people, each of whom seem to have a fairly predictable
viewpoint on my situation: the local Japanese housewives, the local
Japanese husbands, western women, and western men. Which of the four
quite disparate opinions is 'right'?
The local women, especially the older ones (those
about my own age, that is!), watch me go about my work somewhat
wistfully. "If only my husband would ...", is of course their main
thought. They grew up in an era in which men worked exclusively
outside the home, and women in the home, and although such patterns
are now slowly changing, very few of them have any experience of
seeing their husbands do more than the odd token gesture of
housework. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I
have bumped into a male acquaintance shopping in the supermarket.
These women can only dream about having someone help them with work
around the house.
Wistful is not the word that adequately describes
how the local husbands see my behaviour. Just a short while ago, I
was chatting with one of them, a man with whom I have become fairly
friendly during these nine years in this apartment, and his comments
ran to the, "Jeeez ... You sure are making life difficult for me
recently ..." sort of thing. I guess the wives have been holding me
up as a kind of example. "That guy downstairs does all the housework
in his place. You could at least take out the garbage once in a
while!", etc. etc. But these men honestly don't feel that sharing the
housework is their responsibility. They mostly work long (hard?)
hours at their company jobs, and when they get home, they certainly
don't want to get involved in more work. This was the 'deal' they
made when they got married - a pretty much complete division of
labour. In their eyes, I am thus a bit of a 'troublemaker', blurring
those previously clear roles, and stirring up problems.
I don't have much contact with western women
recently, so perhaps I'm going out on a limb a bit here, but it seems
to me that this group's attitude to this is also quite predictable.
"So he goes shopping and does the cooking ... so what. What's the big
deal? Some people feel he is virtuous because of that? Get real!"
It's been a decade since I've been in a supermarket in Canada, but
I'm sure that in any checkout line now, the numbers of men and women
are probably not very far off fifty-fifty ... And I guess the word
'househusband' now appears in most dictionaries. My activities would
not raise any eyebrows in Canada, and indeed, would not even be
worthy of comment.
It is the thoughts of that fourth group, the
western men, of whom I suppose I am one, that are perhaps the least
'visible' to me. I say 'I suppose I am one' because although of
course I am clearly both 'western' and a 'man', the fact that I have
lived buried quite deeply in this Japanese society for so many years
now has certainly tended to affect my ways of thinking. I guess my
basic view on this is that there is nothing particularly special
about my housekeeping activities ... each member of a family should
contribute to such chores to the extent that other factors (jobs,
school obligations, etc.) allow. My 'real' work, woodblock
printmaking, is done here at home, and doesn't demand all my time, so
naturally I do housework as well. I don't have to particularly like
it, simply that's just the way things are.
But interestingly enough, when I dig down a bit
deeper inside, I find that my thoughts are more complicated than
that, because actually, I seem to share the viewpoints of the other
three groups as well ... all of them! Those Japanese women think I am
'special' ... Well ... I do too! It would be a lie to deny that. Not
only do I provide a living for my family, but I do all the housework
too. Is it so bad to feel pride at successfully handling both these
jobs? When people like Isomoto-san make their supermarket comments, I
politely 'brush them off' and outwardly deny the praise, but I would
be less than human (less than male?) if such comments didn't make me
feel good about what I was doing.
But do I also share the view of those Japanese
men? Yes, absolutely. The situation they find themselves in is much
like that of someone who starts playing a particular game, and then
finds out that the rules have been changed while play is under way.
The social contract that was in force during the time these men were
growing up and getting married was, I believe, not such a badly
written contract. Despite the image widely held in the west that
Japanese women have been heavily oppressed and dominated by men, the
reality of the situation has been (and is) quite different. Very few
women indeed (I speak again of my own age group ...) had any interest
in entering that male world, and found a very high level of
fulfillment in taking care of their family responsibilities. This
social contract is now under attack from many causes, most noticeably
the general economic changes that are sweeping the world (and also
the radically altered attitudes of the younger Japanese women), and
this has left many of those men somewhat embittered. The more
sensible and realistic among them will simply accept that their
behaviour will have to change to some extent, but after growing up in
one world they obviously find it difficult to live comfortably in a
new one ...
And the third group, the western women ... Do I
also share their views on these matters? Well, I guess enough of them
are doing exactly the same thing as me - working all day and doing
all the housework, that I can feel a fair amount of empathy with
their position. Really of course, there is nothing special about my
activities at all. But I do wish that some of them weren't quite so
bitter about things ... "So ... welcome to the club!" was a comment
from one woman I was speaking to a couple of months ago ... The quite
pronounced feelings of bitterness and cynicism that surround many of
these women leave me generally feeling quite uncomfortable in their
presence, and I can't help feeling that they are in a way a kind of
'lost generation', people who have succeeded in overthrowing the old
way of doing things, but who have yet to establish a satisfactory
replacement.
I am sure that I can guess one of the questions
that has come into your mind as you have read these words: "So what's
this all about? Any of us do the cooking and cleaning when there's
nobody else around to do it! Just how much housework did this guy do
back when he was married?" Well, I didn't do much. My ex-wife and I
had a division of labour sort of arrangement (unspoken), much like
those I mentioned earlier. In the years we lived here in Japan before
she left to return to Canada, I taught English classes, re-wrote
translations, and made woodblock prints and wooden toys, while she
did the first level of work on those translations, and also took care
of the housework. We both took care of the kids, pretty much equally.
I can't say whether one or another of us had a 'tougher' job. We both
worked all day long. I don't recall that she ever complained because
I wasn't sharing the housework, nor did I ever feel that I was doing
the lion's share of the work. Things seemed to be in balance.
But now, after having this experience as a
househusband, and demonstrating that I am perfectly capable of both
providing a living for my family, and doing all the chores as well,
what would happen if I was to find myself living with someone again?
Would I slip back into my previous pattern, and never go near the
stove again, or would she (perhaps having read this essay!) sit back
and expect me to do everything! Of course, I don't expect that either
of those scenarios would come about. The actual level of cooperation
between us would depend I think, mostly on her desires. If she was
heavily involved with 'outside' work, then I would do as much of the
housework as was necessary, all of it if need be. If she felt less
inclined to work at other things, but was more of a homemaker type,
then I would find no problem in relinquishing the home chores. There
is in my mind a huge list of things that I would like to do, and I
would certainly not slide into 'couch potato' habits.
I guess that all in all, these years of being a
'solo' housekeeper, however long they may turn out to last (now four
years and counting ...), will have been a valuable experience,
whatever the future may hold. It can't be good for anyone to go
through life being fed and cared for entirely by other people, and I
had certainly been well down that road ... But now I see that it's
time to put away this word processor, and head over to the
supermarket ... Kitchen duty calls ... But maybe if I'm lucky again
today, I'll bump into one of my neighbours. "Buru-san wa erai desune ...!"
Music to my ears!