The Socialization of Aristocratic Children by Commoners: Recalled Experiences of the Hereditary Elite in Modern Japan

20 Chapter TL:Layout 1 8/5/07 16:49 Page 317 First published in Cultural Anthropology 5(1), February 1990. 20 The Socialization of Aristocratic Children by Commoners: Recalled Experiences of the Hereditary Elite in Modern Japan n my previous research on Japanese women (Lebra 1984), I learned that, Iprior to the postwar educational liberation for ordinary women to go on to college, lower- and middle-class girls typically spent premarital years, upon graduation from grade school or high school, at households above their own classes as maids or ‘etiquette apprentices.’ For poor families, this was the only available and acceptable employment for a daughter if only to ‘reduce a mouth to feed,’ while better-off families considered it a rite of passage to transform an unfinished girl into a qualified bridal candidate. Matchmakers would count such cross-class apprenticeship as an important, sometimes mandatory, credential for a bride. This finding prompted me to turn to the upper-class Japanese, particularly, aristocrats, as the next research project with the hope of gaining a stereoscopic view of Japanese society. Indeed, I found commoners entering the interior of aristocratic lives and leaving an indelible mark there, in a way much more than as apprentices absorbing the upper-class culture. This article presents a portion of my current research on the Japanese elite, focusing on the part played by commoners in socializing the aristocratic children. A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE MODERN JAPANESE NOBILITY Aristocracy here refers to the modern nobility called the Kazoku, the ‘flower lineage,’ that formally existed from 1884 until 1947 when it was abolished under the postwar democratic constitution. The Kazoku as a status group stood right below the emperor and royal lineage group, and above the gentry (shizoku, largely coming from the samurai vassalage) that was fused into the lowest and largest class, commoners. The Kazoku membership was of diverse backgrounds, but comprised three major subgroups: the former court nobles called kuge who had served the imperial court in Kyoto; the feudal domain lords, commonly called daimyo, who had owed loyalty to the military govern- ment headed by their overlord, the shogun, residing in Edo, present Tokyo; and the meritorious nobles who rose, in most cases, from the modest status of the lower-ranking samurai vassals due to their performances contributive to the state. The Meiji Restoration of the imperial regime, at the dawn of 317 20 Chapter TL:Layout 1 8/5/07 16:49 Page 318 STATUS modern Japan, marked the division between the first two groups as renovated old nobles and the last group as the newly ennobled. Under the Kazoku system, all these nobles of various origins were organized into a single group of ‘peers’ residentially concentrated in the ‘high city’ (Seidensticker 1983) of Tokyo. The generations of my informants were all of ‘hereditary’ elite in varying degrees of genealogical depth. The term Kazoku referred simultane- ously to the status group as a whole, each family, and individual members. In reflection of the ‘absolutely sacred’ sovereignty of the post-Restoration emperor, there was a clear demarcation line between the ‘ruling’ royal group (the main imperial house and its collateral houses) and the ‘subject’ nobility. And yet, there was mutual access and some mobility, upward (only for women) and downward (for both sexes), across the line by marriage, adop- tion, or branching. In many ways the royal family was a cultural model for noble families. For these reasons, my account below will touch upon the roy- alty where relevant. Like the Kazoku, the royal lineage group was also put out of existence in 1947, except the reigning emperor and his closest family. The Kazoku group was rank-ordered by five nobility titles called shaku: koshaku, koshaku, hakushaku, shishaku, and danshaku. In order to avoid con- fusion over the homophones, I shall use English translations: duke (instead of the common translation, ‘prince,’ to be distinguished from the royal prince), marquis, count, viscount, and baron. The holders of the first two titles were privileged to be automatic members, while those of the other three to be mutually elected members, of the House of Peers, one arm of the bicameral parliamentary system. In total, there have been 1011 families, including those which have become extinct, that were awarded Kazoku titles in the 63 years from the inception to abolition of the Kazoku institution. Theoretically, only the male head of each house was a Kazoku, but his spouse and dependent children also were entitled to Kazoku-status courtesy. Most of Kazoku children were sent to Gakushuin, a school complex built primarily, though not exclusively, for them. World War II and its aftermath devastated the Kazoku along with the rest of the nation, and uprooted them from their old life-style, the 1947 abolition of the Kazoku institution being little more than a formal enunciation, for most households, of what had actually taken place. I located and interviewed about one hundred surviving Kazoku or their descendants of various ranks and backgrounds. It is on the basis of fragments of their oral autobiographies con- structed in response to my request and questions that this article was conceived. In view of the current climate of the epistemological self-criticism in anthropology, it may be noted that my reconstruction of the given narra- tives inevitably is a product of multilevel reflexivity and contextuality. This is not to mean that the following account is a fiction. More detailed discussion on this issue is to appear elsewhere.1 SOCIALIZATION: POSITIONAL AND PERSONAL Socialization is to perform a double function: to train the child in assuming a series of roles and statuses on the one hand, and to meet and regulate the 318.

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