Introduction In the changing society, Japanese family is facing many challenges. Some of them are fail to adapt the changing environment. Tokyo Sonata portrays some problems in contemporary Japanese dysfunctional families such as communication problems. In this article, we are going to illustrate them one by one. Portrait of Japanese family To illustrate the dysfunctional families portrayed in Tokyo Sonata, we have to understand the traditional Japanese and how does it work functionally. Traditional Japanese family is a patriarchal family. Father is the head of the family and takes the superior power. Others in the family have to unconditionally follow the father in any circumstance. The support of father’s power not only come from …show more content…
The second problem is that there a huge hierarchy in the family. Fathers are at the top whereas sons are at the bottom in the hierarchy. In some situations, this hierarchy deters the relationship among the family members. For example, father with make any decision without discussion to other family members. Even there is a wrong decision, others cannot challenge him. And the father would stand to his decision even he know he did a wrong decision later in order to maintain his status. Therefore, the family cannot operate efficiently and sometimes make a wrong decision. Also, the family is lack of communication. In the film, we can see there is no discussion on the dining table in Sasaki’s family when they are having the dinner. Lacks of communication induce lack of understanding among family’s members. For examples, we can see that the father do not really know the needs of his sons. He did not know his biggest son want to be a solders and his smaller son want to learn piano. He just put his own value into two sons and request his son unconditionally follow father’s decision. Therefore, two sons are very unhappy. Direction on the dysfunctional family In the 21 century, traditional family structure is facing many challenges. In my opinion, the only solution is change. Every member should change their original mindset to meet the changing society. For the father, he should not establish his self esteem by using compressing
Throughout time, the role that Women had in the early twentieth century to the present has changed drastically and it has changed for the better. Japanese American Women residing in the United States, has experienced the evolution of their culture, tradition, values and their role in society. However though it seems as if there is no time in this ever so rapid society, they still continue to pass down culture and tradition through each generation. Some key terms that are crucial in order to understand the essay are, Issei, or the first generation, Nisei, the second generation ,and Sansei, known as the third generation.Over time the Women slowly moved away form being the average Homemaker and transforming into a respected and valued member of society.
Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s play, The Love Suicides at Amijima explores the disgrace of Jihei and Koharu’s misbegotten romance, the underlying conflict of the hidden innuendos aimed at the Japanese social class and the sense of duty formed between two women from unseemmingly different backgrounds. In order to fully understand these themes, on must take into account the societal structure of Osaka, Japan in the 1720s. Within this culture, every individual was instilled the notion of familial obligation and had to adhere to the rules placed upon them by society. Chikamatsu Monzaemon does an ideal job of capturing these concepts within the play.
The mother of a son and daughter is shown doing the work for two, since her husband was relocated to Montana and then Texas that last December. Nevertheless, even in the position that Otsuka places this family into, they continue to conform into what the American society decides. For instance, when many Japanese citizens chose to begin relocating to the United States they also made the choice to develop and become part of the American culture. The mother shows a perfect example of conforming into being socially acceptable when Otsuka states, “When she got home, the woman took off her red dress and put on her faded blue one——her housedress. She twisted her hair up into a bun and put on an old pair of comfortable shoes.
The ‘new family’ of the 1970s grew up as children with no father figure, did not remember wartime hardships and saw family life depicted through American movies. Civil law changed the system to nuclear family through the exposure of Western influence that was seen as the ideal for the Japanese family. The concept of nuclear family has influenced the increase in “singles, martial couples and single-parent units” which by Nonoyama (2000) sees this as a disorganization of the framework of nuclear structure. Imamura (1990) discusses that love marriages were encouraged with the influence of the western culture, where young people saw to reconsider the ways of courtship before marriage, which decreased numbers of traditional arranged marriages. This
When the Koreans are forced to change their family names to Japanese ones, their Korean identity is weakened. Going through this traumatizing experience is
Have you ever read the cultural story “A Family Supper” by Japanese author, Kazuo Ishiguro? Generally, it’s the conflict between generations in changing Japan, one can understand that this story depicts a young Japanese man (the narrator) who lived in America and has come back to Japan, his motherland to attend the funeral of his mother. He had dinner with his family at the first time of the year. With emphasis on generational conflict, the three aspects that are relationship between the son and his father from their conservation, the cultural property mentioned in the story and how the father’s disappointment affects his son, the narrator of the story.
History has shown how Japanese people are stoic people. During the time of terror and grief they showed no emotions but put one foot forward and continue to strive to build their communities. The six characters each experience the bombing but feel as if it only happened to them at first.
When considering the traditions of Pacific Islander Americans, the fourth story from “The Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety” featuring Min Ziqian relates the most to what Pacific Islanders would consider the ideal relationship between parents and children in terms of family structure. The story of Min Ziqian revolves around his relationship with his stepmother, who mistreated him for not being her natural born son. Ziqian’s father found out and threatened to banish her from the family, but Ziqian stuck up for her, saying that “But if she goes, then three son will have no one to care for them.” This shows that Ziquian not only cared about his stepmother, but also did not want to see his brothers suffer. In the study “Family Dynamics among
Depending on their cultural background, many families will often have different understandings or ideas of what a family is and how it should be structured.
Thesis: During the time when the Japanese girl-mother’s family would have been thriving because of profit from their food store, she, her parents, and their neighbors, unlike Zen Master Hankuin who was selfless by taking care of the baby, did not show an enlightened way of thinking.
A dysfunctional family is a group of people usually related by some means, not always necessarily by blood, in which conflict, misbehavior, maltreatment and neglecting create a hostile life for its members. To explain this idea better we will see the definition of family, the differences between a healthy and a dysfunctional family; their characteristics and behavioral patterns. Some examples will help us examine this issue better, taking us to discuss the different factors that contribute to the formation of such families, along with its consequences in today’s society.
Japan is an unique oriental country in many aspects, especially in politics and economy, both western practices and traditional nationalism are coexisted in this country. The period 1890-1940 was just followed the Meiji restoration, and was typical in the history of Japan, at that time, Japan was on the way from a feudal country to a capitalistic country, called modernization. Many western practices were being more and more adopted, however, at the same time, traditional rules still had strong influences in Japan. Under this background, this report will discuss the Japanese cultural factors during 1890-1940 that influenced the disclosure
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2008 motion picture Tokyo Sonata puts across an account involving a Japanese family as it needs to go through a series of problems that put their determination to test. Each of the four characters in the Sasaki family has trouble understanding what he or she wants from life and as he or she comes to learn and accept what his or her family has to say about his or her personality. Kurosawa most probably wanted to provide viewers with a rather common story occurring in an environment dominated by globalization a place where values change at a rapid pace and where people can or cannot find their personal identity.
There are varieties of families in the world. People develop different personalities and mind sets because they have their own experience and knowledge gain from their individual families. In this essay, I will contrast and summarize each of nuclear, which is traditional, family and non-traditional families and also compare each of the families and examine how changing in non-traditional and nuclear families will affect people’s behaviors and minds in the view of sociologist and psychologist in order to argue how changing family affect individuals and the society.
Natsume Soseki’s Kokoro illustrates the struggles of a young man (the narrator) who was alienated from his family and his loneliness as he pursues acceptance and love by building a friendship with an elder. As a parallel to this, the elder (Sensei), sought an end to his social isolation through his love to a woman whose qualities were not tainted by modernity. K, Sensei’s childhood friend, had also hinted his struggles in isolation as he tried to keep to his idealistic principles. This paper will analyze the isolation and loneliness that was faced by the Japanese people during a period of significant modernization and how they approached it and attempted to solve the conflict between tradition and modernity.