Home Alone: The Individualization of Young, Urban Japanese Singles

Abstract

Social life in Japan has been historically orientated towards hierarchical networks of social integration starting in the family home and extending to the neighborhood, company, and nation. In the postwar period, households and life courses were largely fixed, mediated by company society, a standard breadwinner family model and an ascent up an owner-occupied housing ladder. The bursting of the economic bubble two decades ago, and the subsequent ‘lost decade’, disrupted established flows into employment, family life, and owner-occupation. We examine recent restructuring of life courses around the home which has become characteristic of social changes and a medium of individualization. The home, once ingrained with notions of the eternal Japanese family, has become a conduit of atomization for younger generations who have experienced radical shifts in social and economic conditions. Since the 1990s numbers of single-only and couple-only households have ballooned while marriage and fertility rates have declined. Although homeownership norms have persisted, new patterns of renting and single living in the city, or remaining in the family home as a ‘parasite single’, are increasing. We consider how the reconstitution of ‘home’ under more insecure housing and employment conditions is embedded with the reshaping of life courses, housing pathways, and patterns of urban space and living.