This book explores the degree to which traditional patterns of both houses the family system (ie) are changing in contemporary Japan. It examines the major social, economic and urban changes which are causing this, and discusses the shift from the stem to nuclear family and to large numbers of single person and childless couple households.

1. Introduction: Continuity and Change in Japanese Homes and Families 2. Reassembling Familial Intimacy: Civil, Fringe, and Popular Youth Visions of the Japanese Home and Family 3. Reforming Families in Japan: Family Policy in the Era of Structural Reform 4. The Ideal, the Deficient, and the Illogical Family: An Initial Typology of Administrative Household Units 5. 'I did not know how to tell my parents, so I thought I would have to have an abortion': Experiences of Unmarried Mothers in Japan 6. Masculinity and the Family System: The Ideology of the 'Salaryman' across Three Generations 7. Working and Waiting for an 'Appropriate Person': How Single Women Support and Resist Family in Japan 8. Home ownership, Family Change and Generational Differences 9. Homes and Houses, Senses and Spaces 10. The Changing Face of Homelessness in Tokyo in the Modern Era 11. Coping with Hikikomori: Socially Withdrawn Youth and the Japanese Family 12. The Door My Wife Closed: Houses, Families, and Divorce in Contemporary Japan 13. Living Apart Together: Anticipated Home, Family and Social Networks in Old Age