Japanese Childcare

Eyal Ben-Ari

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136168741
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1997. This book represents an analysis of Japanese preschools as organizations, as administrative frameworks. This volume tackles this set of themes by examining one such institution: Katsura Hoikuen (Day-Care Center). Based on fieldwork carried out in the summer of 1988, and for a short period in October 1994, my perspective is basically ethnographic in its approach.

1 Introduction

This book represents an analysis of Japanese preschools as organizations, as administrative frameworks. The starting point for my analysis is the following contention. While a host of studies of Japanese preschools have been published in the past decade, these works tend to look ‘through’ rather than ‘at’ issues related to organization. In other words, in almost all of these studies the organizational aspects of preschools are ‘transparent’ in the sense that they form the lenses ‘through’ which child care is viewed. In this book, I focus precisely on what is left unexamined in previous work. To put this by way of example, in order to understand the manner by which children learn to ‘become Japanese’ (Hendry 1986a) it is not simply a matter of singling out how preschools employ the same set of cultural concepts and methods of training as those that are found in the framework of families. Rather, the challenge is to show how the implementation of such cultural notions and procedures is carried out by means of the organizational ‘logic’ – the rules and scale, arrangements and sets of priorities, and mechanisms of control and supervision – of these establishments.

This volume tackles this set of themes by examining one such institution: Katsura Hoikuen (Day-Care Center). Based on fieldwork carried out in the summer of 1988, and for a short period in October 1994, my perspective is basically ethnographic in its approach. In order to situate my study in relation to contemporary scholarship of Japan and Japanese preschools, and in order to clearly identify the issues I have singled out for analysis, let me answer three questions in the framework of this introduction: Why the focus on organizations? Why day-care centers? And why the specific case I have chosen to study?

The ‘Transparency’ of Organization

There have been two waves of post-war of research by Western scholars on childhood socialization in Japan. The first wave of studies which was published in the 1950s and 1960s focused on the family and the home. These studies dealt with such issues as motivation (De Vos 1973; 1986), personality (Lanham 1966), or infant-mother relations (Caudill and Weinstein 1969). Most (but not all) of these studies appear to have been grounded in one or a combination of two ‘grand’ approaches: the ‘culture and personality’ school as evinced in Benedict’s (1946) classic volume and various versions of modernization theory (De Vos 1973; Vogel 1963).

The second wave of studies, which began during the late 1970s, continued to concentrate on families (for instance, Hess et al. 1980; White and Levine 1986), but added a new interest in preschools, in institutions of early childhood education. The rationale underlying these later studies was empirical and theoretical. On the one hand, scholars directed their attention to the extent and prevalence of such institutions. With about 95 per cent of children who enter first grade having attended kindergartens (yoochien) or day-care centers (hoikuen) (Tobin et al. 1989: 70) preschool is now a nearly a universal experience for Japanese youngsters. On the other hand, the focus on preschools grew out of a recognition that as the exposure to formal education in preschool was a formative experience influencing children’s later schooling, an examination of this experience would provide insights into how Japanese people gain abilities to carry out the various social roles throughout their lives.

Along these lines, in the past decade or so, a host of excellent studies of preschool education in Japan had been published. These studies include overviews like Hendry’s (1986a) book or Boocock’s (1989) article as well as examinations of specific institutions (Peak 1991a; Sano 1989; Tobin, Wu and Davidson 1989). In addition, other scholars have examined more specific issues such as preschool curriculum, relations between teachers and mothers, peer control and the inculcation of individual responsibility, and cross-cultural differences in notions of childcare (Fujita 1989; Fujita and Sano 1988; Lewis 1989; Peak 1991b). These discussions have done much to further our understanding of the dynamics of custody and instruction in kindergartens and daycare centers.

Yet a careful reading of these studies reveals a set of crucial issues that are left unaddressed. While most discussions have examined themes related to care and education, on the whole they have not examined preschools as organizational frameworks: that is, structures which are governed by their own formal and informal division of labor, complex internal methods, patterns of coordination and control, and rules and regulations. In other words, as I stated before, in almost all of these studies the organizational aspects of preschools are ‘transparent’ in the sense that they form the lenses ‘through’ which child care is viewed. Where administrative issues have been explored, they have either been relegated to appendices (Peak 1991a) or limited to the plane of national government policy (Tobin et al. 1989; Schoppa 1991). Thus focusing on what is left unexamined in previous works necessitates making problematical the organizational character of preschools. This ‘problematization’ is necessary because it may reveal much more clearly how various administrative arrangements and processes in such establishments are related to the socialization of children.

While an examinations of such issues is not new in the realm of organizational analysis, it seems especially pertinent in the context of Japanese preschools. During the past few decades Japanese organizations have been subjected to intense examinations bent (among other things) at delineating their ‘cultural’ character or quality. Many of these studies center on what has been termed the ‘jungle’ of Japanese management (or, more generally, organizational) practices (Shenkar 1988). Indeed, questions about such practices have been directed not only at commercial and manufacturing firms, but also at national and local governments, religious movements, voluntary associations, and schools. Thus many recent studies have extended the notion of a set of peculiar Japanese organizational practices beyond the private business sector, to suggest that these practices are certain variations within basic forms based on shared assumptions and behavior, and that these forms are available culturally to all Japanese people.

We are thus led to the three sets of issues which will form the axes of my examination. The first set of questions revolves around the problematic of preschools as organizations: What are the internal organizational arrangements which undergird the care given to children? How are these qualities related to the achievement of institutional goals? And how are such arrangements related to relations of authority and professionalism? The second set of questions is predicated on problematizing preschools as Japanese organizations: What are the main cultural notions which are related to the organization of preschools? How do these concepts figure in the creation of the organizational reality of such establishments? And how are cultural practices related to patterns of institutional control and resistance? The third set of questions relates to preschols as the first, formative organizational experience of Japanese individuals: How is the encounter with various arrangements in preschools related to the experience of organizational life throughout one’s lifetime? What concrete organizational features are internalized in such institutions?

Why Study Day-Care Centers?

For a variety of reasons – primarily related to the entry of women into the labor force (Hayashi 1985; Yamagata 1986; Carney and O’Kelly 1990) – a substantial part of primary socialization in Japan takes place within preschools. In Japan, institutions of early childhood education are differentiated into yoochien (kindergartens) and hoikuen (day-care centers). Kindergartens are usually open half-days and cater for children aged four and five. Day-care centers normally operate for a whole day (often from seven in the morning until six at night) and cater to children of working mothers between the ages of a few months and six (in reality most of the children attend only after the age of two). In addition, while kindergartens fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, day-care centers are run under the aegis of the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

In the past two decades, however, the type of institution which has shown the greatest rate of growth has been the day-care center. Today there are 22,000 public or publicly recognized daycare centers that cater to over 2 million children (Koseisho 1992; Tochio 1986: 3). At the point of entry into schools – that is entry into primary school – about 30 per cent of children have attended day-care centers (Fujita 1989: 77). But as Tobin and his associates (1989: 209) state, with the falling birthrate ‘some Japanese preschools will have to close, and a gradual shift in women’s lifestyles from full-time mothering toward a more job- or career-centered orientation seems to favor survival of hoikuen over yoochien in the long run.’ Thus the grounds for studying day-care centers are that these institutions are becoming more and more important in ‘designing’ the face of Japan’s future generations both in terms of preparing them for the Japanese educational system and in terms of preparing them for entry into the work force.

But the justification for studying day-care centers also has to do with their organizational features. Many studies of Japanese preschools – like Tobin et al. (1989) or Hendry (1986a: 125) – have tended to examine institutions of early childhood education without differentiating between the special characteristics of kindergartens and day-care centers. Indeed, for their analytical purposes to a large extent both types of institutions are similar in major respects: for example, in terms of curriculum and educational goals. But the differences between them bear importance for our analysis. The fact that children attend day-care centers for whole days involves, from an organizational point of view, a much more complex set of tasks which are to be managed and arranged: not only educational activities, but also such things as cooking and eating, preparing for sleep and sleeping, and longer hours over which the children must be monitored. Thus my point is that if, as I have set out to do, one wants to understand the organizational nature of preschools, then because of the breadth and complexity of the managerial issues they face, day-care centers are an apt instance through which to do so.

In addition, because they cater to children of working mothers, the official view is that these institutions must somehow compensate for what the children lack at home. Thus, it is especially in such preschools that assumptions about motherhood, ‘natural’ child development, and the proper ways of bringing up Japanese children come to the fore. Given the centrality of such notions among middle-class urban Japanese, one would expect that they figure in the way that day-care centers see themselves in relation to parents (primarily mothers) and children. We may better understand, in other words, how these central notions are actualized in the concrete organizational arrangements of such establishments. Along these lines, the theoretical benefit of studying day-care centers lies in their combination of cultural notions of childcare and organized formal care.

The Case: Rationale and Features

Clearly the analysis of a single case limits both the strength and the range of general or comparative arguments (Kennedy, 1979: 671; Yin 1981). Yet such a study precludes neither a delineation of the relevant attributes of the case on the basis of which it may be compared to other instances, nor an exploration of the theoretical problems it raises. Accordingly, let me say a few words about the actual case chosen, and why it is suitable for the analysis of the questions I have set out to explore.

Between July and September of 1988, and again in October 1994, I studied the day-care center that forms the primary focus of this study. In addition, I also visited about fifteen other pre-schools, and utilized data gathered when our older son attended a government run center in the city of Otsu for two years in the beginning of the 1980s. Katsura Day-Care Center is located in the southwestern part of Kyoto (Japan’s ancient capital, and a city of one-and-a-half million people). The center’s 22 teachers (all women) cater to about 110 children between the ages of a few months and six years (although most of the children belong to the older groups of three-, four- and five-year-old youngsters). Parents of children are predominantly white-collar company employees, teachers and self-employed people. The school year is divided into three terms of roughly equal length, and runs from April to March.

The suitability of Katsura Hoikuen as a case for examining organizational issues in Japanese preschools, is related to the question of its typicality or the extent to which it is representative of other cases. In contrast to other societies – like Britain or the United States – and as others – like France or Sweden – Japan is marked by rather uniform child-care systems (Robinson et al. 1979; Tobin et al 1989: 210, 216; Hendry 1986a: 128; Peak 1989: 95; Kotloff 1988).¹ As a consequence Katsura Hoikuen is very similar to preschools throughout the country in terms of teacher-children ratios and teacher-parent relations, curriculum and activities, tuition levels and administrative control, staffing practices, and the kind of ongoing care provided for children. Thus we can safely assume a basic commonality of practices between Katsura Hoikuen and other such establishments. Moreover, being an urban center that caters to primarily middle class parents, Katsura Hoikuen is similar in terms of the family background of the children to most centers in Japan. My assumption is that the findings of my study are representative of most day-care centers and may be suggestive of Japanese preschools in general.

Yet the detailed analysis of such a case study has other (not inconsiderable) methodological and theoretical advantages beyond its typicality. In the first place, ethnographic case studies allow the careful and sustained exploration of theoretical problems precisely because of the diversity of data on which they are based. Therefore, in order to examine the organizational issues I have set out, I use data gathered from interviews, observations, conversations and educational and administrative texts. On the basis of this diversity of data, I have attempted to examine both formal and informal social processes, to chart and reconstruct organizational changes, and to see gaps between ideology and reality. Finally, my analysis should be seen as what Yin (1981: 47–8) terms an exploratory case study – i.e. a single case design that is justified because it serves a revelatory purpose. It serves this purpose in two interrelated senses: by offering insights into a hitherto little explored set of questions and in suggesting further topics for analysis.

On Reading the Book

Let me offer a short synopsis of each chapter in this volume in order to orient prospective readers. The volume consists of eight chapters and seven interludes (or addendums) interspersed among them. My aims in including these interludes are to illustrate a number of points related to the everyday life of the center, and to create a space for the specific voices of the teachers. The following Chapter 2 contains a short overview to the day-care system in Japan and an ethnographic introduction to Katsura Hoikuen. The aim of this chapter is to provide a background for the following chapters.

In Chapter 3 I deal with the question of how the flow of people, information, and resources through the space-time paths of the organization are managed. Empirically, I focus on a ubiquitous but little researched set of phenomena: organizational texts, forms, records, and registers. The importance of documents and documentation in discharging and achieving the programs of preschools cannot be overstressed. It is in these texts that many of the routine (and not so routine) activities of preschools are recorded, and from which they are retrieved (for action) by caretakers. I argue that caretaking in such institutions as Katsura Hoikuen involves ‘writing’ no less than playing, teaching, and disciplining. In addition, a focus on writing allows us to explore issues related to caretaking: the place of written documents in facilitating or limiting the coordination and scheduling of organized care; the link between the ubiquity of written texts and the presupposition that teachers are highly literate and the actual care proffered to the children; and the intended and unintended consequence of writing for the socialization and control of caretakers.

In Chapter 4 I focus on the manner by which official assumptions about, and notions of, ‘normal’ child development are translated into the organizational arrangements of Japanese preschools. My contention is that if we critically examine the ‘common-sense’ notions on which these establishments are based, we may be able to uncover the organizational practices by which children are ‘framed’ – i.e. defined, classified and understood – and then cared for. Here I take the previous chapter’s propositions further to suggest that the organizational definitions of development – what may be termed official classifications or taxonomies of ‘care’ – may be found in the numerous array of records, forms, files, checklists, programs and memos found in such institutions. More specifically, I submit that these bureaucratic texts embody the central notions of child care, and are a primary means for putting these notions into effect.

In Chapter 5 I analyze another dimension of these institutions: teachers’ meetings. One reason for studying meetings has to do with the sheer frequency of such assemblages in any complex organizational framework. Moreover, because meetings are one of the most central elements that individuals and group define as organizational action, we may be able to address two sets of issues through them. The first are general problems such as how the internal dynamics and forms of teachers’ meetings are related to the achieve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Katsura Day-Care Center: Context and Content
• 3. Forms of Quality?: Documentation, Standardization and Discipline
• 4. Caretaking with a Pen?: Documentation, Classification and ‘Normal’ Development
• 5. Teachers’ Meetings: Socialization, Information and Quality Control
• 6. An Organizational Model: Labor Turnover, Information Flows, and Incentive Structures
• 7. A Note: Cultural Scenarios and Organizational Action
• 8. Conclusion: Organization, Standardization, and the Study of Japan
• Notes
• References
• Index