Daily Life

Japan’s transformation into a modern society was not just a story of industry, railways and constitutions — it played out in kitchens, living rooms and streets. The everyday life of ordinary people changed as profoundly as the economy did, and the textbook traces this through the family, the home, housing, leisure and the new figure of the ‘modern girl’.

The old Japanese household was patriarchal and multi-generational: several generations lived together under the authority of the head of the house. As wealth spread, this gave way to a new ideal of the family. The Japanese borrowed the English word and called it the homu — the nuclear family, in which the husband was the breadwinner and the wife the homemaker. This new domesticity was not just a social arrangement; it created demand for new kinds of household goods, new family entertainments and new forms of housing.

Housing itself became a commercial product. In the 1920s, construction companies offered cheap homes for a down payment of 200 yen and monthly instalments of 12 yen over ten years. To see how affordable this was, consider that a bank employee with a higher education earned 40 yen per month. The new middle-class families, in turn, enjoyed new forms of travel and entertainment.

Urban life was transformed. Electric trams improved city transport, public parks opened from 1878, and department stores began to appear. In Tokyo, the Ginza district became fashionable for Ginbura — a word formed by combining ‘Ginza’ with burbura, meaning to walk aimlessly. The first radio stations began broadcasting in 1925. The actress Matsui Sumako became a national star for her portrayal of Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, a Norwegian play. Cinema arrived in 1899, and soon a dozen companies were producing hundreds of films. …