Daily Life

Daily Life Japan’s transformation into a modern society can be seen also in the changes in everyday life. The patriarchal household system comprised many generations living together under the control of the head of the house, but as more people became affluent, new ideas of the family spread. The new home ( homu as the Japanese say, using the English word) was that of the nuclear family, where husband and wife lived as breadwinner and homemaker. This new concept of domesticity in turn generated demands for new types of domestic goods, new types of family entertainments, and new forms of housing. In the 1920s, construction companies made cheap housing available for a down payment of yen and a monthly instalment of yen for ten years – this at a time when the salary of a bank employee (a person with higher education) was yen per month.