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On May 15, 1947, some two hundred titled noblemen gathered in the imperial palace to hear words of farewell from His Majesty, who, in the previous year, had already renounced his “divine” status and assumed a human role. Twelve days before, the new constitution had come into effect, designed to ensure universal equality under the law. The titles and prerogatives of the nobility were thus revoked, and the former elite became commoners like everybody else: the word commoner was now obsolete. This abolished aristocracy of modern Japan is the subject of the present book. The aim is to reconstruct the experience of the former nobility both before and after this constitutional change, as recalled and depicted by its surviving member and descendants. This chapter begins by setting out the rationales and objectives of this book. It then discusses its overall theoretical direction, the method used in gathering information, and the kind of information gathered.

This chapter examines matrimony more as a realignment between households (or househeads), involving cross-generational discontinuity and the reconstitution of the unit house through an outsider's entry as well as the departure of nonsuccessor insiders. It examines how the positional nature of marriage was manifested and how the “personal” side of it spilled over and was handled. As might be expected, the positional and personal sides of marriage often diverged, but convergence also occurred. Although personal marriage is more characteristic of today's generation across all classes, it is not in opposition to positional marriage. As in other classes and other societies, marriage in aristocratic Japan had a great impact on women's lives, causing a sharp break between two stages of life, pre- and postmarital. Women thus have much to say about it, and had in the past as well, as evident in the stories informants tell of their mothers and grandmothers.

This concluding chapter attempts to pull together salient features of the hereditary status and hierarchy that have appeared and reappeared across the preceding chapters. The introduction provided a series of oppositional concepts presented for interpretational purposes; here these oppositions will be useful again for drawing some generalizations. The second half of the chapter sums up the relationship between emperors and aristocrats—for, as we have seen, the emperor is an important focal point for the aristocracy. It reconsiders the idea that the kazoku served as a sort of hanpei (bulwark) for the imperial house.

The kazoku status, to be hereditary, had to have its culture carried on by successive generations. Chapters 3–6 conveyed what that status culture was like; this chapter considers how it was acquired by or transmitted to kazoku members, with a main, but not exclusive, focus on the child. To the extent that “what” cannot be separated from “how,” some redundancy, particularly with Chapter 5, will be unavoidable, especially in regard to who socialized kazoku children. The socialization influence flows both vertically—downward from superiors or seniors, or upward from inferiors or juniors (as when a kazoku master was influenced by his servant, or a parent by his or her child)—and horizontally, between peers or age-mates. Kazoku sometimes felt such multidirectional flows of influence in striking ways. The diversity of socializing agents, indeed, may account for the fact that socialization not only reproduced but also on occasion modified or even created status culture.