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This book examines the nuances of long-term resistance in the lives of Japanese women experiencing ambivalent dissatisfaction from their upbringing in postwar Japan and fashioning adult lives in the globalized and destabilized Japan of the 1990s and 2000s. The study draws on interviews with more than fifty Japanese women over two decades; these women, born between 1958 and 1968, grew up in the heyday of postwar economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s and came of age surrounded by consumption, entertainment, and the spread of global ideas about individuality and women's freedom. This is the era of late modernity, marked by neoliberalism, late capitalism, and postmodernism. The book considers ambivalence, tension, ambiguity, and contradiction as the core concepts of long-term resistance. It explores the ways that Japanese women cope with contradictions externally and internally, their acts of conformity as well as agency or resistance, and how their lives unfold in the space between the perception of risk and personal insecurity and the wish for peace of mind or stability.

This chapter examines how single women live within the dilemma of choice. Singles are at the center of contradictions in Japan and the social movement that is stretching the limits of compatibility with the societal rules. Experiencing both the chaos and the flexibility of late modernity, they feel the pressure to appear successful. This chapter considers two groups, the successful singles and the struggling singles, and how they deal with the question of dependence versus independence in their evolving search for self. It shows that the singles are all seeking an extended or reinterpreted version of self as an expression of their quiet long-term resistance to the rules of society. It also examines how, within the framework of singlehood, these women continue to grapple with the ambiguity of independence and success.

This chapter examines how working mothers balance their careers and having to raise children who would be cooperative, moral individuals. Drawing on interviews with thirteen employed mothers—six full-timers, six part-timers, and a mother with three children who works full-time running an organic farm with her husband—it asks how the conditions in urban, regional, and rural places intersect with the contradictions between work, family, and children. It also considers how questions of class intertwine with women's work–family tension and these geographical differences. Finally, it analyzes what amplifies and eases tensions for these women and how they cope with particularly high tensions. It shows that these women try to shift the foundation of their marriages so they can value their own work as part of their long-term resistance and selfhood.

This chapter examines how married women without children have braved the challenge of choice and decided to marry. Drawing on interviews with eight women who had married but remained childless in 2004, it shows that spoiled, controlling husbands are a source of tension and ambivalence in the lives of some married women more than the lack of children. Other childless women gain satisfaction from being with their husbands and are not keen in having children via fertility treatment. Some women use the values and strategies of long-term resistance to carve out a new, if ambiguous identity, especially for those without a meaningful career. This chapter also discusses several reasons why childlessness did not seem like a contradiction that brought tension to the lives of married women. Finally, it explores how the ambiguous, long-term resistance of married women affects the ways in which they experience marriage without children.

This chapter examines how nonworking mothers have coped with dilemmas associated with marriage, work, and their young children through planning and cocooning. Drawing on interviews with fourteen full-time stay-at-home mothers who have delayed marriage, the chapter explores the nature of their experience of marriage and children. It also considers how these mothers' ambivalence affects their relations with their children and husbands that often confront them with the very contradictions they have been avoiding by staying single. It shows that stay-at-home mothers must deal with the tension caused by the contradiction of family versus self, but ease it by seeing motherhood as easier than other work. It explains how cocooners seem to have lost the ambivalence of their long-term resistance as singles, channeling all their energies toward children and a framework for future status.

This chapter examines the notions of tension and ambivalence in relation to contradictions, and how they work psychologically and socially, by focusing on the voices and experiences of two single Japanese women. Before analyzing the narratives of the two women, the chapter considers the differences between urban and regional Japan that intersect with gender change. It then situates the concepts of tension, ambivalence, and contradiction within ideas about psychosocial development and social movements. It also discusses the nuances of long-term resistance in the lives of the two Japanese women: vascillating between dependence and independence; signals of ambivalence such as symbolic bootstrapping and emotional expressions; and being trapped in dilemmas of adulthood.