Paper short abstract:

This paper employs housing as an example to explore how the material and immaterial realms intersect in the sphere of marriage in contemporary Japan. It reveals how the more tangible attributes of housing at once reflect and determine its occupants' less tangible sense of marital happiness.

Paper long abstract:

When being asked about one's sense of marital happiness, most married young people I encountered in Japan went in great length to talk about the immaterial aspects of marriage: love, intimacy, bond and care. On the other hand, the material aspects of marriage, such as income and property, were often either downplayed or taken for granted. This tendency for people to prioritize immaterial value over material conditions when elaborating happiness in one's marriage coincides with the mainstream discourse in Japan over the past half century that emphasizes love and companionship as the base of a happy marriage. However, by no means I am claiming that in Japan today the material contexts have nothing to do with young people's sense of marital happiness. On the contrary, in this paper I argue that notwithstanding seemingly being obscured either consciously or unconsciously in most of the narratives, the material conditions of marriage indeed powerfully shape people's perceptions of martial happiness. Mainly based on the in-depth interviews that I conducted with 26 married middle-class Japanese in their 30s and subsequent participant observation at several informants' homes during my six-month stay in Tokyo from December, 2015, this paper uses housing as an example to explore how the material and immaterial realms intersect in the sphere of marriage in contemporary Japan. It shows how the more tangible attributes of housing, such as its size and price, its location (eg. at city center; suburb; close to/faraway from the parents' house, etc.) and type (eg. condominium; detached family house; two-generation housing, etc.), and its interior arrangement and decorations, at once reflect and determine its occupants' less tangible sense of marital happiness.