THE RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITY IN MODERN JAPAN: AN ANALYSIS OF A TOKYO SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENT (ETHNOLOGY, SYMBOLIC, LONGITUDINAL STUDY, URBAN)

This dissertation presents an interpretation of key forces shaping life in a Japanese housing development as well as a model for understanding such developments in industrial societies. It is based on fieldwork conducted in a suburban housing development within the Tokyo Metropolitan Area between December 1979 and July 1981. In it I argue, along with Weber, that we are essentially self-directing creatures living in highly structured worlds. These structures act powerfully to shape our shared realities and can be approached on two levels, the social structural and the meaningful or cultural. Understanding the dynamic relation between these domains in one of the key problems of the social sciences.;On another level, I argue that this structural transformation of Japan has brought about new ways of thinking, new symbols and images of what life is "all about." These provide an interpretive canopy for the development as a residential community and for its key institution, the family. I argue that these interpretations themselves are a product of history and are part of a broad discourse within Japan on the nature and direction of modernity. This has been conducted on both an intellectual and a popular level throughout this century and provides a special charter for life in such developments. Finally, I argue that the import of the symbol system employed by the people of New Town lies not only in its content, but also in the deeper dispositions it inculcates and in the ways these in turn shape personal and community identity.;Throughout I argue that a number of complex processes are interacting within this development. Nonetheless it appears surprisingly well integrated and the character of this integration suggests that modernization in Japan is proceeding along fundamentally different lines than in the West.;I approach this housing development as the product of both a new division of labor and of the regional integration of Japan. The former has encouraged the emergence of standardized housing projects based on income and the latter has channelled--over the past century--the migration of people to Tokyo and eventually this development.