ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on domestic violence (DV) and contemporary family relations in Japan from the viewpoint of clinical sociology. Centreing on violence used by husbands and fathers against wives and children, the chapter discusses the problems of adult male batterers and how we can eliminate violence between family members. I do this by placing DV in Japan in the contexts of marriage, the family and society as a whole. I also discuss an educational programme aimed at reorienting and regendering batterers. Programmes and policies supporting DV victims and survivors are obviously also important and I have discussed them elsewhere (Nakamura 2001: 62-93).1 However, since gender is relational, and as various diversion programmes for batterers outside Japan have suggested, helping victims and survivors alone is insufficient to alleviate this complex problem. Because men in general are located at the centre of society, when they come to realize the constraints and antisocial behaviours as well as the power and privileges in their own gendered lives, their increased critical awareness and practices related to the construction of masculinity will, together with the efforts of women, engender the possibility for greater social change.
