ABSTRACT
In the modern world, the personal and emotional lives of individuals have experienced the most important transformations from traditional social ties, which ascribed people’s relationships according to the orders of clan, ethnic, or religious group. As the modern life changes people’s sense of self, individualized and modernized relationships depend upon processes of working out mutual trust by respecting others’ points of view and building up reciprocal and democratic communication with others. Such “pure relationships” can function best to sustain love-sexual relationships, child-parent relationships, marriage and family, as well as friendships (Giddens 2002). Traditional identity shaped people via external influences with the authority of custom, religion, and family; modern self is internally explored and reflexively projected (Gluck 1993: 216). As zanryū-hōjin jumped from rural society to the highly competitive metropolitan world, it is necessary to understand how personal sense of self, desire, emotion, conflict, and strategy have conducted their family relationships. From the private sphere we may have a better picture to look at how zanryū-hōjin have adapted to a transnationally modern life.
