ABSTRACT
There were conflicts between generations in the majority of zanryū-hōjin households encountered in Japan. This phenomenon is not caused by emigration to Japan. The causes of discontent are complex, resulting from the difficulty of adapting to modern urban living and from intergenerational conflicts that are caused by changing desires among the young, and these in turn have been initially caused by changes in Northeast China’s economic and social structure (Yan 2003) and exacerbated by the experience of emigration to an even more materially affluent and modern urban environment. On the other hand, zanryū-hōjin children are also affected by the strategies their parents use to cope with the difficulty of adapting to modern life in Japan. Some children rely on themselves in restructuring their own personhoods within the contradictions between the Japanese education system and their parents’ traditionalism. Japanese schooling, as whole-personhood development in terms of the ideological Japanese spirit of collectivism and self-discipline, has affected zanryū-hōjin children who want to assimilate into mainstream Japanese society and tend radically and wholeheartedly to accept the collectivist values and practices.
