ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the change and continuity in the living conditions of salaried male Japanese workers in the 2000s and their attitudes toward work and family life in terms of happiness. It focuses on the male cohort born in the 1960s and early 1970s. While the criticism of chichioya fuzai or fatherlessness, first raised in the late 1970s, had primarily required fathers to spend more time with their children for discipline, discourses on fatherhood in the 2000s have asked them to be actively involved in infant care as well. The chapter outlines the conditions of salaried male workers' well-being during the period of postwar economic reconstruction and growth. It shows the male white-collar workers' actual living conditions in the 2000s, including their attitudes toward work and family life based on existing statistics and interviews. The chapter discusses the continuity and change in the conditions and meanings of well-being for salaried male Japanese workers.
