ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on research carried out on Japanese day-care centers and primarily on data gathered during fieldwork at one medium-sized center – Katsura Hoikuen – during the summer of 1988. It points out that thumb-sucking, smelling other children, and feeling comfortable enough to sleep as at home can be found in American day-care centers. The chapter emphasizes that the distinctive quality of the Japanese case seems to center on the combination of the close physical intimacy between the children, and the fact that the patterns found at the center are consistent with familial patterns. In Japan the emphasis is, by contrast, on the promotion of increasing dependence of the child on others, and primarily on the mother. Scholars have offered some fascinating answers to the question of how Japanese children learn to shift between the two sets of orientations and behavior found at home and at preschool.
