Open Families Are Strong

It is most important to remember that the future of the family depends on skillful, wise handling of the reins by the person who is in charge of managing the household. That is usually the wife, who is also mediator of the family.
     If there are differences between the children and the older folks, the mother is often better at smoothing things over by talking them out. If there are arguments among the children she becomes an impartial judge. If the storms of malice whip up within the family, she can bring calm by wrapping them in love. When trouble does arise she provides the warmth and harmony to prevent it from getting worse.
   The type of woman most desirable is the one who gives unswerving effort to develop mutual trust and confidence between herself and the man, who will work for the exchange of love and respect between her and her children, and who will continually develop the bonds of cooperation between brothers and sisters. The housewife who is like a ray of sunlight in her family, who is wise, and filled with love and compassion is the one to whom I would like to entrust the future family and society.
   Some people see the family as an oasis in society. Others see the family as a place to relax, and also as a consumer. I would also bet that there are many young people who regard the family as a castle for themselves and those closest to them.
   I agree with all of them. Anyone living in a family which brims over with love and trust, where food is prepared fresh and economically and the parents are happy and cheerful will know what the true meaning of joy is. The senior members of the family experience the delights of age, the husband and wife restore their vigor for another day, and emotional warmth fills the hearts of the young children. I believe it was Fukujawa Yukichi who once said, “ There are many beautiful things done in a family, but the most precious of them is the family discussion where everyone talks things over openly, without reserve. “ Enshrine these words in the form of a picture and the scene would be magnificent.
   But there are times when happiness may be blown suddenly away, like the leaves in a sudden gale. Rising prices and dreadful  economic conditions may chill the wife’s warm smile, the whirlwind of unemployment may cause the husband to bolt from his family. The source of the storm may lie in a traffic accident, children’s illness, anywhere where sudden mishap occurs. And sometimes it may brew within the family.
   If a person looks at his family as a nook nestled in some secure corner of the world, isolated from the rest of society, it may at first glance seem a happy place, but this is the kind of home that will not be able to avoid sudden collapse.
   There is no group as vulnerable to unhappiness as a family that is closed off from the rest of society. I would like to see the kind of family equipped with a strong life-force which will allow them to gauge and cope with the powers of the storm, even while buffeted by the rapid change in society. That family would be always open, ready to fight the evils that fill society. Families such as these in a society are like the white corpuscles and antibodies that fight disease in the human body.
   Since the open family would allow itself to make direct contact with the adversities of society, It would derive the wisdom to sustain itself. If the people making up the family do not have a creative sense, then the family will not be able to cope with the repercussions of society and politics, no matter how great the love that passes between them.    

Read More

cont....The Creative Family: A Base for a Creative Society

cont….     Within the traditional extended family of Japan, love was often overpowered by the strong shadow of the household. On the other hand, there was a distinct family tradition, a kind of family culture which was carried by the vertical connections through the generations. Its customs determined the unique traditions of each family.
                         A style of life and its standards, ways of looking at things, and the way in which the family related to the rest of society were all conveyed from father to son, from mother to daughter, from mother-in-law to daughter-in-law. In the process, the precious experiences of family forebears were interwoven with the wisdom of life.
          Parents taught their children how to live as human beings, provided them with an outlook on life and assisted
them  in developing a world view. Social customs were conveyed from person to person; such things are etiquette and
social behavior, how to manage household finances, raise children, and do well in the world were all taught by parents
to their children.
          But even these advantages were not enough to offset the deficiencies which eroded the human love necessary to
unceasing life-force for the familial organism. Love, then, is the most important bond for the contemporary nuclear
family.
However, the three-generation family in which the grandparents are in good health is preferable, since life with the
Older couple means that the family can learn its traditions. This makes up for the deficiencies in wisdom attendant upon
the nuclear family. When I consider the family of the future, I think life with the grandparents would be the idea.
Realities do not easily permit that, but even where husband and wife are living alone, they should not cut off contact
with the grandparents or older people with their wealth of life’s experience.    

Read More

The creative Family: A base for a Creative Society

          In the early autumn of 1974, after returning from the Soviet Union, I went to Hokkaido, where I had been several times before. No sooner had the plane left Honshu than Hokkaido came into sight. Rain clouds began to gather, soon concealing the view outside. Flying over cloud-covered Hakodate, the fond memory of this town’s somewhat exotic landscape came back to me. I have many friends there. Their faces and those of their families crossed my mind one after another. Among them were some supporting traditional, large families, newly married couples, and women who had suffered great misfortunes but succeeded in pulling their families back from the brink of disaster. The life patterns of human beings are as different as their faces. I pondered, as I rode in the plane, the lives of my Hakodate friends and the love, hatred, suffering and joys they experienced. Then, I remembered the bitter life of a family who had to leave Hakodate and go south across the Tsugaru Straits. I had never met them personally, for they were the ones the TV drama, “Kita no kazoku” was based on, a series broadcast ending in the spring of 1974. Even though it was a TV play, it was a very moving, true- to life story. Apparently, many women watched each episode with rapt attention.

          The story is about a women who, caught up in the repercussions of her husband’s disappearance, leaves with the three children for a new life in Kanazawa. There she lives with her own family, an extended family in which three generations live under one roof. The plot is told against a background of conflict between the grandmother and grandchildren. Eventually the oldest son graduates from school and goes to work, the entire family moves to the port city of Yokohama, where we witness the oldest son and his wife starting their own nuclear family.

          The aging parents then move on  to Uwajima with the daughter. The second son moves to kanazawa to take over the family business , at the grandmother’s wish. But life in the south was not a secure one for the northern family. After the death of the father, the daughter leaves and goes north, back across the Tsugaru Straits to Hakodate. That’s the story as I remember it.

          The author was probably posing the question of what a true family should be. An ordinary family through their meandering travels breaks up to go their separate ways. The drama ended, simply hinting at the kind of family that will probably emerge in the future. I was thinking hard about what kind of family is best for the future, when an announcement that we were going to land interrupted my thoughts.

          The family is a kind of organism. If we think of society as one human body, then each family is a group of cells. Some families move around in the body while others stay fixed in a certain place. Each family group has to live as part of the entire body or else it will not survive. If, on the other hand, each of the cells does not work with the vigor of the life, then we cannot expect society to move forward. The family is like a group of cells which is created  through the efforts of each of its members. The family is the basic unit which decides where society moves. Love is the blood coursing through the unit holding all members together. The family is the only organism by which love can be transacted between husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister. The love between husband and wife provides the basis for all families and from this the nuclear family is born. When they have children, love will be a reality between parent and child.

          In the large family the bonds of love between grandmother and grandfather weave their vertical thread through

Three generations. That love then spreads horizontally among brothers and sisters. These vertical and horizontal ties of

Love are what give dynamism to family life. The parents bear the responsibility for increasing solidarity with each other

and for skillfully handling the vertical and horizontal arteries running through the family.cont…………….          

Read More

Daisaku Ikeda’s prface about family

     The family is the basic unit in social life. People are social animals who can not live alone, and from the moment of birth to the time of death, one’s life is a composite of interactions with others. The essential unit in social relationships throughout a lifetime is the family.
     Families come in all sizes, big ones and little ones. There are many different types as well; families is a patriarchal society differ in many ways from those in a matriarchal society. Form of marriage varies, too, from monogamy to polygamy or polyandry. Th
e family is, nevertheless, the first social group to have existed, before there was any community or society, state or nation. The birth of the family occurred with the inception of the human race.
     In japan, until a generation ago, the word “ family “ was likely to bring up an assortment of gloomy associations all related to the prewar institution of house. The family system of the pre-1945 period was patriarchal, and the authority of the father was nearly absolute. Primogeniture was the rule, and the second son and his younger brothers, not to mention the women, were subordinate to patriarchal authority. Restrictions, restraints and obedience; these were the images of the prewar family system, based as it was on a Civil Code that was heavily influenced by the confucian concept of morality.
     For postwar Japan’s professed democracy, abolition of such concepts of family and household was essencial to the construction of a healthy society. But certain ramifications of the destructions of the oldstyle family are lamented by many. The loss of maternal feeling among mothers and the decline in paternal authority, for example, seen to come right out of the age of the nuclear family. But I for one think the course of democratization itself has been a good thing. I have no sympathy for those who feel nostalgia for the prewar period, who moan that Japan’s society today has brought about the collapse of morality. A society like that of prewar  Japan creates a system in which the indivisual, male and female alike, is bound by the chains of family and group; and such a society can hardly be called wholesome.
    Postwar democratic societies, in the too hasty attempt to liberate the indivisual, have been totally oblivious to something, and the important thing is to discover just what that something is. Society is chenging faster than it ever has, and many adults are bewidered by the growing generation gap and sense of discontinuety. These times are difficult ones indeed, and as an organization leader, I have been able to gain a somewhat broad perspective on those difficulties.
    However, we will not make any progress by just lamenting the confusion. We must not run helter-skelter in bewilderment but get back to our beginnings---our beginnings as human beings, for whether we are old or young, man or woman, we have to try to answer the question of how we should live. This constant searching must begin from a spirit of independence. Only then can we look for the way to harmony and accommodation. This is an easy thing to say, but all the more difficult to put into practice, for we lack a spirit of independence today, and that, I think, is the blind spot  of postwar society.
     Women’s liberation is neccessary. I understand that there is , in the United States and other countries, a men’s liberation movement developing along with the women’s. Before considering whetherone is male or female, parrent or child, the urgent need is to cultivate a spirit of human independence. This is the movement for human liberation. Through the efforts of each and every person, we can leave behind us the forms of the past and out of this will come something new; the creative family. I hope this matter will be of some helpin that work  

Read More

Family

FamilyFamilyFamilyFamilyFamily

Read More