Inside a Japanese Sharehouse: Dreams and Realities

This Book Explores Social Change In Japan At The Most Intimate Site Of Social Interaction – The Home – By Providing A Detailed Ethnography Of Everyday Life In A Sharehouse. Sharehouses, Which Emerged In The 2007 'sharehouse Boom', Are A Deliberate Alternative To Life In The Family Home And Are Considered An Experimental Space For The Construction Of New Social Identities. Through A Description Of The Micro-level, Mundane, Material Interactions Among Residents Within A Mid-sized, Mixed-sex Sharehouse, The Book Considers What These Interactions Indicate About Existing – And Often Conflicting – Ideas About Intimacy, Privacy, Gender, The Individual, Family, Community, And The Home. In So Doing It Highlights How Sharehouse Residents, Though A Dramatic Rejection Of The Twentieth-century Domestic Model, With Its Ideal Of The Family Home As A Partnership Between A Male Wage-earner And A Dedicated Housewife, And Its Implied Separation Of 'family' And 'outsiders', Are Nevertheless Uneasy About Overturning Existing Gender Roles And Giving Precedence To The Individual Over Community, And Are Regarded As A Foreign Import.