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Children have great freedom with their grandparents, though they are also objects of respect. Grandparents are not cast in the rôle of disciplinarians. They may take that rôle when they object to the laxness of the children’s upbringing, and this is the occasion of a good deal of friction. The child’s grandmother is usually at hand twenty-four hours of the day, and the rivalry for the children between father’s mother and mother is proverbial in Japanese homes. From the child’s point of view he is courted by both of them. From the grandmother’s point of view, she often uses him in her domination of her daughter-in-law. The young mother has no greater obligation in life than satisfying her mother-in-law and she cannot protest, however much the grandparents may spoil her children. Grandmother gives them candies after Mother has said they should not have any more, and says pointedly, ‘_My_ candies aren’t poison.’ Grandmother in many households can make the children presents which Mother cannot manage to get them and has more leisure to devote to the children’s amusements.
아이들은 조부모에게 지극한 자유를 느낀다. 비록 존경의 대상일지라도. 조부모들은 훈련자의 역할을 맡지 않는다. 조부모들은 아이 양육에 대한 laxness에 매어있을 때에는 그 역할을 맡을 수도 있다. 그런데 이것은 많은 불화의 계기이다. 종종 아이의 할머니는 하루 24시간 가까이 있고, 아버지의 엄마와 엄마 사이의 대립관계는 일본의 가정에서 흔한 일이다. 아이의 관점에서 보면 그 둘 모두는 아이에게 구애한다. 할머니의 입장에서는 며느리를 지배하기 위해 종종 손자를 이용한다. 며느리는 일생동안 시어머니를 만족시키는 것을 최고의 의무로 삼으며 시어머니에 저항할 수 없다. 그러나 조부모의 많은 사람들이 손자를 망칠지도 모른다. 할머니는 어머니가 아이에게 더 이상 먹으면 안 된다고 말라고 말한 후에 사탕을 준다. 그러고는 “내가 주는 사탕은 해롭지 않다”고 신랄하게 말한다. 많은 가정에서 할머니는 어머니가 운영할 수 없는 것과 아이의 즐거움에 기여할 더 많은 레저를 갖도록 제안할 수 있다.
The older brothers and sisters are also taught to indulge the younger children. The Japanese are quite aware of the danger of what we call the baby’s ‘nose being put out of joint’ when the next baby is born. The dispossessed child can easily associate with the new baby the fact that he has had to give up his mother’s breast and his mother’s bed to the newcomer. Before the new baby is born the mother tells the child that now he will have a real live doll and not just a ‘pretend’ baby. He is told that he can sleep now with his father instead of his mother, and this is pictured as a privilege. The children are drawn into preparations for the new baby. The children are usually genuinely excited and pleased by the new baby but lapses occur and are regarded as thoroughly expectable and not as particularly threatening.
형이나 누이 역시 동생을 이용하도록 학습된다. 일본인은 다음 아이가 태어날 때 우리가 아이의 ‘뒤죽박죽되어 버린 코nose being put out of joint’라고 부르는 것의 위험을 정말 잘 알고 있다. (막내의 권리를) 빼앗긴 아이는 쉽게 엄마의 침대와 젖가슴을 새로 태어난 동생에게 넘겨줘야 한다는 사실을 쉽게 인정할 수 있다. 동생이 태어나기 전 엄마는 아이에게 이제 곧 ‘가짜’ 아기가 아닌 실제로 살아있는 인형을 갖게 될 것이라고 말한다. 이제 엄마 대신 아빠랑 잠을 잘 수 있으며 이는 특권으로 묘사된다. 아이는 새 아기에 대한 준비에 끌리듯 빠져든다. 아이들은 대부분 영리하면서도 기쁜 마음으로 물러나지만 가끔 실패가 발생하는데 이미 예견된 상황으로 심각한 위협으로 간주되지는 않는다.
The dispossessed child may pick up the baby and start off with it, saying to his mother, ‘We’ll give this baby away.’ ‘No,’ she answers, ‘it’s our baby. See, we’ll be good to it. It likes you. We need you to help with the baby.’ The little scene sometimes recurs over a considerable time but mothers seem to worry little about it. One provision for the situation occurs automatically in large families: the alternate children are united by closer ties. The oldest child will be favored nurse and protector of the third child and the second child of the fourth. The younger children reciprocate. Until children are seven or eight, what sex the children are generally makes little difference in this arrangement.
특권을 빼앗긴 아이는 아기를 집어 들고 나가면서 엄마에게 “우리 이 아기를 갖다 버리자”라고 말할 수도 있다. 엄마는 대답한다. “안 돼, 우리 아기야. 봐봐, 우리가 잘 해줄 수 있어, 아기는 너를 좋아할걸. 아기를 돌봐주는데 네가 필요해.” 그러한 소소한 풍경은 이따금씩 자주 되풀이되지만 엄마는 전혀 신경을 쓰지 않는다. 대가족에서 자동적으로 발생하는 그러한 상황에 대한 대비책이 있다. 대안적인 아이를 보다 밀접한 끈으로 묶는다. 가장 큰 아이는 셋째 아이의, 둘째는 넷째의 호의적인 보호자이자 양육자가 되게 한다. 더 어린 아이들은 보답한다. 아이들은 예닐곱 살이 되기 전, 남자든 여자든 일반적으로 이러한 배치에서 큰 차이가 없다.
All Japanese children have toys. Fathers and mothers and all the circle of friends and relatives make or buy dolls and all their appurtenances for the children, and among poorer people they cost practically nothing. Little children play housekeeping, weddings, and festivals with them, after arguing out just what the ‘right’ grown-up procedures are, and sometimes submitting to mother a disputed point. When there are quarrels, it is likely that the mother will invoke _noblesse oblige_ and ask the older child to give in to the younger one. The common phrase is, ‘Why not lose to win?’ She means, and the three-year-old quickly comes to understand her, that if the older child gives up his toy to the younger one the baby will soon be satisfied and turn to something else; then the admonished child will have won his toy back even though he relinquished it.
모든 일본 아이들은 인형을 갖고 있다. 아버지와 어머니 그리고 모든 범위의 친척과 친구는 아이를 위해 인형이나 장난감을 사거나 만든다. 그리고 가난한 사람들은 실제 비용을 거의 들이지 않는다. 어린 아이들은 장난감을 가지고 가사, 결혼, 축제 놀이를 한다. 어떤 것이 ‘올바른’ 성장과정인가 말싸움을 하고 난 후 때때로 논쟁점을 엄마에게 이른다. 말다툼이 있으면 엄마는 _노블리스 오블리제_를 환기시키고 큰 아이가 작은 아이에게 양보하라고 말하는 경향이 있다. 공통적으로 하는 말이 “왜 져주지 않니 그게 이기는 것인데” 엄마의 말은, 세 살짜리 아이는 금방 엄마의 말을 이해하게 되는데, 만약 큰 아이가 자신의 장난감을 작은 아이에게 양보하면아기는 금방 만족할 것이고 다른 무언가로 관심을 돌릴 것이다. 그러면 혼난 아이는 자신의 장난감을 (동생에게) 양도했을지라도 돌려받게 된다는 사실을 의미한다.
Or she means that by accepting an unpopular rôle in the master-servants game the children are proposing, he will nevertheless ‘win’ the fun they can have. ‘To lose to win’ becomes a sequence greatly respected in Japanese life even when people are grown-up. Besides the techniques of admonition and teasing, distracting the child and turning his mind away from its object has an honored place in child-rearing. Even the constant giving of candies is generally thought of as part of the technique of distraction. As the child gets nearer to school age techniques of ‘curing’ are used. If a little boy has tantrums or is disobedient or noisy his mother may take him to a Shinto or Buddhist shrine.
아니면 엄마의 말은 큰 아이가 제안 받은 주인-하인의 게임에서 부적적한 역할을 받아들임으로써, 불리한 역할에도 불구하고 그들이 얻을 수 있는 재미를 아이는 ‘따낼win' 것이라는 점을 의미한다. ‘지는 것이 이기는 것’은 사람들이 성장한 후에도 일본인의 삶에서 크게 존중받는 장치sequence가 된다. 이외에도 아이들을 혼내고, 괴롭히고, 주의를 빼앗고, 사물로부터 관심을 돌리는 기술은 아이 키우는 영역에서 존경을 받고 있다. 일반적으로 끊임없이 사탕을 주는 행위조차도 주의를 돌리는 기술의 영역으로 고려된다. 아이들이 학교에 갈 나이가 되면 ‘치유’의 기술이 사용된다. 만약 아이가 역정tantrum을 내거나 뻗대고disobedient 소리를 지른다면 엄마는 신사나 절에 아이를 데려간다.
The mother’s attitude is, ‘_We_ will go to get help.’ It is often quite a jaunt and the curing priest talks seriously with the boy, asking his day of birth and his troubles. He retires to pray and comes back to pronounce the cure, sometimes removing the naughtiness in the form of a worm or an insect. He purifies him and sends him home freed. ‘It lasts for a while,’ Japanese say. Even the most severe punishment Japanese children ever get is regarded as ‘medicine.’ This is the burning of a little cone of powder, the _moxa_, upon the child’s skin. It leaves a lifelong scar. Cauterization by _moxa_ is an old, widespread Eastern Asiatic medicine, and it was traditionally used to cure many aches and pains in Japan too. It can also cure tantrums and obstinacy. A little boy of six or seven may be ‘cured’ in this way by his mother or his grandmother. It may even be used twice in a difficult case but very seldom indeed is a child given the _moxa_ treatment for naughtiness a third time. It is not a punishment in the sense that ‘I’ll spank you if you do that’ is a punishment. But it hurts far worse than spanking, and the child learns that he cannot be naughty with impunity.
엄마의 태도는 이렇다. “우리 도움을 받으러 갈 거야.” 종종 그것은 완전히 짧은 여행jaunt이며 치유를 담당하는 사제는 사주팔자와 (지금 처한) 어려운 점에 대해 질문하면서 아이에게 진지하게 말한다. 사제는 물러나 기도하러 가고, 돌아와서 치유책을 선고한다. 그 치유책은 때때로 버릇없음을 없애기 위해 벌레나 곤충의 자세를 취하게 한다. 사제는 아이를 치유하고 가정으로 돌려보내 자유롭게 한다. “그것은 아주 잠깐이야” 일본인들은 말한다. 지금까지 일본인 아이들이 받은 가장 심한 처벌조차도 “약”으로 여긴다. 이것은 작은 삼각뿔 형태의 가루를 아이 피부 위에서 태우는 것인데 moxa이라고 한다. 뜸은 평생 흉터를 남긴다. 모싸로 뜸을 뜨는 것cauterization은 예로부터 동아시아에 널리 퍼진 의술이며, 일본에서도 전통적으로 수많은 통증과 고통을 치료하는데 쓰였다. 뜸은 울화tantrum와 완고함obstinacy도 치료하였다. 여섯이나 일곱 살의 작은 아이도 어머니나 할머니가 이러한 방법으로 치료할 수도 있다. (치료가) 곤란한 경우에는 두 번씩 사용할 수도 있지만 매우 드문 경우 버릇없음을 고치기 위해 아이에게 뜸 치료를 세 번할 수도 있다. 만약 네가 그걸 한다면 나는 너의 뺨을 때리겠다고 하는 것은 벌이지만 이러한 의미에서 뜸은 벌이 아니다. 하지만 뜸은 뺨을 때리는 것보다 더 나쁜 상처를 주고, 아이는 장난을 치면 벌을 받는다는(벌을 받지 않고는 장난을 칠 수 없다는) 사실을 배운다.
Besides these means of dealing with obstreperous children, there are conventions for teaching necessary physical skills. There is great emphasis on the instructor’s putting children with his own hands physically through the motions. The child should be passive. Before the child is two years old, the father folds its legs for it in the correct sitting position, legs folded back and instep to the floor. The child
finds it difficult at first not to fall over backward, especially since an indispensable part of the sitting training is the emphasis on immobility. He must not fidget or shift position. The way to learn, they say, is to relax and be passive, and this passivity is underscored by the father’s placing of his legs. Sitting is not the only physical position to be learned. There is also sleeping. Modesty in a woman’s sleeping position is as strong in Japan as modesty about being seen naked is in the United States. Though the Japanese did not feel shame in nudity in the bath until the government tried to introduce it during their campaign to win the approval of foreigners, their feeling about sleeping positions is very strong. The girl child must learn to sleep straight with her legs together, though the boy has greater freedom. It is one of the first rules which separate the training of boys and girls. Like almost all other requirements in Japan, it is stricter in upper classes than in lower, and Mrs. Sugimoto says of her own samurai upbringing: ‘From the time I can remember I was always careful about lying quiet on my little wooden pillow at night. . . Samurai daughters were taught never to lose control of mind or body—even in sleep. Boys might stretch themselves into the character _dai_, carelessly outspread; but girls must curve into the modest, dignified character _kinoji_, which means “spirit of control.”’[4] Women have told me how their mothers or nurses arranged their limbs for them when they put them to bed at night.
다루기 힘든 아이를 다루는 이러한 수단 외에도, 가르치는데 물리적인 기술이 필요한 관습이 있다. 훈육자들이 동작을 통해 물리적으로 아이들을 수중에 장악하라고 강조한다. 아이들은 수동적이 된다. 아이가 두 살이 되기 전에 아버지는 다리를 접어 바르게 앉는 자세를 취하는데 다리를 뒤로 접고 발등이 바닥을 향하게 한다.(무릎을 꿇게 한다.) 처음에 아이는 뒤로 굴러 떨어지지 않기가 힘들다는 사실을 발견한다. 특히 앉기 훈련의 필수불가결한 부분은 움직이지 않음을 강조하기 때문이다. 안절부절못하거나 움직여서는 안 된다. 일본인들이 말하길 배우는 방법은 수동적이 되거나 편안해지는 것이다. 그리고 이러한 수동성은 아버지가 다리를 놓는 위치에 따라 강조된다. 물리적인 자세엔 앉기만 배우는 것이 아니다. 잠자기도 있다. 일본에서 여성의 잠자는 자세에서 드러나는 정숙함은 미국에서 나체를 바라보는 것만큼이나 정숙함에 있어 강력하다. 외국인의 동의를 얻기 위한 홍보 중에 도입하기 위해 일본정부가 노력하기 전까지 일본인들은 목욕탕에서 벌거벗은 것에 부끄러움을 느끼지 않지만 잠자는 자세에 대한 그들의 느낌은 강력하다. 소녀는 자신의 두 다리를 가지런히 하고 자도록 배워야만 한다. 소년은 더 자유롭긴 하지만. 그것은 소년과 소녀의 훈련을 분리하는 첫 번째 규칙 중 하나이다. 일본의 거의 모든 요건들과 마찬가지로 하위계층보다는 상위계층에서 더 엄격하다. 스기모토 여사는 자기 자신의 사무라이 양육법에 대해 말한다. “내가 기억할 수 있을 때부터 나는 밤에는 언제나 나의 작은 목재 침대위에 조심스럽게 누워있어야만 했다…사무라이의 딸은 잠을 잘 때조차도 마음이나 몸을 통제(반듯이)하도록 배운다. 소년들은 글자 dai大처럼 즉 부주의하게 펼치는 것처럼 자신들을 뻗칠 수 있었다. 하지만 소녀들은 ‘통제된 정신’을 의미하는 고귀한 글자 kinoji처럼 정숙하게 굽혀야만 했다.” 여성들은 나에게 자신들의 어머니나 보모가 밤에 침대에 들어갈 때 자신들의 팔다리를 어떻게 정렬했는지를 알려주었다.
In the traditional teaching of writing, too, the instructor took the
child’s hand and made the ideographs. It was ‘to give him the feel.’ The
child learned to experience the controlled, rhythmic movements before he
could recognize the characters, much less write them. In modern mass
education this method of teaching is less pronounced but it still
occurs. The bow, the handling of chopsticks, shooting an arrow, or tying
a pillow on the back in lieu of a baby may all be taught by moving the
child’s hands and physically placing his body in the correct position.
Except among the upper classes children do not wait to go to school
before they play freely with other children of the neighborhood. In the
villages they form little play gangs before they are three and even in
towns and cities they play with startling freedom in and out of vehicles
in the crowded streets. They are privileged beings. They hang around the
shops listening to grown-ups, or play hopscotch or handball. They gather
for play at the village shrine, safe in the protection of its patron
spirit. Girls and boys play together until they go to school, and for
two or three years after, but closest ties are likely to be between
children of the same sex and especially between children of the same
chronological age. These age-groups (_donen_), especially in the
villages, are lifelong and survive all others. In the village of Suye
Mura, ‘as sexual interests decrease parties of donen are the true
pleasures left in life. Suye (the village) says, “Donen are closer than
a wife.”’[5]
These pre-school children’s gangs are very free with each other. Many of
their games are unabashedly obscene from a Western point of view. The
children know the facts of life both because of the freedom of
grown-ups’ conversation and because of the close quarters in which a
Japanese family lives. Besides, their mothers ordinarily call attention
to their children’s genitals when they play with them and bathe them,
certainly to those of their boy children. The Japanese do not condemn
childish sexuality except when it is indulged in the wrong places and in
wrong company. Masturbation is not regarded as dangerous. The children’s
gangs are also very free in hurling criticisms at each other—criticisms
which in later life would be insults—and in boasting—boasts which
would later be occasions of deep shame. ‘Children,’ the Japanese say,
their eyes smiling benignantly, ‘know no shame (_haji_).’ They add,
‘That is why they are so happy.’ It is the great gulf fixed between the
little child and the adult, for to say of a grown person, ‘He knows no
shame’ is to say that he is lost to decency.
Children of this age criticize each other’s homes and possessions and
they boast especially about their fathers. ‘My father is stronger than
yours,’ ‘My father is smarter than yours’ is common coin. They come to
blows over their respective fathers. This kind of behavior seems to
Americans hardly worth noting, but in Japan it is in great contrast to
the conversation children hear all about them. Every adult’s reference
to his own home is phrased as ‘my wretched house’ and to his neighbor’s
as ‘your august house’; every reference to his family, as ‘my miserable
family,’ and to his neighbor’s as ‘your honorable family.’ Japanese
agree that for many years of childhood—from the time the children’s
play gangs form till the third year of elementary school, when the
children are nine—they occupy themselves constantly with these
individualistic claims. Sometimes it is, ‘I will play overlord and
you’ll be my retainers.’ ‘No, I won’t be a servant. I will be overlord.’
Sometimes it is personal boasts and derogation of the others. ‘They are
free to say whatever they want. As they get older they find that what
they want isn’t allowed, and then they wait till they’re asked and they
don’t boast any more.’
The child learns in the home his attitudes toward the supernatural. The
priest does not ‘teach’ him and generally a child’s experiences with
organized religion are on those occasions when he goes to a popular
festival and, along with all others who attend, is sprinkled by the
priest for purification. Some children are taken to Buddhist services,
but usually this too occurs at festivals. The child’s constant and most
deep-seated experiences with religion are always the family observances
that center around the Buddhist and the Shinto shrines in his own home.
The more conspicuous is the Buddhist shrine with the family grave
tablets before which are offered flowers, branches of a certain tree,
and incense. Food offerings are placed there daily and the elders of the
family announce all family events to the ancestors and bow daily before
the shrine. In the evening little lamps are lighted there. It is quite
common for people to say that they do not like to sleep away from home
because they feel lost without these presences which preside over the
house. The Shinto shrine is usually a simple shelf dominated by a charm
from the temple of Ise. Other sorts of offerings may be presented here.
Then too there is the Kitchen-god covered with soot in the kitchen, and
a host of charms may be fastened on doors and walls. They are all
protections and make home safe. In the villages the village shrine is
similarly a safe place because benevolent gods protect it with their
presence. Mothers like to have their children play there where it is
safe. Nothing in the child’s experience makes him fear the gods or shape
his conduct to satisfy just or censorious gods. They should be
graciously entertained in return for their benefits. They are not
authoritarian.
The serious business of fitting a boy into the circumspect patterns of
adult Japanese life does not really begin till after he has been in
school for two or three years. Up to that time he has been taught
physical control, and when he was obstreperous, his naughtiness has been
‘cured’ and his attention distracted. He has been unobtrusively
admonished and he has been teased. But he has been allowed to be
willful, even to the extent of using violence against his mother. His
little ego has been fostered. Not much changes when he first goes to
school. The first three grades are co-educational and the teacher,
whether a man or a woman, pets the children and is one of them. More
emphasis at home and in school, however, is laid on the dangers of
getting into ‘embarrassing’ situations. Children are still too young for
‘shame,’ but they must be taught to avoid being ‘embarrassed.’ The boy
in the story who cried ‘Wolf, wolf’ when there was no wolf, for
instance, ‘fooled people. If you do anything of this kind, people do not
trust you and that is an embarrassing fact.’ Many Japanese say that it
was their schoolmates who laughed at them first when they made
mistakes—not their teachers or their parents. The job of their elders,
indeed, is not, at this point, themselves to use ridicule on the
children, but gradually to integrate the fact of ridicule with the moral
lesson of living up to giri-to-the-world. Obligations which were, when
the children were six, the loving devotion of a faithful dog—the story
of the good dog’s _on_, quoted earlier, is from the six-year-olds’
reader—now gradually become a whole series of restraints. ‘If you do
this, if you do that,’ their elders say, ‘the world will laugh at you.’
The rules are particularistic and situational and a great many of them
concern what we should call etiquette. They require subordinating one’s
own will to the ever-increasing duties to neighbors, to family and to
country. The child must restrain himself, he must recognize his
indebtedness. He passes gradually to the status of a debtor who must
walk circumspectly if he is ever to pay back what he owes.
This change of status is communicated to the growing boy by a new and
serious extension of the pattern of babyhood teasing. By the time he is
eight or nine his family may in sober truth reject him. If his teacher
reports that he has been disobedient or disrespectful and gives him a
black mark in deportment, his family turn against him. If he is
criticized for some mischief by the storekeeper, ‘the family name has
been disgraced.’ His family are a solid phalanx of accusation. Two
Japanese I have known were told by their fathers before they were ten
not to come home again and were too shamed to go to relatives. They had
been punished by their teachers in the schoolroom. In both cases they
lived in outhouses, where their mothers found them and finally arranged
for their return. Boys in later elementary school are sometimes confined
to the house for _kinshin_, ‘repentance,’ and must occupy themselves
with that Japanese obsession, the writing of diaries. In any case the
family shows that now it looks upon the boy as their representative in
the world and they proceed against him because he has incurred
criticism. He has not lived up to his giri-to-the-world. He cannot look
to his family for support. Nor can he look to his age group. His
schoolmates ostracize him for offenses and he has to apologize and make
promises before he is readmitted.