The Japanese family : touch, intimacy and feeling

This book explores how the relationship between child and parent develops in Japan, from the earliest point in a child's life, through the transition from family to the wider world, first to playschools and then schools. It shows how touch and physical contact are important for engendering intimacy and feeling, and how intimacy and feeling continue even when physical contact lessens. It relates the position in Japan to theoretical writing, in both Japan and the West, on body, mind, intimacy and feeling, and compares the position in Japan to practices elsewhere. Overall, the book makes a significant contribution to the study of and theories on body practices, and to debates on the processes of socialisation in Japan.

Foreword Eyal Ben-Ari Part 1 1. Introduction Part 2 2. Parent-child Touch: (Dis)Locating the Body in Skinship 3. Exclusion and Inclusion in the Bedroom Part 3 4. Moving into the Big, Wide World 5. Arriving to a Conceptual Understanding of Belonging Through the Felt Meanings of Touch 6. How Touch Feels after Five 7. Conclusion