SEMINAR: Asian Studies Seminar Series

Trends in marriage, divorce and longevity mean that Japanese people are spending less of their adult lives married. In Japan, as in other countries, this delay and decline in marriage and the correlated decline in fertility, has been variously construed as proof of social crisis, the triumph of individualism, and/or feminist progress (Roseneil and Budgeon 2004). In this context, intimate relationships outside the nuclear, reproductive family are likely to assume weight (over a longer time span) in the life course and practices of adult Japanese women and men. Friendships, for example, offer possibilities for creating and articulating identities, and permit production of new social competences (Eve 2002, 405). Friendship is enabled and maintained by factors including shared experiences, care and corporeal proximity (Urry 2002, 255-256). Shared spaces, and shared experiences, facilitate friendships that may develop qualities complementary or supplementary to romantic and kin-based ties. In this paper, I explore the significance of place in forming and maintaining friendships in Japan, using discussion drawn from recent ethnographic fieldwork. I explore the connection of friendship and ba (roughly, “place”) in producing intimate relationships. Drawing on the concept of ba, defined by Nonaka and Konno (1998, 40) as a “shared space for emerging relations”, this paper explores how place shapes the conceptualization as well as the practice of friendship.