3. Conflicts in making the town. Gifts and conflict resolution

Making the town is not without conflict. Transition from village system to town system has been marked by individual households maintaining a double system for a long period of time. While they appeared to agree on a democratic system based on new local administrations, they maintained practices of the earlier village system.[74] The transition was almost completed by 1995, and by the time I started fieldwork the town was the main frame of political action. Conflict between villages was non-existent, although conflict among households and between households and the central office continued, both overt and covert.

Tamon is a household head in his late sixties. He runs a private business in farming and logging. On his return from a town meeting he said that he was happy he had spoken at the meeting. He did not like the town office organising a meeting to discuss the price of wood and other related products. After all, it was their business, and it was the private business of the farmers. The farmers had their own union and corporations, they did not need the town office arguing on the price of products. He liked making the town but he wished the town office would listen to what villagers had to say. As he put it: ‘They do not listen very much. When they come with a project they want to do the project. They ask your opinion but they go ahead anyway. This time we have made a stand, I hope that since we complained, which is rare in these meetings they will not go ahead. No prestations of sake or food were offered after the event, thus no further negotiations took place. The project was re-examined and postponed for few months.

Conflicts varied over different subjects. Complaints arose most commonly over the town’s interference in public and household affairs and the amount of ceremonies and gatherings involved in making the town. Most conflicts over the degree of interference by one household into the affairs of another were usually anticipated by using gifts of apology. If conflicts were not resolved, households resorted to methods of ostracism.[7] Individuals gradually learned to leave or resolve the situations they felt uncomfortable with:

Abe, a woman in her early forties, wife of a traditional household had been working at the town office for several years. She worked with people who, with a few exceptions, came from prestigious village families. She left all of it behind for the enterprise of making the town. The town had to be a ‘democratic’ and an ‘international place’. She had enrolled herself in English classes in order not to let down her office colleagues, who pushed her into it with the excuse that it would benefit her children who were later enrolled in it. However, the timetables interfered with her domestic duties and family business. Gradually she grew unhappy with the activities of the municipal office. Every day she had several meetings and many functions to attend. Her duties at the office were many and not always fulfilling: arranging decorations at meetings, buying presents for the guests, assisting her boss in matters to do with the making of the town. Most of her activities consisted in attending events and contributing to gifts. As I observed while I was with her at the office, gift giving was constant, marked by the many travelling omiyage gifts, and the ‘free’ gifts received from other institutions. However, after many arguments with her father-in-law, who perceived the town office as overly interfering in the farmers’ affairs, she decided to stop working there and return to farming and staying at home. She was not completely happy with the way the office handled its relations with the co-operative and with the farmers, and although she did not want to speak out she was clearly not happy with her place at the office either. Finally, both she and her husband left their work both at the JA and the municipal office and went back to work on their farm. She received many farewell presents that ‘thanked’ her and her husband for all their work. After the event, Abe said she could not feel ‘bad’ about the town office, because in their gestures they had ‘thanked her’, and that is what counted. She insisted, that she and her husband were better off at home.

The set of prestations received here are clearly of a different nature from those of apology. They specify the character of ‘breaking off’ relations that took place, and trying to ‘smooth’ over and resolve the rupture. Like most gifts of thanks they are ambiguously placed at the boundary of apology, coercion and obligation to belong to the town. However, not all conflicts are about the town’s interference. Conflicts may also arise as a result of the households’ interest in seeking prestige.

Yoshimoto, the sixty-seven year old wife from a prestigious old family and a keen gossipmonger, did not feel very happy about the way things were done in town, because her husband felt marginalised in decision-making. Their family had been politically influential for decades, but could never achieve a full political post through democratic elections. The did not have enough people supporting their candidature. Their opposition to town matters never took the form of public confrontation, but they tried to attend town events as little as possible. She did not want to be disrespectful, and did participate in the events which the town organised for their district, especially those to do with respect to the elders and village traditions.

From the point of view of the town office and the political representatives of the town, to make the town is an arduous business. As one officer argued, ‘I think we work more than a salaryman, we have to make everybody happy’. The relation between households and municipal officers is a complex one which cannot be reduced to one of mere antagonism or interference, although a degree of both takes place. It would be simplistic to see their relationship as merely oppositional. Rather, households and the town office try to win each other over to their communal and personal goals.

[74] Talking about the transformation of gift giving patterns in rural Japan I met a missionaries who argued that transformations occurred very slowly with people following both ‘traditional’ and ‘democratic’ arrangements simultaneously. To explain this he told me that he had been the local priest in a neighbouring town for over fifteen years until he moved to another town. Ten years later - in 1989 - he returned to the town. During his visit many people who remembered him came to thank him and gave him kimochi and orei gifts. In total he received over 270,000 yen (£1,421). I am inclined to agree that despite democratic transformations giving for ‘status’ as well as giving orei to ‘thank’ for past favours is still practised. []