Abstract: An analysis of two domestic dramas, “Wata-Oni” (Japan) and “The Romantic Story” (China). Examines how such dramas represent the social dynamic and family relationships in their respective countries. Focuses on the relationships between women, specifically between mothers and daughters (in law).

Domestic drama expresses and focuses on the everyday lives of middle or lower classes in a certain society. Domestic drama refers to a dramatic story containing an emphasis on its characters’ intimate relationships and their responses to unfolding events in their lives. The characters, their lives, and the events that occur within the show are usually classified as ‘ordinary’ events, lives, and characters, but this does not limit the extend of what domestic drama can represent.

First we have “Wata-Oni” (渡る世間は鬼ばかり/冷暖人間), the archetype of all domestic dramas ever produced in Japan, a series which has been running since 1990. The title, “Wataru-seken-wa-oni-bakari” literary stands for “World’s filled with cruel monsters”, which is an expression used to express the difficulty of human relationships in Japanese society, especially family life. Throughout its 15 year run, the drama has dealt with very typical issues faced by typical Japanese middle class family members, such as difficulties getting along with mother-in-laws, how a woman can balance work and family life, and generation gaps between parents and children.

The story of “Wata-oni” starts with Daikichi, a middle class white-collar worker with five daughters. As they grow, each daughter has to deal with her own generation specific problems targeted toward the same age group in Japan. For example, the story deals simultaneously with the first daughter, who is married and suffering with her husband who refused to take responsibilities of their children, (typical marital life problem in Japan, referred as “absence of husbands”) and the fifth daughter, who is trying to marry an older man (20 years her senior) against her parents’ will (generation gap about values of love relationship). As years pass, the daughters get married, divorced, have children, and face new time-specific problems at the society then, faced by other Japanese people in that age groups. From the flow of those issues, one can easily see the transition of family values through each generation in Japan. For example, the issues with wives and mother-in-laws were the single most important and the most significant theme of the show for past 12 years. However, recently the most notorious mother-in-law left the story, reflecting the Japanese marital trends shifted towards woman’s independence and individualism (aka. Americanized). Instead, more time is given to problems such as youth delinquency and educational competitiveness. The stories are usually centered through personal and emotional conflicts held between characters against each other: wives against husbands, wives against mother-in-laws, parents against their children. To get a better sense what this drama is about, let’s briefly walk through story lines, dynamisms, and themes of Wataoni.

The first season (1990)Daikichi couple

• theme—Japanese white collar living after retirement
• Daikichi, a retired white collar worker becomes a board member of a smaller company, does not appreciate the life “used by” others all the time. However, his wife cannot understand his distress, and wants him to continue with the steady job her husband holds. Daikichi eventually quits his job after dealing with the inheritance problem of his 2nd daughter, and starts his business as a chef while his wife continues to deal with her own problems.

1st Daughter, Yayoi

• theme—Independence of housewives and nursery cares of elder family members
• Yayoi has been married to a white collar worker, Noda, for many years. She is lonely at home, as her husband is a typical workaholic with no interest in his family, and her two children have grown up. Yayoi decides to take back her job as a nurse. However, neither her husband nor children support her efforts. Instead, Yayoi takes her mother-in-law, who is bedridden and in need of round-the-clock care, back home to offer nursery care.

2nd Daughter, Satsuki

• theme—Inheritance issues around middle class family
• Satsuki’s father-in-law, who is the owner of a ramen shop, dies without a will. Satsuki’s sisters in law claim their shares of the inheritance, but there is no other way to pay them without selling the ramen shop. Satsuki’s mother in law insists on keeping the shop, but her daughters continue to fight.

3rd Daughter, Fumiko

• theme—Child raising issues of a “working couple”, and problems with parents
• Fumiko has a very good career in a firm—and earns more than her husband. Her successful career has been preventing her from taking full care of their young child. Her mother in law criticizes her about it very badly, and the problem grows so bad that divorce seems inevitable.

4th Daughter, Yoko

• theme—How to choose a husband
• Yoko has a steady relationship with Taro, who is the son of a wealthy family. However, because Taro opposes her desire to continue work after marriage, she is hesitant about marrying him. When she starts to work in Japan, she meets Yoji, a second son of a middle class family. As Yoji shares her view about careers, she decides to marry Yoji instead.

5th Daughter, Nagako

• theme—Employment and marriage
• Nagako is about to graduate from college. Her father Daikichi wishes her to stay with them after getting her job; however, she has no will to do so. After her graduation, Nagako gets hit by a car, and accidentally meets Masayuki. Masayuki has a daughter with his dead wife, but Nagako falls in love with him and decides to marry him. Her parents, not surprisingly, oppose to let her marry to a man with a child.

Not surprisingly, the main audience of such a drama is female, especially housewives in Japan. “Wata-oni” has earned long lasting popularity mainly because of its reality as perceived by those audiences. A number of reviews from real housewives claims the author to be “seeing through the ugliest, and nothing more than the most typical issues that can be found, presenting it in exaggerated manners”, or even, “Please don’t write exactly what is going on in my family and mothers-in-law!”

Just by watching this drama, one can get a sense of several social dynamics of the family relationships that an average Japanese woman faces in her young to middle adulthood. First of all, Japanese young adults, even after college, employment, and marriage, still maintain a close relationship with their parents, often interacting on a daily basis. Many Japanese young couples live with their parents-in-law, especially the husband’s side. The ancient Confucian value of “women should be married to the husband’s family, rather than to only himself” still stays, at least in the minds of the older generation, which causes much conflict and distress of women in younger generation, who value independence and Western individualism. In the story, all daughters of Daikichi become involved in problems with their mothers-in-law. Yayoi takes responsibility of taking care of her husband’s bedridden mother, suggesting the underlying social pressure that children are obliged to solve their parents’ problem themselves. In fact, many housewives in Japan are currently facing this responsibility to volunteer nursery care to their parents-in-law. This kind of responsibility is considered to be the duty of daughter-in-laws, rather than of daughters. Fumiko and Nagako both cherish their independence as individuals with economic power, however, run directly into conflicts with their mothers-in-law, who happen to be stubborn about the thought “wives should stay home and take care of their husbands and children”. Those women in older generation had (and were encouraged) to make sacrifices for their children, and child rearing was the only thing that they could give them a “feeling of achievement in life”. As a consequence, many Japanese mothers are overprotective to their sons, causing a lot of conflicts with their daughters in law. Meanwhile, a typical son of those women—husbands of Daikichi’s daughter—are emotionally tied to their mothers in a large extent because they know about the sacrifice their mothers made for them. As a result, husbands often cannot take any stance or active position to solve the distress felt by their wives and mothers. This issue becomes more serious when the wife is living or doing business with parents-in-law, as in Satsuki’s case. Even though Satsuki works more than her share, as long as she is married to the owner of the ramen shop, she as an individual does not have any economic or political freedom. This description reflects that inside a small family business, the traditional Japanese regime functions perfectly.

“The Romantic Story” (浪漫的事), directed by Yazhou Yang, is a Chinese domestic drama which resembles “Wata-oni” in many ways. Yang’s creation has been earning popularity among middle class Chinese citizens because its realism in subject matter. He himself claims that he wants to depict “the most of ordinaries” (要多俗有多俗) in his dramas. In “The Romantic Story”, the story revolves around a family with an elderly mother and three daughters, representing three different lifestyles of modern Chinese women. The first daughter Xue, a competent high school teacher, is in a successful marriage life with her husband who is an engineer. Their story represents a typical Chinese intellectual couple who were probably born in the 1950s to 60s, both having a steady profession and a child, whom they will nurture with meticulous care and high expectations. The second daughter Yu, in contrast, is married to a hotel worker who constantly dreams about getting rich by being successful in business. They quit their jobs out of distress of being looked down upon by intellectuals in their office and start their own business, with series of trials and failures. Their story represents some of the Chinese people’s mentality towards rapid economic growth, feeling that they should get rich and “get ahead of everybody”, even their practices are unethical or illegal. The third daughter, Feng, leads a highly successful professional life but remains single in her private life, despite of her popularity among rich males. Her idealization towards marriage results her to end up marrying an environmentalist who holds tons of ideals but no economic success or desire.

Both “Wata-oni” and “The Romantic Story “roughly depict the same issues existing in modern Asian society. They both use the “many daughters situation” to depict women living in modern society with diversified backgrounds and issues. However, despite of the similarities in format, these two dramas vividly reflects huge differences in social relationships between Chinese families and Japanese families.

Readers' Comments