CELL
都会で核家族を築いた子どもと、地方に残された年老いた両親。1953年、小津安二郎は映画「東京物語」で、戦後の復興期から高度成長期へと向かうただ中で、都市化とともに変わりつつあった家族の関係性や距離感を、静謐なモノクロ映像で描写した。30年後の1983年、森田芳光は映画「家族ゲーム」で、家庭の食卓風景を舞台回しに、都市部で暮らす核家族のありようをコミカルに描いた。
それから30年余り。労働環境の変化や女性の社会進出、広がり固定化する格差や貧困、一人暮らしを容易にしたといわれる24時間営業のコンビニや外食産業の発達、ネット通販の拡大・浸透など、社会やライフスタイルの変化を背景に、未婚・晩婚化、個人化は進み、「おひとりさま」、「ソロ充」の流行語を生む。
20年後、未婚・晩婚に高齢化による死別や離婚も加わり、全世帯における一人暮らしの割合は4割に達し、人口の一極集中が続く東京区部では、その半数以上が単身世帯になるという。血で結ばれた核家族が減りゆく中、ルームシェアやグループリビングなど「疑似家族」も広がりをみせる。二人の映画監督が描いた「核家族の時代」が過ぎ去り、「おひとりさまの時代」が到来したとき、どんな「家族」が描かれているのだろう。
地方の過疎化と裏腹に、ブラックホールのように人を飲み込み、有機体のように変化と膨張を続ける巨大都市・東京。かつて「親と子」が集った家々は、時の移ろいとともに空き家となり、独身者たちは、ユニット化されるように集合住宅へと集約されていく。冷たいコンクリートの表層の裏側で、さながら都市を形作る細胞のように増殖し続ける独身者とその住処は、未婚・晩婚化とともに、人々が個人化していく東京の今を、映し出している。
Children who built nuclear families in the city and their aging parents left behind in the countryside—
In 1953, Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story quietly portrayed, in serene black-and-white images, the changing relationships and emotional distances within families amid Japan’s postwar reconstruction and rapid urbanization leading toward high economic growth.
Thirty years later, in 1983, Yoshimitsu Morita’s The Family Game humorously depicted the life of an urban nuclear family, using the dinner table as a miniature stage for the dynamics of contemporary domestic life.
More than thirty years have passed since then.
With shifts in working conditions, women’s participation in society, the widening and solidifying of economic inequality and poverty, and lifestyle changes brought about by the proliferation of 24-hour convenience stores, fast-food chains, and online shopping—which all made living alone easier—Japan has seen rising rates of late marriage, non-marriage, and individualization. These trends even gave birth to popular phrases like ohitorisama (“party of one”) and solojū (“fulfilled solo life”).
Two decades from now, adding bereavement and divorce to the effects of aging and non-marriage, single-person households are projected to account for 40 percent of all households. In Tokyo’s central wards—where population concentration continues—over half of all households will consist of individuals living alone. As nuclear families bound by blood ties decline, new forms of “pseudo-families” such as shared housing and group living are spreading.
When the “age of the nuclear family,” portrayed by those two filmmakers, has passed and the “age of solitude” arrives—what kinds of “families” will be depicted then?
In contrast to the depopulation of rural areas, Tokyo, an ever-expanding metropolis that swallows people like a black hole and continues to mutate like a living organism, grows denser. Houses once filled with parents and children become vacant over time, while single people converge in modular apartment units.
Behind the cold concrete façade, these solitary individuals and their dwellings—multiplying like cells that compose the body of the city—reflect the current state of Tokyo, where people are increasingly atomized amid the rise of late marriage and individualization.