In Japanese studies it has often been argued, at times even presumed, that in Japan the family is a microcosm of the nation, the national body traced in the tissue of intergenerational relations within the domestic sphere. The site of often extended familial units, in which the proximity of elderly, middle-aged and young people bespeaks a cross-section of society, is not as prevalent as it once was in the country. Moreover, as Davies and Ikeno stress, the ideology of the family has become weaker in recent decades, lessening as ‘patriarchism has gradually lost its power’ (2002, p. 124), and the foundation of the family has shifted from the unit, the collective, to the individual. However this social paradigm, like other aspects of families as an institution, still exists as a contemporary ideal, a perceived repository of traditional values, and as such it still has value for any analysis of both Japan and its often family-centred cinema. Such discourse has increased in recent years, examining several different facets of the family and in particular the fact that it has been undergoing a fundamental transformation as regards its typical formation and the functions of and attitudes to its constituent members. Joy Hendry (2003) regards families as part of a socio-political hegemony, noting that in Japan ‘the family has historically been the focus of considerable ideology’ (p. 25), whilst in a 2006 study entitled The Changing Japanese Family Marcus Rebick and Takenaka Ayumi note that ‘it is difficult to understand many of the other changes that are taking place in Japan without some sense of what is happening in families’ (p. 12). Yet others have contended that a crisis point has been reached with regard to families in Japan, and concomitantly that it has been (and is still) subject to wider problems such as an ageing population, shifting perceptions and expectations of gender roles and a general decline in the national birth rate that directly affect its composition and social stability.