Cultural Divide in Views on Marriage and Love, Responses to Aging, and Family Relationship Reconstruction: A Comparative Study of Chinese and Japanese Social Dramas “The Mature Years” and “Restarting Life”

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_137How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Social drama; Cultural comparison; marriage and dating perspectives; Aging; Family relationships; “The Mature Years”; “Restarting Life”

Abstract

China and Japan, both part of the East Asian cultural sphere, share Confucian traditions. Yet under the impact of modernization, their family structures and cultural logics have diverged significantly. This paper analyzes the cultural differences in marriage, love, eldercare, and family values by comparing the 2023 Chinese drama “The Golden Years” with the Japanese drama “Restarting Life.” Against the shared backdrop of deep aging, “The Golden Years” portrays the tension within Chinese families between traditional ethics and modern individualistic demands, focusing on the struggle for material resources and the negotiation of support responsibilities. It reflects both the resilience and predicament of the blood-related family as the core unit. Meanwhile, “Restarting Life” reflects Japan’s cultural shift within a low-birthrate and low-desire society, where individuals partially replace traditional family functions by cultivating “post-affective” intimate friendships to seek spiritual fulfillment. Both works collectively mirror the pains of modern transformation in East Asian families, while their divergent value orientations profoundly reveal distinct paths in social structures and cultural psychologies between China and Japan.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Tianran Luo
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/03/26
TI  - Cultural Divide in Views on Marriage and Love, Responses to Aging, and Family Relationship Reconstruction: A Comparative Study of Chinese and Japanese Social Dramas “The Mature Years” and “Restarting Life”
BT  - Proceeding of 2025 8th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1260
EP  - 1266
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_137
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_137
ID  - Luo2026
ER  -