Exploring Social Backgrounds of Domestic Violence in Japan: Findings from Japanese General Social Survey 2008

This study aims to explore social backgrounds of domestic violence in adulthood toward female in Japan. Researches of domestic violence against female have pointed out that experiences of violence in their childhood are related to the opportunity of victimization of domestic violence in their adulthood. Based on this finding, this research will verify whether this phenomenon is observed as well as in Japan by national sample data, and analyze whether this is related to other factors such as social stratification of origin, home discipline types of father and so on. These analyses are based on the Japanese General Social Survey 2008 (N=2060). This data set includes three types of violence; punched or beaten experience in childhood, punched or beaten experience in adulthood, severely criticized or yelled experience in the past 5 years by their spouse or intimate partner. According to basic analyses, we found that female respondents experienced domestic violence much more than male. For example, 9.5% of female respondents reported that they experienced physical violence by intimate partner or spouse, while 0.5% of male respondents reported. Moreover, 11.8% of female and 3.6% of male reported that they had experience of verbal violence.  We also found that people who were victimized by violence in childhood also tended to experience domestic violence in adulthood, both physically and verbally. In addition, the types of home discipline from father were slightly related to likelihood of both abuse experiences. On the other hand, social stratification variables didn’t directly affect violence experience in adulthood. Overall the findings indicate that their status of origin is less significant when we predict the likelihood of domestic violence in adulthood. Other outcomes about the relationships between social stratification and disciplining will be discussed.