【１】魏志倭人伝によると、当時、海をわたって中国と交通する際に、必ず持衰と称する男を一人伴っていたという。この男は、航海中決して頭を梳（くしけず）らず、のみ、しらみを取らず、衣服を洗わず、肉を食わず、婦人に近づかず、服喪中のひとのようであった。【２】無事に航海が終わって港に着けば数々の財物を与えられたが、暴風に会ったりして難破すると直ちに殺されてしまった。こういう役割の男を持衰といったのである。記録に残されているところは以上の通りである。【３】持衰とよばれるこの男はどうやら一種のシャーマンであって、航海の安全を祈ったものであろう。シャーマンというものは、成功してはじめて評価されるもので、失敗すればたちどころに殺されてしまう。殺されることが呪力の持続の保証でもあったわけである。
　【４】ところで、いかに呪力を持ったシャーマンとはいえ、航海中に一定の禁忌を守りさえすれば、船が目的地に安着するというのはどういうことなのであろうか。それは時の持続、出発地の時間が目的地まで持続すること、そういう流れない時のシンボルなのではなかったろうか。【５】】あるいは、そういう時の演劇的表現が持衰だったといってもよい。そして、そういった場合には、演劇的表現を生む以前のある時期には、流れない時のリアリティーがすべての人々に実感されていたに違いないのである。
　【６】流れない時、時間をこえた時、そういう時はたしかにあった。創造というのは、そういう時に出逢うことである。竜宮城の浦島太郎はこういう時を日常の時として不老不死であったが、故郷に帰って玉手箱を開けたとたんに、一挙に時間が流れ去ったのであった。【７】山川の流れにも、淀むときがあり、早瀬となって走るときがある。表層の水は白く泡立って流れていても、深層の水は静かにたたえている。そういうことがある。時間も同じことである。
　時について考えるには、時をまずその原初の意味においてとらえ直す必要がある。【８】そうすると、時は『もの』である。手でつかまえることのできる『もの』、眼で見、耳で聞くことのできる『もの』である。時はタンジブルなものである。桜の花の咲く時、梅の実の黄ばむ時である。そういう時に逢う時、それが時である。古池∵や蛙とびこむバシャッという音、それが時である。【９】『もの』を離れて時はない。
　かつて北部ラオスの村で調査していたときのことである。毎日、村の家々を訪ねて家族のあり方を聞いてまわっていた。ラオ語がよくできなかったから、簡単な質問ですむ調査を手始めにえらんだのである。【０】「あなたは今年、何歳ですか」「あなたの奥さんはどの村で生まれましたか」「長男の名前は……、年齢は……」といった質問を繰り返していた。
　ところが、村びとは子供の年齢をよく知らない。「一番下の子は何という名前でしたか」「サオ・ボーアです」「サオ・ボーアは何歳ですか」「サアー、お前、サオ・ボーアは幾つだったかナー」と傍らの奥さんに聞く始末である。しかし、それでもわからない。そうすると遊んでいた子供を呼びもどす。「先生、サオ・ボーアはこの子ですよ。何歳だと思いますか」
　私はびっくりしてしまう。何歳と思うかと私に聞かれてもどうしようもない。親が娘の年齢を知らないのだから、私が知るはずはないではないか。そう思った。文化の低いところは困ったものだ。そう思ったこともある。しかし、その後、考え直してみると、問われている本人を呼びにやって質問者の眼の前に連れてきたのである。本人が私の前に立っているのである。これほど確かなことがあろうか。（中略）
　時は、あるいは時間は、われわれの人生がその上に展開する座標ではない。最近、宇宙船地球号というイメージが普及している。そういうイメージからすると、この地球に住む約三十八億の人間がそれぞれ腕に腕時計をはめて宇宙空間をただよっているような気分になるが、実はそんなことはない。日本の時間とボルネオの時間とは違うし、現代の時間と古代の時間はちがう。私の時とあなたの時はちがう。時間は決して一つになってはいない。

There are some sociologists who claim that a strict division of household tasks between husband and wife is breaking down in western society. It is argued that the family structure is developing in such a way that women's and men's roles are becoming more 'symmetrical'. More women are working outside the home in addition to performing their traditional family roles, and men are increasing their involvement in the family, while maintaining their work commitments. This symmetrical family form is regarded as the most usual mode of family organization for the future. It implies a movement towards a balance between the involvement of husband and wife in the two spheres of domestic and paid work.
Such a view is now the common one in the current picture of family life as shown in the mass media. This picture is based on an interpretation of two particular socio-economic trends. Firstly, it is said that, since the number of women doing paid work has increased greatly, some sharing of household tasks is now quite common. Secondly, the growth in household technology is thought to have removed the dull labour from female domestic work, saved a great deal of time in its performance and rendered most tasks so simple that they can be undertaken by any household member. Such an account also appears to set the conditions for a symmetrical family form and the gradual breakdown of a domestic division of labour based on sex.
But although this view has been widely accepted, a vast amount of concrete evidence suggests otherwise. This evidence is of two kinds: American time-budget surveys, and sociological surveys and studies of housework and the housewife which are mainly British in origin.
In recent years a number of time-budget studies have measured time spent on housework and other activities such as paid work and leisure. Such research generally involves either asking those interviewed to record their activities for particular time intervals over a number of days, or having them keep diaries recording the number and nature of tasks performed and the amount of time spent on each. The findings are remarkably consistent.
One study, for example, completed in the late 1960's, shows that women who have no employment outside the home work an average of fifty-seven hours per week on such activities as preparing and clearing up after meals, washing, cleaning and tidying the house, taking care of children and other family members and shopping. More recent research shows women spending similar amounts of time on domestic tasks, to the extent that if it was paid employment it would certainly be regarded as full-time work.
For women employed outside the home, it appears that the more waged work they do, the fewer hours they spend on housework but the longer their overall work week. It has been reported that women who are in paid employment for more than thirty hours per week work a total of seventy-six hours in all, including an average of thirty-three hours spent on housework. Yet those husbands whose wives have the longest work weeks, have the shortest work weeks themselves. It appears that the husbands of wives in waged work do not spend any more time on housework than those with full-time housewives. This apparent lack of interest on the part of husbands in women's waged work is confirmed by other research, including a study of 3,500 couples in the United States. Wives employed outside the home worked many more hours every day than either their husbands or full-time housewives. They also spent about double their weekday time for housework doing domestic jobs on their days off, whereas husbands, and even full-time housewives, had the weekend for increased leisure.
This burden increases very much when there are very young children, or many children, in the family. In either case the wife's work week expands to meet the needs of the family. Research shows that in families with a child under one year old, the wife fully devoted to her housework spends nearly seventy hours a week in housework; nearly thirty hours of this is spent in child care. The typical husband spends five hours a week on this task, but reduces his time spent on other work around the house, such as home repairs, decorating and cleaning the outside of windows, so that his total domestic commitment does not increase. When the wife is employed outside the home for fifteen or more hours a week, the average husband spends two hours more per week on child care, increasing his total household labour to twenty hours. His wife spends over fifty hours on housework, indicating that the amount of time spent on housework by the employed woman increases greatly with the presence of young children.
In addition, researchers do not appear to regard the housework or childcare activities of husbands as particularly significant. They point out that men are more likely to be occupied ill this way after dinner. At this time child care typically consists of playing with and talking to children, which is not particularly hard. Moreover, while husbands are occupied in this way, their wives are tied up with the less-than-exciting after-dinner jobs. When men are involved with other domestic tasks it is frequently because their wives have to leave for employment after dinner and so are not themselves available to perform them.
Thus the activities of husbands are a form of back-up, or reserve labour, for a series of tasks which remain mainly the women's responsibility. Most married women still spend a considerable part of every day performing the necessary and most time-consuming work in the household. It is also noteworthy that the work week of domestic labourers is longer than that of the average person in the labour-force. Thus, it is clearly demonstrated that although waged women do less housework than unwaged women, this has little effect on the distribution of particular tasks within the home. Domestic labour is still very strictly separated along sex lines and this division appears to be constant across regions and nations. Time-budget data indicate that there has been no significant change in the sexual division of labour within the household.
One significant finding suggests that in the nineteenth century there was an alteration in the content, although not in the amount, of housework performed. Although technological changes were slower in reaching the home than the work-place, they did begin to enter the richer homes towards the end of the nineteenth century. However, major technological developments did not affect the households of most of the population until shortly after World War I. The significance of these developments cannot be neglected. As a certain sociologist says, 'Three things dramatically reduced dirty, heavy work for the housewife: gas and electricity for cooking, heating, and lighting; indoor running water; and the washing machine.' The use of household technology as seen in refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and freezers, and also convenience foods have also made activities such as cooking and cleaning easier. This has led one researcher to suggest that technological changes in the home have been equal to, and as important as, those of the Industrial Revolution.
Thus in the 1920's a large proportion of a housewife's time would have been spent in heavy routine and boring jobs such as fetching, hand-washing and cleaning. Today, time is more likely to be spent in arranging activities, particularly child care and planning shopping expeditions. The continuing emphasis on the physical, moral and emotional stability of childhood as a significant part of mothering has obviously influenced the amount of time women spend on the bringing up of children. But despite the increased availability of household technology, the purchase of household equipment does not necessarily make woman's domestic role easier. Rather, it is suggested that the more technology present in a household, the more time spent in getting it, and its use and maintenance. For example, food mixers encourage the preparation of more ambitious meals, and washing machines, together with better levels of tidiness, mean that more washing is carried out more often. Indeed, Parkinson's Law seems to operate, keeping women's housework at a constant level despite improvements in household technology. The situation appears to have changed very little over the last eighty years or so, since the amount of time devoted by full-time housewives to housework has remained remarkably stable during this time. Moreover, household technology has been developed on an individual and family basis, thus increasing the particular nature of the domestic work which women perform. Despite the many developments made in this area, housework remains unsystematic and is performed in isolated, relatively inefficient units. For all these reasons it has been argued that instead of challenging the sexual division of labour within the home, modern technology has tended to support, and even strengthen, the traditional distribution of domestic roles.
symmetrical対称の time-budget生活時間の配分 work week週労働時間
Parkinson's Law イギリスの政治・経済学者パーキンソンが「仕事は使える時間いっぱいまでのびる」という前提から諷刺的に導いた経験則