is a structure played out in modern times by the company and the family (employee, wife, and children) is not a household, in the Japanese sense, but merely a family.

In this modern context, the employee’s family, which normally comprises the employee himself, his wife and children, is a unit which can no longer be conceived as an ie, but simply a family. The unit is comparable to the family of a servant or clerk who worked in the master’s ie, the managing body of the pre-modern enterprise. The role of the ie institution as the distinguished unit in society in premodern times is now played by the company. This social group consciousness symbolized in the concept of the ie, of being one unit within a frame, has been achievable at any time, has been promoted by slogans and justified in the traditional morality.

ie, n.Definitions

ie