The Sohma Family: The “Ie” System
The “ie system” is a traditional family and household system of Japan that appears to be a key inspiration in developing the uniqueness and complexities of the Sohma family in Fruits Basket.
If you have ever wondered how the Sohma are able to do and get away with so many things, with no one outside or within the family trying to stop it or alert authorities, you are right to notice that its highly unorthodox - but the narrative is not without its own explanation and internal reasoning as to why. That explanation lies in large part in the “ie system” and understanding that the Sohma are not simply a family - they are a specific type of family, somehow existing in near perfect form in a world where they are not supposed to exist at all. It is that very premise that makes up the foundation of the plot of Fruits Basket.
Families in Modern Day Japan
So, why is the “ie system” important to understanding the Sohma family? Firstly, we must understand that the Sohma do not resemble a normal Japanese family for the time in which the story takes place. Some readers unfamiliar with contemporary Japanese culture might take for granted the nature of their existence, but for a family that resembles anything like theirs to exist in late 90s - early 2000s Tokyo, Japan would be incredibly unusual.
The story itself highlights this, when Tohru first goes to visit the Sohma’s main estate in chapter 10 after Hatori has requested for her to come speak with him. Tohru is surprised by a number of things, including the grandeur of the estate, its size once she’s inside, Momiji using the terms “inside” and “outside” to talk about the family, when he explains that the estate is in fact even bigger than she initially realized, and when he tells her the family has over 150 living members.
The setup of the Sohma family is something unique and essential to the world building of Fruits Basket and its overall story. It cannot be taken at face value that Tohru has found herself entangled with a family or even simply a large and wealthy family.
As Hatori comments upon Tohru’s utter shock at everything Momiji has said, the family isn’t “exactly common” and understanding that is a key factor in understanding the family overall. In fact, when taken altogether in reference to the real world, Hatori’s comment is an understatement.
At the time Fruits Basket was being written (20 years ago), nuclear families had already been the standard in Japan for several decades. Some would argue nuclear families had been the standard in Japan for even longer than that, but regardless, the “ie system” was officially abolished following World War II and as its systems and social customs declined, nuclear families spiked. The single family home, consisting of parents and their children, had become the norm.
Grandparents living with their grown children was still somewhat typical but it was not under the same sort of strict patrilineal scheme as the traditional “ie”. It was more likely that grown children who had moved out and started their own families would move back in with their aging parents in order to take care of them (think Tohru’s grandpa and her other relatives) rather than living with the parent throughout their life. Grown children leaving their parents’ home to start their own family, as well as their own family register, was the new norm.
The “ie” existing in the form of a large extended family system made up of a main household and branch households (a dozoku) would be especially unusual. Already in the mid-1900s, when some extended studies were conducted on existing dozoku, they were understood as dying out and only found in rare instances in very isolated areas, not even existing in their ‘pure’ form.
While much research has been done on how the “ie system” has had a lasting social impact and persisted in small ways and new forms, its literal formation and existence as it shows itself in the Sohma family was already long gone. In the same way, knowledge of its system would also be uncommon among the average Japanese person, as can be seen in Fruits Basket through Tohru’s shock and awe at her introduction to the ins and outs of the family.
Inheritance & a Family Head
Aside from the basic formation of the family as an “ie” versus a nuclear family, the legal functions of the “ie system” had been abolished, such as the authority of the Head of the Family and primogeniture inheritance, and its related social customs had largely faded from practice and societal consciousness. Due to the family register system and other legal processes and documents it would be easy to discover if a family was still functioning like an “ie system” in illegal ways - for example, if they were consolidating property and power through a single line of inheritance and by “buying in” branch households.
This is probably why Takaya stated in an interview that she pretends “family registers and whatnot” don’t exist in the world of Fruits Basket. Relatedly, actions like the Sohma handling children in the family who had been abandoned by their parents (Kyo, Isuzu) by having them taken in by whatever other family members were willing are the kind of matters that outside governing bodies would become involved with in real world, modern day Japan, but that the “ie”/family might have had sole authority to determine in the days before.
Fruits Basket seems to be operating in a world where the legal system of the “ie” is still the law but culturally most families and general societal understanding have moved beyond it, given Tohru’s surprise and the makeup of most of the families in the story.
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