Abstract Is the family in industrial Japan the same modern conjugal family created by the Industrial Revolution and the modern welfare state of the west? Is it also shifting toward a post‐modern family? This paper attempts to analyze the nature of family changes in Japan by using the “individualization model.” The Japanese family experienced the first wave of change in the first two decades after the world war II from the prewar patriarchal stem family to the modern conjugal family. It is undergoing the second wave of change since the mid 1980s which is characterized as the process of individualization or diversification of the modern family. Though we observe phenomenal changes in contemporary Japan, the family system based on distinct gender roles will not lose its ground unless the industry‐oriented family policy and family‐based welfare policy become more indiv