In Japan, there is no single answer to the question of whether cousins are treated as close family. Some cousins are extremely close, while others barely have any relationship at all. It varies enormously from family to family.
In families with strong ties between relatives, cousins may grow up seeing each other often and can become almost like brothers and sisters. If the extended family regularly gathers at the grandparents’ house, or if the parents get along well and visit each other frequently, the children naturally spend more time together too.
The opposite can also happen. If the parents rarely interact, the cousins may hardly see each other. Even if the cousins themselves get along well, they can become distant if their parents have a falling-out.
Age difference matters as well. Cousins who are close in age may grow up playing together, while cousins who are ten or twenty years apart may have very little contact from the beginning. Gender can sometimes affect how cousins interact as well, and physical distance matters too. Cousins who live nearby generally have more opportunities to meet than those who live far apart.
Even within the same family, the relationships may be completely different. Someone might stay in regular contact with one cousin while hardly ever seeing another.
So in Japan, you cannot assume that cousins are “like immediate family,” but you also cannot assume that they are distant. They may all be treated as relatives at weddings or funerals, while their everyday emotional closeness can be completely different.
If a Japanese person says, “my cousin,” that phrase alone tells you very little about how close they actually are. You would need to know whether they grew up together, still keep in touch, or have not seen each other for years.
How close cousins actually are can vary greatly depending on the relationship between their parents, their ages, where they live, how much time they spent together growing up, and many other factors.
