Hiromasa's Blog

The Topic of Sexuality

2006-12-24T23:20:00.000-08:00

The largest difference in sexuality between Japan and the United States would be its openness, as far as I see. As the White's book 'The Matelial Child' describes, Japanese society 'compartmentalizes' the fields of life such as work, family, friends, love, and sex and so on. On the other hand, in American society, these activities are connected(or are not separated) with each other. There is an example which indicates that difference of two societies; the ex-president of the United States Clinton was once accused about his private love life to be said that it is a problem that the president leads such a life. This is an example of wall-lessness between a person's private life and his work life. In contrast in Japan, when a politician who once left a party re-joined the party and at the same time she had a divorce problem , she declared her private life was nothing to do with her work so there was no problem. This reasoning can be accepted in Japanese society. However, when considering the reason of this difference of two society, one contradiction arises that even though American society is based on the religion of Christ and Japanese society is not that penetrated by a religion, the people open to sexuality are American. In my opinion, Japanese are fundamentally or historically more shy than American. One of the reason why there are a lot of vending machines of condom in Japan and there is none in the U.S. might be Japanese hesitate to buy one from a person because they are afraid of being known that they are going to have sex. Both the extreme openness and openlessness of sexuality would have some problems. Because of openness, people would have sex more casually and abortion rate would become high, while openlessness prevents the people from learning appropriate knowledge of sexuality.

The Topic of Friendship

2006-12-14T06:30:00.000-08:00

I was pretty surprised when I learned some differences in the friendship between the U.S. and Japan. It is from my university period when I have some relations with the foreiners, so I am not sure these differences are true of their jounior high or high school period, but in general I have an impression that the students from the U.S. tend to act much more independently than those from Japan. As a characteristic of Japanese there is 'groupism', while 'individualism' is a characteristic of Americans. Their characteristics appear in various situations. For example, many Japanese hesitate to have lunch by themselves, so they always try to join or make a friend or friends join to eat lunch toghether. The reasons are often that they prove their strong friendship by having lunch toghether, and they avoid being considered as strange people by showing their friends to the people around them. In Japan, it is often the case that people have friends not because they like their friends but in order to maintain the status of themselves. On the other hand, as far as I see, Americans' friendship is more purely rooted in comfortableness when they are toghether, so they play toghether on the weekend but they do not always be toghether like lunch time. Secondly, friendship of Japanese is much less flexible than that of Americans. Japanese teens organize a number of groups in a class, and usually one student belong to one group. Altough it is true of American class, in Japan group members are quite unchangeable and it is rather difficult to make friends with the people in different group. Third, paticularly among girls, the members of the same group tend to wear same cloths or accessary. I am not sure whether the people who have the same taste gather or the people who gathered come to have the same taste, but in my opinion they indentify their friends by wearing the same clothes.

The Topic of Materialism

2006-11-30T19:28:00.000-08:00

Materialism penetrates deeply and widely the Japanese society, especially among teens’ daily lives. Through out the chapter 5 ‘Material Child’, White describes many ways in which the marketing industry tries to shape trends and to influence teenagers to buy things. There are some specific examples of this in Japanese daily life: some fashion magazines declair the phrases which encourage, rather force the readers to buy the specific stuffs in the way like 'The hottest color of this year gonna be green!' or ' Tight geens are not here to stay any more!'. Another example is that some fashion industries 'make up' the symbol character who is a kind of fashion leader and try to make teens buy the same things as that person.
When you get on a train, you will surely find some advertisement of magazines, and the ads inculde the catch phrase like 'This year's hottest color!' or 'This is out of date, and that is here to stay!' which encourage the market, that is, teens to buy constantly buy new products. Teens are tend to accept that kind of propaganda, but these are completely arbitrary and based on the intention of industries to promote the selling of new product. Japanses magazines also often say that 'That is not here to stay.' or 'This is out of date.' These phrases are crucially influencial because there is the Japanese trait that they extremely care the reputation from others. In order not to be said that their fashions are out of date, Japansese teens try to keep purchasing new comodities.
Another way of shaping trends is to make up the fashion leader. In Japanese society new fashion leader appears on a regular basis. Suddenly some fashion models or musicians come to be featured on Television that they are now really pupular among teenagers. Most of the case these fads are made by PR companies intentionally, but mass medias report them as if they came to be popular among the fashionable teens. Therefore, audiences who do not know the person come to pay attention to the person, though often they do not think the person is cool by themselves. The featured person time after time makes a new fad item. That is how the industry shape trends.
These strategies are in my opinion problem because teens often do not use their taste to decide what is cool but they use the information around them which is made up intentionally by some industries. In addtion that they are Japanese, teens care their reputation from others, so this way is mean though absolutely effective.

The Topic of School

2006-11-09T22:52:00.000-08:00

I went schools only in Japan, so I do not know how unique the schools in Japan are, but it is often said that Japanese education puts emphasis on strict discipline and the school rules are sometimes not acceptable for Americans where the concept of freedom is dominant.
I have rarely thought the rules are insane and tried to resister them, because these rules were valid without any doubts. However, as discussing these with the people from America, I was totally astonished to learn the differences between Japanese schools and American schools, and I came to think some of these were unreasonable. In my elementary school teacher would offer, rather, force the students to eat everything during the lunch time. Some Americans might think it is wrong, but personally I think it was effective for the students to treat foods importantly and try anything. In my junior high school and high school, dying hair was prohibited, and if you did you would be shaved your hair. Focusing on the only this rule, it is ridiculous and irrational, but Japanese schools try to control every student and not to let a person outstanding and exceptional being afraid that it lead to the corruption. Other than that, there are many rules such as ‘Do not pierce your ears.’, ‘Your shoes must be totally white.’, or ‘You have to carry the white uncool bag which the school assigned.’.
In my opinion, there is a fundamental difference between Japan and America. In America the important thing is to foster each student’s identity. However, Japanese education system trys to prevent the students from being distinctive and conspicuous. It causes the ironical influence on the society that there are so many unreasonable rules in Japan that people ignore even the crucial rules because they consider them as meaningless rules.

The Topic of Family

2006-11-09T16:20:00.000-08:00

There are a number of and large differences between Japanese families and families in the U.S. in the relationship between parents and children, and roles of each member of the family.
When considering the relationship between parents and children in typical Japanese family, first thing I think of is that there is a clear interval between parents and children, that is, parents have a kind of authority over their children, and they are not like friends. For example, many parents discipline their children to talk neatly, and that way of talk is quite different from that with children’s friends. It can often happen in a lot of family that children greet their parents with ‘Keigo’ like ‘Ohayougozaimasu’ , while just ‘Ohayo’ is used among friends. It can lead to the deficiency of communication in the family because it makes a mental wall between parents and children and obviously makes it difficult to express and consult worries or troubles.
Secondly, another difference between Japanese families and American families is their roles in the family. In the typical Japanese family, father usually does not do housekeeping tasks like cooking, washing and cleaning. The person who does these tasks is usually mother, and most of the cases she does not complain about the situation. The interesting thing is that it also happens in the family in which both the father and the mother work. In reality, though my father and mother work during the daytime, after the work my father usually does not do housekeeping tasks and my mother does almost all housekeeping tasks. Of course, their children including me should help her to do these tasks.
These characteristics of Japanese family might not be acceptable for Americans because it is not reasonable in a sense. It would be more comfortable if the parents were more like friends for their children, and it would be fair if house keeping tasks were assigned to each member of the family equally. However, I do not believe that these characteristics have been totally harmful and should be changed immediately. Parents have disciplined their children to behave and respect others through teaching them to behave and respect their parents, and mothers have tried to make an environment where their husbands who worked all day could relax after the hard work. Modern Japanese society is encountering the change, and these customs need to be reconsidered.

Hello!

2006-10-19T20:41:00.000-07:00

Hi. I am Hiromasa, from Tokyo, Japan.

I am a first year student of Waseda University,
and studying in the school of international liberal studies.
Though I don't have a major yet, I am strongly interested in film and business.
So I mainly focus on these study courses in the University.

I was born in Tokyo and have lived in Tokyo for 18 years,
and I have never been to a foreigh country, even as a trip.
Therefore I am very curious about foreigh cultures
including their language, lifestyle and sense of value.

I would be glad if I can learn many things about foreign culture and help someone
to know about Japan through blogs!