JAPAN GLOBAL AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

1
JAPAN - GLOBAL AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
2

• Globalization (production, communications,
  finance)
• De-territorialisation national space
• compression of the world and the intensification
  of consciousness of the world as a whole (Roland
  Robertson
• Frederic Jameson an immense enlargement of world
  communication and a world market

3

• Fragmentation
• Flows
• Hybridity
• Flows of capital, commodities, signs, labour
• Cultural hybridity (creolization of culture)
• Economic transformation, immigrants
• Change in role of state
• How has globalization impacted Japan, national
  space, community, national identity
• diasporic space Kang Sang Jung

4

• Bubble economy
• 1993 LDP (since 1955) replaced by coalition of 7
  smaller parties
• 1995 Kobe earthquake
• (NGOs)
• Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attacks, Tokyo subway
  system
• Scandals, corruption

5

• Sociological changes
• Family,
• Minorities, gaijin (foreigners) immigrants
• Homelessness
• Gender relations
• Consumption
• individual-society

6

• Conventional category of social analysis
• Ie household system
• Uchi-soto, omote-ura, tatemae-honne
• situational, context-specific
• Amae
• Globalization
• Miyanaga creative individualism
• Consumption/production

7

• Globalization
• Unemployment 4.8 (15 for 15-24 year olds)
• Homelessness
• Yoseba
• Elderly men
• NGOs?

8

• Immigrants
• Koreans in Japan 638,000 ( 554,000 permanent
  residents)
• 3 million foreigners enter Japan every year
• 100,000-300,000 illegal overstayers
• Revised Immigration Act 1990 3rd generation
  Nikkeijin (S American Japanese descendants)
  main challenge of unskilled workers

9

• Chinese, S. American labor
• Brazilian, Peruvians, Filipinos, newcomer
  foreigners
• Asian brides rural Japan
• Assimilation
• Education, schools
• Neighbourhoods
• 270,000 overstayers no medical coverage

10

• NPOs/NGO
• Advocate for rights of foreigners
• Kawasaki elections, municipal government
• Japanese youth activism
• Civil society development
• Negotiate new identities

11
Gender
12

• Nihonjinron theory of Japanese uniqueness
• Doi Takeos Amae no kozo (The Anatomy of
  Dependence)
• Kawai Hayaos Bosei shakai Nihon no byori
  (Psychiatry of the mother dominated society).

13

• Oriental men feminized (Orientalism)
• Japanese women doubly feminized
• Japanese men have been gradually deprived of
  their masculinity since the samurai were
  disarmed
• Japanese economci orgnaization feminization of
  men
• Bubble economy 1990s de-stabilization of
  Japanese masculine identity

14

• Fathers lose jobs
• Crisis in male centered corporate world.
• Maternal society? Moetherhood and maternal love
  /nation-state
• Reproductive function, home/ national goal of
  technological modernization
• Domesticity/consumption mai homu shugi ideology
  of home ownership
• Mass consumer society

15

• Idealization of US middle class life style
• My-home/wokd gender divsions of labor
• Home professional wives modern and rational
  home mmnagement, children, education