What Japan's Youth are Really Like

One thing I've noticed when discussing Japan-related issues online is that not a few commenters seem to be woefully unaware of the realities of ordinary life and youth culture beyond the usual clichés about anime, cosplay and other relatively marginal pursuits beloved by Western geeks; either that, or its recycled 1980s nonsense about cram schools preparing fresh material for "Japan Inc." and hysterical blather about a mythical wave of ultranationalism sweeping the young, and supposedly attested to by Kenkanryu. The reality is that today's Japanese youth are even further removed from such attitudes than their American counterparts*, let alone their peers in Korea and China, and this clip about one youth subculture - that of the Shibuya "gyaru" - gives a truer picture of how things really stand.

The "gyaru" para-para culture is actually the focus of an amusingly silly TV show currently on the air in Japan right now.

There's a reason why I smirk whenever I hear some ignorant person or other going off about how young Japanese are raging with nationalistic fervor when they aren't keeling over from their studies, as if we were still in the 1930s: fighting and dying for the sake of "the nation" or anything else is just about the last thing on their hedonistic minds, and giving up their lives for the sake of some company isn't exactly high on their list of priorities either, a reality no LDP tinkering with educational policy is likely to change. You have to look to mainland Asia to find lots of angry youths so hopped up on nationalism that they seem more than ready to serve as cannon fodder in the military adventures of power-hungry old men.

*Summary: in a four country poll involving America, China, Japan and Korea, Japanese high school students came dead last in the emphasis they placed on academic achievement, while "being the most popular person in school" came first in their list of priorities; their chief expressed interests lay in consuming popular culture (TV dramas, manga), chatting on their mobile phones and fashion/shopping, in that order.

PS: Following is an interesting passage from a 2005 article on Japanese patriotism in Australia's "The Age."

Trying to estimate the national mood, Japan's Cabinet Office has conducted huge surveys - some involving 20,000 respondents - on national pride almost every year since 1969.

Strangely, the number of people who say that they "love the state more than others (do)" was about 14 per cent during the first survey in 1969 and remains just as tepid in the most recent one, conducted this year.

The following passage also confirms what I've said here:

The Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living says boys no longer dream of becoming salarymen like their fathers, and that there is no "guaranteed path to contentment".

PPS: Compare and contrast the essentially unchallenged nationalist indoctrination under discussion in this article (see the astute comments here) with the mild yet stoutly contested changes proposed in this piece, and then tell me which society seems to be in the grip of ultranationalism; and yet, to read most mainstream coverage in the West, one would think the reality were the other way around. Where East Asia is concerned, far too many people seem obsessed with retreading World War II, as if chauvinistic aggression were a genetically determined trait, and national cultures incapable of changing.

Comments

[Scott Wickstein]

That's better then them dreaming of being civil servants though!

[Chuckles]

It is not unrealistic to conclude that Japan has more to fear from Korea and China than vice versa.
Reports such as this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/world/asia/30japan.html

only put it in much graver perspective; as well as the lessons drawn from much of Japanese youth culture, which as you have pointed out, is crazily hedonistic. Tho' I would have thought that the whole gyaru subculture has received a fair amount of exposure in the West - from books, magazines etc. What fuels the anti Japanese sentiment we are witnessing is an unhealthy lust for revenge, and the usual desire of human beings to massage their self esteem by inventing enemies when there are none.
My greatest concern with respect to Japan is one of equilibrum. I feel, that the culture of the Youth generation in Japan today is so surreal that it cannot possible continue to exist - and that surely enough, the pendulum might begin very soon to swing the other way, as opportunists from the right decide to start filling the vacuums in the social consciousness. I dont think contemporary Japanese youth culture is healthy - and my sample population here consists of the larger Japanese cities: I dont think this jejunity can continue for much too long.

All in all, I think Japanese policy makers recognize the problems, and the saner ones recognize the dangers they face from within and without: And while setting up Eton like boarding schools might make a slight difference; what Japan needs to morph it into the ultranationalist Tojoesque demon many like to portray it as, what Japan needs is a 9/11^9/11 paradigm shift - something the unthinking Koreans and Chinese might very well end up producing if they dont put a lid on the whining ASAP. I dont doubt that fringe elements in Japan know this and actually want to *bait* China and Korea into providing their deus ex machina - but if wisdom exists in Far East Asia at all, everybody is just going to cool down, cool off, sip some soju, sake, du kang or whatever and realize that far greater threats face the region than Dokdo or Yasukuni, viz:

http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501040607-644220,00.html

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200410/kt2004101215551210230.htm

http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2047.html

[Abiola]

Looking for "wisdom" in a Chinese leadership which thinks it can indefinitely fend of challenges to its power through "patriotic education" seems a lost cause to me; as for Korea, I don't see that the GNP is really that much more sensible where Japan is concerned - Park Guen-hye might well feel pushed to keep the disputes boiling to fend off criticism about her father's Japanese ties - though one hopes the Korean right's greater appreciation for the value of the country's ties to America will keep this within certain limits.