Caught Between Culture, Society, and Globalization: Youth Marginalization in Post‐industrial Japan

Abstract

In this article, we review the controversies regarding how representative Japanese psychological patterns are of an interdependent orientation and discuss understanding these controversies in the context of seeing Japanese youth as being marginalized in their own society. We review specific studies on shifting values and motivational patterns at the individual level and incorporate a sociological perspective to understand the causes of these patterns at the social-structural level. We argue that traditional cultural practices are maintained to protect the senior elites of Japan at a cost of increasing the rift between culture, society, and post-industrial trends. The unsustainability of this rift then ends up asymmetrically marginalizing Japanese youth who bear the brunt of the cost of institutional resistance to globalization pressures. Therefore, the ''demotivation'' and psychological distancing from interdependent norms among marginalized Japanese youth are not the causes of marginalization, but rather, are an outcome of it. Thus, we argue that psychology of globalization and the psychology of marginalization can go hand-in-hand, especially for societies with dominant institutions that are interdependent, relatively inflexible, seniority-based, and are entering a post-industrial economy due to globalization demands.

To Conform or to Maintain Self-Consistency?HikikomoriRisk in Japan and the Deviation From Seeking Harmony

“…Recently, we Norasakkunkit, Uchida, & Toivonen, 2012; have provided some evidence and theoretical grounds for the argument that hikikomori is part of a larger set of youth problems that stem from a misalignment between mainstream Japanese institutional practices and postindustrial pressures to make structural and ideological changes so that Japan can become more competitive in the global marketplace. Put more simply, hikikomori and other recent social problems in Japan (i.e., underemployment of youth, decreasing population size, women's increasing reluctance to get married and/or have children, etc.)…”

“…It is an affliction that mostly affects young Japanese men (Koyama et al, 2010), although there are some women and older people who suffer from this syndrome as well. Currently, the lifetime prevalence rate of hikikomori is about 4.6% of Japanese youth ages 15-34 who suffer, which is estimated to be more than 1.2 million young individuals (Norasakkunkit, Uchida, & Toivonen, 2012). The afflicted have been known to shut themselves in from six months to even decades at a time (Zielenziger, 2006).…”

Living in the tide of change: explaining Japanese subjective health from the socio-demographic change

“…We tested reliability and validity using criteria that are both available at the city level. Because the change after 1990s should have affected both urban and rural regions during this special period of economic disaster and globalization (Norasakkunkit et al, 2012 ), we expected change in both urban and rural prefectures.…”

“…After the economic crisis known as the collapse of the bubble economy , 1 Japan has witnessed increasing societal problems, and this has led to investigations on the relationship between culture change and health (Norasakkunkit et al, 2012 ). In this study, we take the perspective that Japanese culture, especially its socio-demographic context is becoming more non-traditional (Hamamura, 2012 ), and the change in context from 1990 to 2010—the two decades of extremely low rate of new employment opportunities, spread of new liberalism, and market globalization (Zielenziger, 2006 )—would negatively explain the health of Japanese adults.…”

“… Today, countries around the world are caught in the tide of change toward Gesellshaft , or individualistic socio-demographic condition. Recent investigations in Japan have suggested negative impacts of change on emotional and motivational aspects of the Japanese self (Norasakkunkit et al, 2012 ; Ogihara and Uchida, 2014 ). Building on previous findings, in Study 1, we measured socio-demographic change toward individualistic societal condition during 1990–2010—two decades marked by great economic recession—at the levels of prefecture and city using archival data.…”