Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Representations of young people and of Japanese new religions 2
Recent research has shown how young people may be opting out of hier-
archical social structures to cope with or even possibly change traditional
forms of Japanese social organisation (Martinez 1998; Henshall 1999; Das-
gupta 2000; Sakurai 2004; Mathews and White 2004; Kingston 2004). Such
studies have introduced heterogeneity into a homogenised representation of
Japanese social life. Yet, another homogenising picture also has emerged in
which Japanese youth
is popular cultural consumption is seen to uproot or
melt down attachments to traditional social power structures of the family
and lifetime employment. Some young people have been found to retreat into
their own social networks and private mediated spaces to fend off
'
an unde-
sirable adult world (Ackerman 2004). Miller (2004) describes how teenagers
and young people as a whole use new bodily transformations to create zones
of freedom that adults cannot control. McVeigh (1998, 2004) argues, as do
Kotani and Ackerman, that young people have little choice but to reproduce
the Japanese adult social order, and that actual resistance is not forthcoming. On
the other hand, others (Sakurai 2004; White 2004) have found that although
young people do not engage in the community in the way that their parents
did, they nevertheless have their own community networks, which may re
ect
a more cosmopolitan attitude and an openness to the world that di
ers from
their parents
generation. Judging from such studies, a variety of social trends
and experiences among young people is taking place. Still, young people have been
found to be typically politically passive in the face of overwhelming social
forces (Kotani 2004), showing little interest in formal political organisations.
As such, they tend to constitute a large part of the infamous mut - has - ,or
una
'
liated voters (Hirata 2002) who may or may not be motivated to vote
come election time, but who once they vote in signi
cant numbers can play a
role in election outcomes, as seen in the 2009 Lower House election (discussed
in Chapter 5 ) . The voting rate among 20
40%
since it fell below the 50% line in the 1993 House of Representatives election,
which incidentally saw the
-
29 year olds has been between 30%
-
first opposition-led government take power. It rose
again, however, in 2009, when roughly 50%
liated voters chose the
main opposition party, which was ushered into an historic victory while only
roughly 16%
-
60% of una
23% voted for the LDP.
In recent decades the mass media have depicted a wealth of social problems
among young people, such as the unruliness of elementary school children
resulting in gakky - h - kai, or classroom collapse (see Kobayashi 2001). Much
has been made of a phenomenon referred to as
-
(parasaito
shinguru), where thirty-somethings still live with their parents (see Nakano
and Wagatsuma 2004). Another example is fut - k - (school-refusal syndrome),
and hikikomori (shut-in syndrome), in which young people of usually junior
high school age refuse to go to school, or young people in their late teens or
early twenties shut themselves into their rooms and refuse to come out (see
Shiokura 1999; Ky - toku 2001). Such issues have been deplored widely by the
'
parasite singles
'
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search