Can education change Japan's 'depressed' generation?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32013613

by druml • 11 years ago

73 30 11 years ago

bbc.co.uk

mikekchar3• 11 years ago

Having worked as a teacher in Japan for 5 years, I really take odds with this story. Japan is really, really different from the west. Take the survey about being happy with yourself -- I'm actually surprised that half the Japanese people surveyed actually said they were. It doesn't mean that Japanese youth are depressed. You just don't say that you are happy with yourself because it can limit your development, it makes you look vain, etc, etc.

It frustrates me to no end because this lack of understanding perpetuates really hurtful stereotypes. Things are not perfect here, of course, but this reporting is absolutely off the mark. Japanese people are no more soulless, depressed automatons than Americans are psychopathic mass murderers.

Please don't measure cultures using a yardstick from your own culture. Do not extrapolate from peculiar societal problems into thinking that there is an overall systemic failure. Different cultures have different problems and different ways of dealing with them. This kind of "journalism" is voyeuristic at best and hate mongering at worst.

WhitneyLand• 11 years ago

Thank you for posting because I was wondering how much of it is generally accepted vs a teased out hypothesis by one author.

I didn't see it as voyeuristic or hateful, but it's definetely something that should be portrayed clearly as either reporting or opinion.

RogerL2• 11 years ago

The author is Japanese, the survey was conducted by the Japanese government.

mikekchar3• 11 years ago

Probably I should pause before I post stuff. However, if I could probably write a very critical article about Canadian culture (being a Canadian) and have it printed by a Japanese news service. I really don't think it would be helpful to anyone.

byuu2• 11 years ago

There are an inordinate amount of amazing things about Japan and the Japanese; and it's why I've spent over a decade studying the culture and language.

But it's not really fair to use only rose-colored glasses. There are serious issues with extreme conformity and group-think in Japan. Yes, there's exceptions to everything, but overall it's far more extreme there than it is elsewhere.

Expectations for how you are supposed to behave and interact are much more strict; and that sort of thing really does rob people of their individualism, to some extent. And you can see this by way of Japan having the seventh highest suicide rate in the world; with only two countries significantly higher than theirs.

Surely, every country has its problems; but that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about any of them.

You just don't say that you are happy with yourself because it can limit your development, it makes you look vain, etc, etc.

Tell that to the producers of the TV show Cool Japan :P

(For those who haven't seen it, it's a show that brings in tourists from around the world to gawk about Japanese exceptionalism in all things; while the Japanese hosts inquire why other countries are so backward by comparison. You probably think I'm exaggerating; but I can assure you, it's actually even worse.)

mikekchar3• 11 years ago

Cool Japan definitely makes me cringe. That is a great example of stuff that I really would rather not happen. Or if you look at the English version of the Japan Times which seems to want to attract foreign readership by slamming all the negative aspects of Japanese culture. There is unfortunately a lot of money in this kind of thing.

I probably should never have posted what I did. That kind of poor journalism/entertainment which exploits "we're better than them" attitudes exists everywhere in the world. A random rant in HN is not going to change that. If anything it simply polarizes opinion and invites the trolls to control the stage. I wish I could think of an effective strategy to change opinions on this topic.

dasil003• 11 years ago

Please don't measure cultures using a yardstick from your own culture.

Setting aside the particulars of this article, I take issue with this idea. External cultural observation and comparison is invaluable for bringing new perspectives to internal problems. That's not to say the outsider's perspective is more correct, but merely that it is illuminating in a way that is difficult to achieve from an ensconced position inside an echo chamber.

PopsiclePete• 11 years ago

My old country, Bulgaria, consistently ranks as one of the unhappiest places in Europe based on some random surveys somebody did.

Funny thing is, you ask 9/10 Bulgarians how they're feeling, the "traditional" way to reply to that, even if you won the lottery, is "oh you know.....so-so".

To say "great" or "wonderful" is seen as inviting bad luck into your life, basically.

dunstad• 11 years ago

I get the feeling that the first paragraph or so is trying to make this Japanese school sound somewhat dystopian. I can't help but be amused by that, thinking back on reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every day in gradeschool.

ivanca• 11 years ago

The army isn't going to fill itself.

kleer001• 11 years ago

What if it did though? What if an army was a self sustaining force? Gathering raw materials from the land, reproducing quickly to fill its ranks. That sounds horrible, like ants... sorry for the weirdo sci-fi tangent.

mc323• 11 years ago

The fascinating part of the indoctrination toward citizenship isn't so much the bowing in unison and redoing it till the bow is perfect, it's rather the inane but repetitive instructions over communications systems _everywhere_ at school, in the subway, in the stations, at department stores, public spaces, always a calm soothing voice reminding you what you are to do next. It's pervasive. It's also interesting from a cultural perspective.

IkmoIkmo• 11 years ago

Tell me more :) I mean I kind of know what you're referring to but I've never really read much about it. It'll either be really dry academic stuff, or some over the top Vice article that makes any culture look like that of North Korea. And while I've watched a fair bit of Japanese cinema and all, and having visited neighboring countries but never Japan itself, I sort of know how it's like but also not really, at all, so I'd be interested to know more. Cheers

escherplex• 11 years ago

If you haven't already, I'd suggest downloading 'Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904)' by Lafcadio Hearn (free for Kindle or as an .html from Project Gutenberg). Although sympathetic but culturally chauvinistic by contemporary standards this study does supply a corpus of interesting observations on the history of a Japan rapidly transitioning from micro-managed hierarchical feudalism to a form of Euro-inspired modernism, with associated strengths and weaknesses. And this while engaged in a war with tsarist Russia. What Japan was shapes what Japan is.

mc323• 11 years ago

I dont have time to look but here are some listed examples. http://www.japanintercultural.com/en/news/default.aspx?newsi...

Basically in a way society advises you on what's best for you. Yes there are examples in other countries, but they pale in scope. In Japan it begins in elementary school and follows you all thru life.

mullen• 11 years ago

Never heard of this. My wife and I went for a couple of weeks to Japan and we never ran across anything like this. If anything, we were struck at how quite some places could get, say like the subway. A completely pack subway pulling out of Tokyo station at rush hour and it was more or less silent.

Japanese people were a bit warmer than we thought and as far as I could tell, they like have people visit their country.

mc323• 11 years ago

It's the announcement systems and loudspeakers everywhere. They are pervasive.

Kind of like the 'stay clear of the doors' you hear in subways systems elsewhere but they do it for everything. So basically you get used to the other telling you what to do, in a way. You don't have to think. It's done for you.

cheatsheet• 11 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avcJdb8MVXM&noredirect=1

captaindiego• 11 years ago

There's a Japanese guy who campaigns against pervasive noise and inane repetitious instructions. There's an article on him here: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2014/10/10/lifestyle/making... and somebody has been translating some of his book to English and commenting on it. I believe there's a link at the end of this article.

jimpick• 11 years ago

I'm depressed that the food here isn't as good as in Japan.

deciplex• 11 years ago

I'm not sure why learning English and working abroad is supposed to curb depression? What does one have to do with the other? The article just sort of jumped from "depression" to "working abroad" without really establishing a link. I suggest there isn't one. I mean, in addition to working 80-hour weeks, new recruits have to attend English lessons as well?

If Japan was serious about curbing depression it would take serious measures to reign in the permanent overtime a lot of employees find themselves in, where many are staying in the office until nearly midnight. By "serious" I mean fines and possibly jail time for employers that allow it to happen without reason, or allow it to happen regularly even if they have a reason. And don't rely on reporting, either - start doing audits. If that sounds severe, remember that these are the people whose government formed a committee to investigate why so many Japanese companies required their workers to come in on Saturdays - which committee itself met every Saturday. "Soft paternalism" is probably not going to cut it.

The drinking culture here probably doesn't help, either. Alcohol's links to depression are well-known.

rhino369• 11 years ago

Maybe the reason is that so they can go work abroad if they aren't fitting in with Japans conformist culture.

Though the immigrants I work with seem to just reconstruct the same pattern of behavior. My Japanese office mate works til midnight every single night for no reason. I feel sad for the poor guy.

kevin_thibedeau• 11 years ago

Part of that is that the Japanese excel at processing reams of pointless paperwork to get any little thing done. In addition, the strict social hierarchy forces workers at the bottom of the ladder to stay later than their superiors to demonstrate their commitment to the company. This leads to the ridiculous 12 hour work days possibly followed up by mandatory drinking with the boss after work.

VLM• 11 years ago

"I'm not sure why learning English"

If you think that's mystifying, try having an economy only big enough for 100 million people, but actually have 127 million people, and describe the problem as they "feel" rejected (they ARE rejected, not "feel" it) and if only the victims would work a little harder, a job would magically appear (why?). Its a steaming pile of victim blaming.

Another interpretation is its a confusion of micro vs macro economics. Surely on an individual scale working harder and longer and learning more always benefits that one individual. But on a macro scale if the problem is ten jobs for fifteen grads, its inhumane to tell the five losers that the solution to societies problems is for those five, or all fifteen, to work harder. If they are dumb enough to actually work harder, the most likely outcome is next year they'll be only nine jobs for the fifteen grads, at which time we'll tell the six losers the solution to the societal problem is those six should have worked harder... leading to seven of them unemployed the next year, LOL. We do the same dumb thing in the USA with "go to college and get a great job". Well, jobs aren't magically created by the granting of a diploma, so you do the math on that. Send everyone to college and you merely end up with everyone deep in debt and lots of bartenders and receptionists with really cool sounding degrees.

fidz• 11 years ago

I have seen about "Hikikomori", but only in anime and Wikipedia. I am really curious. Do they really exist? How could they live without work? How do they make money?

cskau• 11 years ago

There are several good documentaries out there on the subject. I can't name any of the ones I've seen off the top of my head, but I'm sure googleing will yield plenty.

Quite a lot of young Japanese live at home even through their university years, and it seems the common case of hikikomori is that they just never leave.

Can education change Japan's 'depressed' generation?

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