Lecture 3 - Homogeneity, Minority Groups, and Migrant Workers Flashcards
What has social policy in Japan always been about?
How we can increase fertility rate.
Why are governments reluctant to get involved with the topic of fertility in Japan?
Has associations of wartime period, as want to increase potential people who can serve in the military. Therefore sensitive topic.
Is Womenomics successful?
Seen to be unsuccessful in getting women into the workplace or increasing fertility.
What is another suggested reason that women in Japan do not want to have babies?
Men do not get involved and if it were a shared job it would be more appealing. Issue is fear of having babies without a man around - therefore not getting married.
What is significant about the marriage rates in Japan in relation to the average number of children?
Rising rates of unmarried people is causing fewer children. If you get married in Japan, average number of children has not changed in around 50 years (2.2). Issue is that marriage rates are falling, and no marriage usually equals no children.
How could these demographic changes be solved in Japan and what are the issues regarding these solutions?
- Technology, .e.g. robots to take care of elderly, but issue with that is there are not enough scientists and engineers in Japan to develop this technology.
- Same as European countries - immigration. No European country has a fertility rate that is up to 2.01 but these countries deal with falling population through immigration - however, incredible resistance in Japan towards migration.
Why is there resistance towards migration in Japan?
Japanese state as we know it has been built since the Meiji period on ideology of homogeneity. Idea that they form a consistent, continuous line of people who share so much in common that anything coming from outside would upset that shared sense of understanding.
How has the ideology of homogeneity been disseminated?
Been disseminated to create the belief that the core of Japan’s economy and social structure is homogeneity.
What prompted Japan to modernise?
In response to a number of threats to Japan at the end of the 19th century. Only way to avoid colonisation was to modernise asap.
How did Japan avoid colonisation (four points)
Japan needed to identify collectively as ‘Japanese’ in order to avoid colonisation as before Meiji period was a feudal system.
- restored Emperor to throne as national symbol
- created national flag, anthem, other symbols
- developed unified education system that disseminated ideas and values about what it is to be Japanese
- created modern newspaper system.
What is ‘samuraisation’?
Taking the ideas of the upper classes and disseminating them to the lower classes. In this case, the idea in question was the ‘ie seido’ (household system) - kinship system that pertained mainly to elite samurai class in feudal Japan that became the model of Japanese kinship during Meiji.
How does the transport system in Japan support the notion of unification?
- all four islands physically linked, despite there being no economic sense behind huge bridges that link Shikoku and Honshu, for example (almost entirely unused)
- psychological investment in making people feel like part of the country. Tiny schools in rural areas to maintain idea that they are still communities that operate.
What is ‘haragei’?
Strong ideology particularly in 80s nihonjinron literature that Japanese people have a certain type of intuitive communication that non-Japanese do not have.
What are ‘kikoku shijo’?
‘Returning children’. Special schools/programs for children who had lived overseas and come back to help them readjust into Japanese society.
What does being Japanese broadly consist of and what is significant about it in regards to going abroad?
Blood, culture, and linguistic skills. Fear that in going abroad you might lose some cultural/linguistic skills. Problem with settling in Japan and being accepted as ‘Japanese’.
