In centuries past, a young worker would apprentice for years, learning a craft at the feet of a master. Today, companies try to create systems that require “zero-training.” Fast food industry is one of the best examples of this. I think the shift was caused by the industrial movement. In early 19th century, people had to work with the limited technology and often required handwork that took long time to complete a task. This was basically the feature of traditional industry. However, people have been more and more impatient as the technology developed because they can do the mass production and do things much faster than the traditional manmade task. Because of this alternative technology, new types of industry came to exist and new types of business started from it and there was a significant proportional transfer from the previous industry to new types of industry and the business.

Many sociologists argue that organization and mechanization of fast food restaurants create an “interchangeable” industry. In this environment, teenagers are the best kind of employee for fast food companies. The purpose of the mechanization of workplace is to increase the “throughput” with the small number of employees. Mechanizations were designed to do jobs as fast and much as possible. Fast food companies didn’t depend on the skills or talents of the employees but the “innovative technology” that requires no training. Therefore, fast food companies basically didn’t care who are working for them and gave great importance to the mechanical systems that organize the environment which was for “mass production.” And the companies try to make the systems and instruction/direction of it as simple as possible so that anyone, especially the teenager, can easily follow it, which requires no talents or skills of the workers. Therefore, the companies can employ anyone and that’s why they can replace people easily when they got tired of it. Teenagers were targeted because the companies can hire them with fewer wages to pay because they have no experiences and skills and can reduce the labor costs. Moreover, since teenagers don’t have knowledge of society and how society works, they are easily controlled by the people in top.

Other than mechanization, fast food companies use various strategies to keep labor costs down. When U.S. experienced the end of baby-boom, the fast food companies were targeting “immigrants, the elderly and the handicapped” that were I think poor and can be hired with cheap wages and longer working time. Another strategy was to hire the crew members. The employers arrange their schedules so that they can limit the amount of work they can do and at the same time not making the overtime payment. And often the companies used some tactics to force the employees to work and control their working time. Even though the workers work for overtime, some companies cheated by just erasing the working time on the papers and force them to just work, ignoring their complaints and claims. Moreover, employers often don’t pay wages but serve food to the “minors and recent immigrants” instead of the overtime payment.

by Hirokazu Takeuchi

Reference
Schlosser, E. (2005). Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal. Harper Perennial.

When there are many news articles talking about urbanization; about young people leaving their home town to work in big cities; about only elderly left in the town and lead to depopulation in rural area. However there is some news articles keep popping out saying that there is a new trend of moving back to the rural area to farm. People who move back to the rural are not just retired elderly people, but also some young people. They give up their job also the convenient life style in big cities, while we are thinking what’s wrong with those people. Have you thought about the food that you eating everyday were grown by the farmers in rural area?

The Global food shortage is catching more attention now and this encourages young people to move back to the rural area. Food is one of the most important elements for us to maintain our daily life; especially Japan is a country that most of their foods are imported. The awareness of food safety is another reason that encourages young people to farm, many young people are interested to learn how to produce organic food and there are farmers who teaching young people how to farm in an organic way.

Life in big cities is hustle and bustle. Take typical white-collar workers as example, trying to get onto a train which is full to go to work, get on the empty train to go home every day, with long working hours, included the over-time work. Work occupies most of their time, they might have good salary, but they also have to afford the high rent and high living cost. No matter where you are going it is always crowded. Would you enjoy a life style like this? Young people who tired of the big cities life style moved out and starting a brand new life in the rural area!

Back to the origin, living in somewhere that are not surrounded by convenience store, growing your own organic food; earn money by selling the food that you grew; your life not controlled by your work anymore, conversely you got the right to control your life. I believe most of the young people moving out of the city are because they found the way of living in the rural area is enriching their life and soul.

by Chi Lun CHENG

People from all over the world can enjoy the same films, TV channels, fashions, and goods in current society. The apparent differences between nations are disappearing. To what extent do you think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages of this? Globalization offers conditions for widening international exchanges, strengthening mutual understanding between nations, expanding cultural, educational, and scientific cooperation between countries, enjoying the cultural achievements of people around the world which encourages the process of modernization and the enrichment of national culture.

However, these conditions also create the possible danger of diminishing the national culture with a negative impact on national identity. Through globalization and an open door policy, different concepts and a lowering of ethical standards, an individualistic lifestyle and exotic cultural products can easily be imported into the country. At present, modern information technology which in the main is controlled by US is hourly and intensively disseminating US ideology, way of life, culture and films across the world. Even US food is promoted so that some people consider globalization as global Americanization. In China, young people are used to wearing jeans, eating Mcdonald and watching movies from Hollywood. They are accepting American culture gradually, and sometimes they even know more about American customs than China’s. Here I come up with an example of the movie Mulan by Disney. The original theme of this Chinese traditional story is to praise Mulan’s filial piety to her father, however, in the movie the theme seems to become to tell how Mulan pursues her self-worth. This makes many Chinese teenagers confused, since the movie are representing different things from what they learn from textbook, and maybe after 20 years, Mulan’s traditional theme will be totally replace by the new one. Thus if there are more Chinese traditional subjects juggled, the true Chinese culture will disappear in the future.

During the process of economic globalization, inequality between developed and developing countries has been increasing and the gap between the rich and the poor has become wider, most of the result of globalization go to assist developed countries. Globalization does not pose equal interests and risks to all nations. Because of the rapid growth of global trade and global production system and continuous expansions of multinational corporations and their capital, the national economy of developing countries have to face more and more pressures and attacks, and the dependency to developed countries is aggrandizing. Developed countries are holding capital and advanced technologies and controlling the international economy system, so they can leave the developing countries far behind in the economic globalization process.

For these reasons, globalization is a fierce and complicated struggle in both cultural and ideological fields. We take the initiative in international economic integration but also have to take the initiative in fighting to keep our distinct culture resisting pro-foreign and cross-bred phenomena, and overcoming the psychology of preferring money over ethical values.

 by Xue Wang

Many countries are confronted with the problems of ethnic and cultural diversity in their society. Under the globalization, the flow of people from one place to another has been increasing tremendously in the past few years and yet, many countries still struggle to put their policies on multiculturalism into practice.

One of the countries that have been quite successful at putting multicultural policies in practice is Singapore. Singapore is well known for being a multi-ethnic country, with 77 percent of the population being Chinese, 14 percent Malays, and 8 percent Indians. Because of this diverse population, the government of Singapore recognizes English, which is the most widely spoken language, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil as the official languages. At school, children learn various subjects in English, but also have the choice to take courses on their mother tongue if they wished.

In addition to the different languages that are recognized in Singapore, the country also celebrates a variety of ethnic and cultural festivals such as the Chinese New Year, Deepavali and Hari Raya Puasa. Each of the racial groups celebrates festivals of other cultures, which shows how people in Singapore respect ethnic and cultural differences of the others.

On the other hand, Japan still seems to be reluctant to accept many immigrants who are non-Japanese. For example, care workers from the Philippines and Indonesia that came to Japan had to learn Japanese, be able to read Japanese and take exams to qualify for these care workers in Japanese. Many Japanese people also expressed their anxiety, such as the language barrier and fear of non-Japanese workers providing care, when Japan first accepted care workers from overseas. As a result, many institutions did not accept these foreign care workers to work at their hospitals.

Like the example of Japan, even if the country may have policies on multiculturalism, if these policies are not effectively implemented, it does not make the country multicultural. Singapore has successfully established a multicultural and multiethnic society by recognizing the different ethnic and cultural backgrounds of the people living in Singapore, and has treated all of the different identities equally. Without the recognition of the different cultures that exist in the society, it would be difficult to establish a multicultural society that everyone, regardless of their ethnicity, can feel some connection to the society that they live in.

by Nami Tatewaki

Moyer, Amy J. “Current Sociolinguistic Situation.” Singapore: A Multilingual, Multiethnic Country, n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2011.

I’ve been living here in Kyoto for around seven months now and so far, I’ve only seen one rainbow flag proudly displayed along the quiet streets of Kyoto. I discovered Colori Caffe , an Italian restaurant owned by Yossy, an openly lesbian Japanese woman. Aside from serving Italian cuisines and good coffee, Colori is also a place where everyone can be themselves. It’s one of the few, or possibly the only place in Kyoto that openly supports LGBTs – lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered individuals.

I was happy to discover Colori, but at the same time, I was also quite surprised to find this café in a relatively conservative place such as Kyoto, Japan. I asked Yossy if all of her customers know what the rainbow flag in front of the café symbolizes, sadly, nearly half of them aren’t even aware of its meaning.

The rainbow flag symbolizes the LGBT pride; it also represents the diversity within the LGBT community. It’s often used in pride movements pushing forward LGBT rights, and yet a lot of people have no idea what it represents – most people would perhaps think of it as a symbol of peace – which it really is, but often times, its eminent message is left forgotten, drowned by its own bright colors.

Perhaps the biggest predicament is that a lot of people are still unaware of LGBT issues, if not, then they are simply indifferent. Or worse, they are heavily misinformed; hence they tend to misconstrue the issue. This problem can be traced back to the fact that most people don’t have a clear understanding of gender, primarily because gender itself is a socially constructed concept in which dominant norms have forced itself onto everyone. Hence giving birth to discrimination and prejudice against the LGBT community. This problem is not confined to Japan, but can be observed all over the world.

Most of us, as early as childhood, were probably already exposed to the dire distinctions between men and women. We were told that girls and boys should act in certain ways; otherwise, we are disturbing the imagined code of gender roles that society has imposed upon us. We live in a world which follows a strict gender binary: men are like this and women are like that. Men are supposed to be attracted to women, and women to men. But what about same-sex couples? Some would deny their existence, hence placing the issue as a taboo. While others would openly denounce same-sex couples as an “abomination,” a moral disgrace, a social deviance. This problematic outlook towards the LGBT community may be a product of a homogenized way of thinking regarding human sexuality. This homogenization of the concept of gender has been manifested through dominant teaching practices, the popular media, and through social norms.

Most societies today maintain a highly heteronormative nature – the representation of heterosexuality as the norm, and the denouncement of homosexuality as an unacceptable social deviation – this puts the LGBT community on a detrimental position. On top of that, most societies also maintain a strong patriarchal nature, hence putting lesbian and bisexual women in an even more difficult and oppressed position within society.

For decades, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered individuals have fallen as victims of social stigma, unfair treatment, and harsh stereotypes. Myriad societies continue to look down on LGBTs, hence affecting their lives on multiple levels – socially, economically, politically, and even emotionally and psychologically.

by Fritzie Rodriquez

Last week, there was a demonstration against Japanese job hunting system in Shinjuku, Tokyo. This demonstration was mostly organized by Japanese university students but there were also some working members of society.

This demonstration’s concept is to destroy the system of Japanese job hunting these days. They raised some points they think should be changed. First, considering this depression and high unemployment rate period, students have to start their job hunting process when they are in junior year hence they cannot concentrate on their studying. Second, unlike many foreign countries, Japanese companies are not flexible to hire students who want to get out of the rail Japanese society made. For example, if a student goes abroad and travels the world for a year or so after his graduation, he won’t have as many opportunities to get a job as he could have just after he graduated. Most Japanese companies treat new graduate with very great deal but that is only for them. This tendency also encourages students to get a job before they graduate from university. Third, having these pressures, many students are worrying about getting jobs. Recently, companies to support students’ job hunting have emerged. Demonstration also mentioned these companies should not be allowed. They think these companies are making it worse because they are getting money from these students who are worrying about job hunting by offering them seminars and books.

However, this demonstration is taken as a quite negative issue. Japanese people rarely demonstrate on the streets. People think people who demonstrate are too sensitive. Some people even say that they are complaining these things because they could not succeed to get a job and they are just being bad losers by complaining those things to society.

Are they crazy? I don’t think so. I think people who have a problem should demonstrate to let society notice. These students who protest got many negative comments, but they could let society know that there are some problems in this Japanese society. They may get people’s attention and those who also think that this is a problem but never say it out loud.

One person cannot change the society but using the power of people and the media, it may work. I respect their courage to demonstrate.

by Naoko Matsumoto