McDonaldization

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Nowadays, large chains such as McDonald’s, Starbucks, Pizza Hut and Subway can be found pretty much in all parts of the world. While most of them offer affordable, quick meals, they also have a tendency to sell unhealthy food. Another side effect of the chains growing so big is how they have come to control the food market and diets of millions of people. Since they are cheap, it’s easier for people to buy their meals there – at the same time, when people end up eating there all the time, it’s not good for their health.

One of the main driving points behind the McDonald’s chain is how everything is supposed to be the same – yet you can find different things in different parts of the word. For example, in the McDonald’s in Japan you can buy Teriyaki burgers, and the McFlurries tend to have different flavors depending on where you go. So even though the stores essentially sell the same products all over the world, they also offer products aimed at the population of the country it is located in. Another example of this can be found in the Japanese Starbucks, where they sell matcha lattes, and so on. This might have contributed to the chains gaining popularity in the countries they’ve settled in.

Back in my home country, we don’t have a lot of the big chains yet. Places like Starbucks, Subway, KFC and Pizza Hut have yet to set root in my home country. What surprised me at first is how people would react when they found this out. Some would react with disbelief and ask me what we actually do have back there, while others would express how they believed it was a good thing that it hadn’t been overtaken by big chains yet. Back home I didn’t really think about it much, but after traveling a bit and coming to Japan I realized how much of an impact certain chains have made on the world. Take McDonald’s for instance, you can pretty much find them in any part of the world. And while it might be nice to have somewhere to go where you know what the food will be like, regardless of which part of the world you’re in, it’s still kind of overwhelming to think about how large the franchise has become to achieve this.

How is it that chains like these manage to spread out and become this big? And how will they continue to shape the food market from now on?

by Sindre M. Berg

Are the Social Networking Sites Taking Over?

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Over the last couple of years, social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and so on have gained a tremendous amount of popularity, and it’s become more unusual for people not to know or have heard of these sites than otherwise. Why have these pages become so popular? One of the reasons Facebook has been able to become as successful as it is, is probably because of how it satiates our natural curiosity. Through simple pages of information and pictures you feel like you can get to know people and their interests better, creating the illusion that you know them better than you actually do. The social network sites can also give off the illusion of having more friends than one actually has.  Because how many of the people listed as a friend on a social network site is someone you can count on in a dire situation?

Social network sites might make it easier to stay in touch with people, although they aren’t the only methods of doing so. There are several programs one can use for chatting with people individually. Why then, should there be a need for adding people on a social network page? One possible reason is how the social network sites make it easier to share information with several people at the same time, instead of contacting them one by one.

Before Facebook and Twitter, a lot of my friends would use Livejournal – a page for writing journal-like entries and finding people with shared interests. While this page has not grown to the size of Facebook, it still has a pretty large community of users. It functioned as a diary of sorts, and you could choose who had access to the entries you posted. Soon everyone had Facebook and Twitter though, and if you didn’t have one you were missing out. And that’s how the situation has become nowadays. If you don’t use any of the social network sites, you’re not “following the times”. When did it become like this? I’ve experienced people around me who initially had no desire to get Facebook or similar pages end up getting it in the end anyway, because if one does not have at least one way of communicating through these social network sites nowadays, one is essentially left with the short end of the stick.

The social network sites seem to have become almost essential in a way to keep in touch and up to date with recent happenings. Whether this is a good or bad thing, however, remains to be seen.

by Sindre M. Berg

Rethinking about Multiculturalism

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As the globalization goes on, “multiculturalism” or “multi-ethnic society” gets more and more attention all over the world since the 1970s. Multiculturalism is the political ideology in which every each of ethnic group or culture is expected to have the right recognition and dignity from the others with different cultural backgrounds by mutually being allowed to maintain and promote their own way of living, tradition, custom, language, or a sense of value. When it comes to issues of multiculturalism, Charles Taylor introduced in his work the idea of politics of recognition which he states is vital need for people. According to him, identity is partly shaped through the recognition by other democratic citizens in the modern age and, everybody should be equalized with dignity, based on the respect for the universality and equality. Multiculturalism was first born in the United States in the history of increasing number of coming migration back then.  Gradually, the idea has spread to the other countries like Canada, Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom, and so force. However, I am personally a bit skeptical about this idea. This is because multiculturalism that Taylor says is double-bladed device. We should notice that there are both positive and negative sides in the concept of multiculturalism.

Let us focus on the Japanese case of construction of multi-cultural society to discuss my skepticism about multiculturalism more deeply. In Japan, “multi-cultural society ” (多文化共生) was firstly introduced in the 1970s in the relation to the expanding world trend and remaining problem of Zainichi people. It may supposedly sound like a good idea that the aim to the multicultural society enables minority people to have more political rights or entitlements, accordingly, that discrimination against Zainichi people is supposed to be weakened. Moreover, Zainichi people themselves have long been fighting against and criticizing the harsh discrimination by Japanese people who put a great emphasis on the theory of Japanese ethnically-homogeneous society to exclude outsiders, which here means, Zainichi people. Yet, I just wonder if it is really favorable to pursue multiculturalism for these two reasons.

First politics based on the multiculturalism perhaps has potentially the exclusive force which may divide the different ethnic groups by drawing an unnecessarily strict line between “us” and “them”. In other words, there exists an idea of cultural essentialism in its basic concept which makes people believe that culture or ethnicity is basically built-in and unchangeable, though it actually is not. For example, there is a contradiction that Zainichi people tend to regard their culture as pure, though they, on the other hand, criticize discrimination based on the fixed idea of Japanese homogeneity.   In that sense, we can see that the myth of purity of ethnic group remains even in the resisting movements by Zainichi people.

Second, a seek for the multiculturalism has the possible danger that it enforces people to have a certain identity based on one specific category. For example, Appiah criticizes Taylor’s multiculturalism by arguing that Taylor is too interested in collective identity and identity politics could become a new kind of oppression. To put it differently, multiculturalism is somehow blind to individual identity and diversity in one collective group. When I watched the movie GO, it reminded me of this argument. The same goes in this movie. The main character had great difficulty to know who he was and decide which identity he had to choose, Japanese or Korean. To my eyes, he was struggling to make a choice under the pressure of strictly designed collective identities. Accordingly, in the age of multiculturalism, it might be hard for us to say that “I don’t want to be categorized into one specific cultural group!”

Therefore, I think we should not be too optimistic about multiculturalism. The idea includes downsides too; do we really have to have one specific, pure, solid collective identity? Perhaps, the true freedom is to be free from an enforcement to have “the identity”.

 

Charles Taylor(1994), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition,  Princeton Univ Pr

by Wakana Dohtan

Another Type of Japanese Minority

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Do you know the town called “Kamagasaki” in Osaka?  It’s so-called Japanese slum where many homeless people, day laborers have lived long time ago. I suppose that there are some who haven’t ever heard about this town because the name of this place was changed to “Airin-chiku (愛隣地区)” as a political term by Osaka government. However, most of the residents and those who know this place well call it Kamagasaki.

In this town, there are not only residents but also plenty of supporting organizations and most of them are organized by those who don’t live in Kamagasaki. Why are there so many supporting organizations? Why don’t they band as one big organization to support Kamagasaki residents? The reason is that each organization has each idea of their activities. Some of them appeal the right to work and live stably, while others insist on the right to live on the streets. For us, who have our own houses, it’s too hard and cruel to be forced to live on the streets. If I ran into such situation, I would surely aim to rehabilitation. Therefore, we tend to expect that Kamagasaki people also hope to work and work stably. However, not all Kamagasaki people hope so.

Before I explain the reason, I need tell you another story.

They have their favorite song named “Kamagasaki Ninjo (釜ヶ崎人情―kamagasaki  heart)”. In its lyrics, it have a phrase―”Koko ha tengoku kamagasaki (means, here is heaven, Kamagasaki)”. Why is Kamagasaki heaven although people can’t work and live without any problems and are forced to live on the streets? I sometimes go there to work as a volunteer, and I cannot possibly think that I want to live there. Kamagasaki, which is like a hell, is a heaven to the residents. This difference of thoughts between them and us makes Japanese labor problem complicated, tells us the difficulty in resolving, and creates supporting organizations with various ideas.

Now, bring the topic around the reason why they think Kamagasaki is heaven. Japanese society use many laborers to build infrastructures in the term of rapid economic growth and after finishing it, our society excluded them as disposable labor force and have ignored them. Such people lie in Kamagasaki. Therefore, the hell is Japanese society rather than Kamgasaki for those people. There, they can get a few job such as day labor and somehow manage to squeeze. They can also walk around the town not as a poor person but a resident. This is the reason why Kamagasaki people sing “here is heaven, Kamagasaki”, and appeal not rehabilitation but the right to live on the streets.

Profound social problems, especially local ones such as Kamgasaki problem, villages with nuclear power plants, and Okinawan base problems, always have differences of thoughts between outsiders and concerned people. In these local problems, concerned people are usually minority. They are neither immigrants nor minority ethnic groups, but they are also Japanese minority. To understand those minorities’ thoughts and to solve the local problems, the outsiders should know that there are differences of thoughts between them and concerned people.

by Yukari Deguchi

Hollywood Dreams and Social Classes

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Back in high school history classes, we learnt about how back in medieval times, feudal systems shaped society greatly. The Pope had the greatest power, then the king, knights, the archbishops, down to the slaves who hardly had any power at all.

A similar example is Japan during the Edo period, there was the Emperor, then the shogun, the daimyo, the samurai, and so on.

It seems that nowadays, social classes don’t affect us so much. Of course with the concept of liberal capitalism and occupations with varying income, there is a system of classes to a certain degree, but much less harsh compared to the graphs we saw in our history books. We are told, just like with gender and racial issues, that discrimination doesn’t exist “much” anymore. Most of us are taught in school that we, as the people of today, are all regarded as equal human beings with a universal set of rights. Even though you may be a janitor with less income than a doctor or a lawyer, you have the right to send your child to the same school as theirs.

By sending your child to the same school, you are giving them the equal chance to get a high income job, and move up into a higher social class.

But isn’t this too idealistic? A little too “Hollywood”?

In reality, we all know that changing classes isn’t as simple as that. If you have higher income, you will send your child to a private school with a good reputation. Your child will be surrounded by people with a similar background, with a higher guarantee of getting a “good” job and making future connections. Your child will be raised knowing the social conduct to fit in such crowd. On the other hand, the janitor’s child, even if they managed to get a well-paying job, would not have been raised knowing how to act with other private school graduates.

A great example of modern day class discrimination can be seen in a scene from the Hollywood blockbuster, “Pretty Woman” (1990). When prostitute Vivian, played by Julia Roberts, walks into a store on Rodeo Drive, despite the fact she had the money, was told –“I don’t think we have anything for you. You’re obviously in the wrong place. Please leave.” Ouch.

So although the difference in social classes today may not be as extreme as historic feudal systems, we may all dream of it, but it’s still damn hard to move up the class ladder like Vivian does in “Pretty Woman”. What are the chances of a successful businessman agreeing to pay you three grand to be an escort one day?

But I would like to end this post with a quote from the same film – “Some dreams come true, some don’t; but keep on dreamin’ – this is Hollywood. Always time to dream, so keep on dreamin’.”

 

by Marina Sata Khan

Religion for Japanese and Americans

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“What religion do you belong to?” This is what I was asked many times when I was in the U.S. I was not able to give them a clear answer, since I had never thought of it in my life. In Japan, we seldom think of our religion, right? The U.S. is a heterogeneous society, where Caucasians, Black, Asians, Mexicans, Indians, etc., who belong to different religions, are mixed. Whereas Christians celebrate Christmas, Jewish celebrate Hanukah, instead, so you cannot invite your Jewish friends to a Christmas party. So religion does matter in the USA! Japan, on the other hand, is a homogeneous society, so the Japanese share common feelings, customs, and norms more than Americans do. But that is NOT the only reason that the Japanese have a less sense of religion. Yes, we do go to shrines on the New Year’s day, but we visit there for the different reason than the reason why Christians go to Church every Sunday. Unlike Christians, we go to shrines not because God or the Bible tells us, but because it is a Japanese custom, or tradition. It is a traditional custom, where families get together and have a good time, just like the Americans get together and watch football games with families. Watching football games with families or friends has nothing to do with religion, right? We celebrate Christmas not because we are Christians, but it’s a custom. We just get together, have parties, and have fun; nothing to do with Christianity or any other religion. Therefore, we are not really aware of our religion, although some think that Japanese are Buddhists or Shintoists, and that’s why I was not able to give a clear answer when I was asked to what religion I belonged.

Religion, anyway, has a very important role necessary for today’s American society. Although religion is one of the causes of many of the conflicts and wars happening in the world, it actually contributes to the integrity of the American people and security in American society. Unlike Japan, the USA is inhabited by different people who share common things less than the Japanese people do, and therefore USA needs something to unite the people, that is, religion. At religious rituals and meetings, people get together and meet new other people who are similar to them, at least in terms of religion they believe in. By getting to know one another, they get to share more and more feelings and become integrated. Religion prevents people from committing crimes because their religious document such as the Bible tells you to do good things and not do bad things.

Although religion is sometimes criticized as being a cause of conflicts, it has an important role that unites people and contributes to security for the society as a whole.

 

by Yutaro Nishioka

To Marry Zainichi in Japan

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In Japan, if you want to marry someone, you have to take many necessary steps for it. “Marriage is not the problem of your own but the problem of houses” is Japanese marriage and every Japanese thinks that they have to get their parents’ permission to get married. I think so too. By the way, if your partner was “Zainichi Korean”, do you think your parent allow you to marry with them?

Michihiko Noguchi, professor of sociology at Osaka City University, asked 7500 Kyoto citizens “ If you have a child, what will you do if they are from Douwa, Zainichi Korean, Japanese foreigners and impaired people?” In result, the most case that they tell their child to think again was impaired people and the second was Zainichi Korean. How can this happen?

Japanese are tending to be nervous about neighbors and family. And also Japanese have their special “personal space” and they don’t like to get inside of it, especially elder people. In Noguchi’s writing, the percentage of people doesn’t care about their partners situation getting higher that their age get higher. I think this is the biggest reason why it is difficult to marry with Zainichi people in Japan. Most of these things are their assumption and some people say these prejudices are past things. But now I feel things are getting more extreme. Young people have understanding of other countries culture so that they don’t care where ever their partners come from or even they are Zainichis. Either way, I think it is impossible to get away the discrimination of Zainichi in Japan. Even it get better, I think it is too difficult to forget the conflict between Japan and Korea. So we, the young people, have to think more about the relationship between two countries and try to know more about each other.

Source
http://blhrri.org/info/book_guide/kiyou/ronbun/kiyou_0144-02.pdf
2012年1月3日

結婚差別に影響を与える要因についてー二０００年京都市民意識調査からー
野口　道彦
http://www.ism.ac.jp/kokuminsei/index.html
2012年1月3日
日本の国民性調査

by Kyoko Yamada

Brazilian Children in Mie Prefecture

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My cousin and grandparents family lives in Mie prefecture, where there are many Brazilian workers and their family. The reason why there are so many Brazilian workers is because Mie prefecture and Sao Paolo, Brazil have a sister-city relationship among each other. From the beginning of 20th century to 1960s, many Brazilians have migrated to Japan for work. Since then, there has been a promotion of wide-ranging exchanges, such as in the areas of culture, sports, and technological fields. However, what I see in Mie is different to what is said; the Brazilian immigrants and the local people in Japan lives nearby but there are the discriminations and prejudice visible, which are the sufferings minorities often face.

In Mie, there are many manufacturing companies which need cheap labor working for a long time, so that the product costs can be kept low. My cousin is now 10 years old now, and at the school he goes to, there are about 30 Brazilian students, about 10 students classified into 3 classes. They are the “sansei” or “yonsei”, who’s ancestor has came to Japan as migrant workers who decided to settle in Japan living with their family. Most of them acquire a permanent resident visa and a while later, obtain Japanese nationality. Most of the Brazilian students in my cousin’s school spoke Japanese fluently than Portuguese; since they were born and raised in Japan, just like any other people called “zainichi.”

However they belong to a Japanese school speaking in Japanese, at first when they enter elementary school, they tend to stay together with the Brazilian friends and not hang out with others. In other words, the Japanese children keep a distance from them. This situation continues until they graduate. What I saw was shocking; when I went to school to pick up my cousin, in the playground, there were many children playing soccer and dodge ball who were only Japanese, and the Brazilian children group were shoved by the corner, passing the soccer ball to one another. After school, I asked my cousin how they stay with the Brazilian group, he said that “they don’t speak that much and play with us so we don’t stay with them. They look so different and don’t feel like we are in the same classroom.”

As we went home to my grandparents’ house, my grandmother said the same thing, that they are so different. Also, she said that they are said to be noisy in night, not following the rules and making the environment bad. This is exactly what we learnt and saw in looking at the class of zainichi and Nikkei, the cases we saw in the Koreans and Filipinos; especially since where my cousin lives is at the country side, people have the prejudice from the beginning and recognize them as “foreigners.”

I feel miserable that these problems are occurring close to me. When I go to Mie again, I would like to talk to my relatives more deeply, and persuade how their attitude is wrong and rude.

Source
International Affairs Office, Department of Social and Cultural Affairs.
Mie Prefectural Government, n.d. Web. 22 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.pref.mie.lg.jp/KOKUSAI/HP/sistercities/brazil/index.htm&gt;

by Shiori Miyake

Looking at Japanese Characteristics

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From my experience living in several countries and traveling around the world, I myself felt lots of differences between Japan and other countries, which are the way they live, their sense of values, their common sense and so on. I started to realize the characteristics of Japan and Japanese people objectively by comparing with other countries. In order to avoid the conflict which may happen from these differences, I want to show the Japanese characteristics which I have felt from my experience.

I think one of the biggest difference of Japanese and foreigners are Japanese people are more collectivism than individualism. In order to have a good relationship with other people, they often have to care about the others. Therefore, it seems that they put more emphasis on harmony with others rather than having their own determined attitude. This phenomenon is quite different from other countries because it seems that they put more emphasis on having their own thoughts and their own opinions. Japanese people are also unlikely to attract attention in order to maintain their harmony. There is a Japanese term called “KY” (空気読めない) which means not to read the atmosphere. If you act or speak something which does not really fit into that situation, you may be called “KY” by others which I think it is peculiar characteristic of Japanese.

Other characteristics of Japanese people are that they are polite, calm, and shy. Of course everybody is not like that but I think it tends to be like that when I compared with foreigners. What I see the difference the most is the service toward the customers. People treat customers as if they were gods in Japan. It rarely happened when I lived in Paris. However, it may be a big stress for workers because their services are highly expected by the customers. Also, I think many foreigners think Japanese people are very shy. For example, when I went to American school, I was surprised because many students were often speaking in class. I remember that I rarely could speak in class because I haven’t taken classes that students have to give their opinions in front of the people. Therefore, I think Japanese people are not really good at giving their opinions in front of the people compared with foreigners.

These are only some examples of the characteristics of Japanese people but I think it is important to know about it because not knowing anything about people who live in different country may provoke conflict and it could also be obstacle of communication. I want foreigners especially those who are willing to live in Japan to know how Japanese people are and try to understand about our character! (Of course, I want to emphasis that not all the Japanese people are like this. I just want to present the general character of them.)

by Mao Shukunobe

Why Does Discrimination Against Ethnic Groups Occur in Japan?

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In this class, we learn about the existence of many ethnic groups in Japan. However, they all have common point that they have been discriminated against or experienced bad treatment in Japanese society. I want to look the reasons of the discriminations mainly and consider if it is possible to accept them easily in Japanese society.

I want to classify the reason of discrimination in two categories; psychological perspective and sociological perspective. First of all, psychological perspective is to discover the factor of discrimination in inside of human beings. I think we all have a feeling of wanting to have a higher status than other people. For example, maybe I want to gain more money than other people or I want to get higher score in exam than other people. Also, I think we tend to want to have people who are weaker than us. For example, even though you could not get higher score than your friend, if there are other friends who got lower score than you, then you do not need to suffer a lot from a feeling of inferiority. Also, we may feel proud of ourselves by bulling the weak people. Another aspect of psychological perspective is that it may be difficult for people to accept different way of thinking or sense of values. There is a risk of leading to the thought of “antiforeignism” that people cannot accept the new way of thinking and cling to the traditional thoughts. Therefore, even though ethnic groups increase more in Japan, they may show the reluctance toward them.

Now, I want to see the sociological perspective. Japan is said to be as a “collective society” which means to attach high value to the collectiveness and accommodativeness of people. It is important for us to work or act together so that it can rally the society efficiently. However, because of this characteristic of Japanese people, I think we tend to exclude the eye-grabber things or people. Japan is also a country which is a more ethnically homogeneous nation compared with other nations. When I lived in Paris, I saw many ethnic groups every day and it was a normal sight. However, it is very rare thing in Japan to see that many ethnic groups though they are increasing day by day. Therefore, because of the characteristic and situation in Japan, it may be difficult for them to accept minorities’ way of thinking or sense of values easily and in bad way, it leads to discrimination.

By the advance of globalization, ethnic groups may increase more in Japan and it might be normal to see them. However, I think it takes time to accept them in Japan because our way of thinking may be different fundamentally. Also, if they increase more, there might be the problems of employment, criminals, communication, or many other problems. Therefore, I think discrimination against them cannot be solved easily and there are still many tasks to implement a multicultural state in Japan.

by Mao Shukunobe