Judging the past: Memory, others, and intergenerational responsibility among the Japanese youth

The past continuously haunts Japan. It has been more than 75 years since the end of the last war and Japan has never fully reconciled with its Asian neighbors, especially China and South Korea, over the question of how to commemorate Japan’s past wrongs and atone for the physical as well as the psychological wounds it caused in Asia. In this context, also problematized is the question of intergenerational responsibility. Can the members of current generations feel responsibility and obligation to make restitution for wrongs perpetrated before they were born? If so, how? If not, why not? As it is reported that the Japanese public’s sense of affinity toward China and South Korea greatly deteriorated in the 2010s due to a series of memory disputes, it seems imperative to delve into the Japanese youth’s sense of the past. In this exploratory study, by following Barry Schwartz and his colleagues’ Judging the Past framework, we conducted college student surveys (N = 320) in 2017/2018 and interviews (N = 31) in 2017 and explored the cognitive connection between the Japanese youth’s sense of nation and their perceptions of moral responsibility for Japan’s militaristic past.

Oyster Cultivation Betting on Foreign Workers: A Study of Indonesian Workers in Hiroshima

One of the reasons foreign workers are looking for jobs abroad is that there are not enough jobs in their home countries. Indonesia is one of the countries that send migrant workers to more developed Asian and Middle Eastern countries. The increasingly rapid flow of globalization in the world goes together with the need for new workers to fill the industry, especially in Japan. This condition has forced Japan to open doors for foreign workers from developing countries to satisfy demand. These workers usually come from developing countries, such as Indonesia, Vietnam, China, the Philippines, and others. In general, they occupy the less desirable working positions over Japanese youth, the so-called 3D work (dirty, dangerous, and demanding). Therefore, the current dynamics of these migrant workers' life in Japan becomes an exciting subject to comprehend, especially for the Indonesian migrant workers. This study aims to determine the dynamics of Indonesian worker's life while working in the Japanese fisheries sector. In particular, the study looks at those who work in oyster cultivation in Hiroshima prefecture. This research was carried out using descriptive analysis methods and field study with in-depth interviews conducted from 2016-2018. The interviews performed in this study were structured to find answers for the following questions: What problems do the workers face while living in Japan? What kind of processes did they go through before coming to Japan? While working in the Japanese fishing industry, how was their life as a Muslim minority?

Oyster Cultivation Betting on Foreign Workers: A Study of Indonesian Workers in Hiroshima

One of the reasons foreign workers are looking for jobs abroad is that there are not enough jobs in their home countries. Indonesia is one of the countries that send migrant workers to more developed Asian and Middle Eastern countries. The increasingly rapid flow of globalization in the world goes together with the need for new workers to fill the industry, especially in Japan. This condition has forced Japan to open doors for foreign workers from developing countries to satisfy demand. These workers usually come from developing countries, such as Indonesia, Vietnam, China, the Philippines, and others. In general, they occupy the less desirable working positions over Japanese youth, the so-called 3D work (dirty, dangerous, and demanding). Therefore, the current dynamics of these migrant workers' life in Japan becomes an exciting subject to comprehend, especially for the Indonesian migrant workers. This study aims to determine the dynamics of Indonesian worker's life while working in the Japanese fisheries sector. In particular, the study looks at those who work in oyster cultivation in Hiroshima prefecture. This research was carried out using descriptive analysis methods and field study with in-depth interviews conducted from 2016-2018. The interviews performed in this study were structured to find answers for the following questions: What problems do the workers face while living in Japan? What kind of processes did they go through before coming to Japan? While working in the Japanese fishing industry, how was their life as a Muslim minority?

Locality in Makoto Shinkai’s Kimi no Na wa: Negotiating Japanese Youth Identity

Japan becomes one of the countries that has been producing worldwide popular culture, namely through anime. Besides its popularity which attracts wider audiences, anime cultivates cultural content as it is also found in popular anime entitled “Kimi no Na wa”. Aside from its popular culture, Japan has undoubtedly been known for its ‘high culture’ products such as haiku or Zen, to which Japanese identity is attached. Then, the content of Japanese locality performed in the anime highlights some crucial issues related to Japanese identity, including the problematic relationship between traditionality and modernity, generations, and genders. Thus, the local content in the anime is interesting to scrutinize how traditional values are depicted and negotiated concerning Japanese identity. Since this study is descriptive-qualitative research, it answers the problem by describing the phenomenon and employing the interpretative method by Hall’s concept of identity. The selected data related to locality and identity obtained from the movie and poster are grouped and approached by Hall’s semiotic representation to see the relation to its significations. Finally, this brings out the interpretation of the data indicating that the anime portrays the ‘return’ to local culture. It is referred to as ‘nihonjinron’, which is particularly emphasized in youth life. Through this film, the identity is negotiated. The characters (Taki and Mitsuha) perform post-modern subjects; a case in point accepts the changes as they develop their identity in the current era.

Estimation of psychological distress in Japanese youth through analyses of narrative writing (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Internalizing mental illnesses associated with psychological distress are often under-detected. Text-based detection using natural language processing methods are increasingly used to complement conventional detection efforts. However, these often rely on self-disclosure through autobiographical narratives, that may not always be possible, especially in collectivistic Japanese culture. As such, we propose the use of narrative writing as an alternative task for mental illness detection in youths. Accordingly, this study investigates the textual characteristics of narratives that are written by youths with psychological distress. OBJECTIVE Our research focuses on the detection of psychopathological tendencies in written imaginative narratives. We apply NLP tools, such as stylometric measures and lexicon-based sentiment analysis. METHODS Using stylometric measures and sentiment analyses, we examined short narratives from 52 Japanese youths (M = 19.81, SD = 20.01) through crowdsourcing. Participants wrote a short narrative introduction to an imagined story, before completing a questionnaire on their psychological distress tendencies. Based on this score, participants were categorized into Higher distress and Lower distress groups. Written narratives were then analyzed using stylometric measures and sentiment analysis, and examined for between-group differences. RESULTS Youths at higher tendencies towards psychological distress used significantly more positive (happiness-related) words, revealing differences in valence of the narrative content. This paves the way for online surveillance and detection efforts, particularly in Japan where youths may be hesitant to engage in self-disclosure. We discuss the implications of these findings in more detail. CONCLUSIONS Youths with tendencies towards mental illness were found to write more positive stories that contained more happiness-related terms. These results may potentially have more widespread implications on screening, particularly in cultures like Japan that are not accustomed to self-disclosure.