Introduction

Japan is a highly dynamic society. Economically the country has risen to the second world economic power within the second half of the twentieth century. Defeated in war a whole generation has dedicated their private life to a work and business centred lifestyle. Daily routines were strongly gendered and everybody seemed to know their place in the society. This included children whose task was for a long time living up to meritocratic standards in school by concentrating on preparation for entrance exams: a world, which was characterised as a credential society (Teichler 1973). However, values changed and nowadays youths are already the children of the generation, which was called “shinjinrui” the new mankind in the 1980s (OAG 1987). New labels are easily created and it seems that youth are always provoking news by their innovative sets of being (Iida 2005). However, not only the most eye-catching youth cultures have changed but also the surrounding factors are undergoing extreme developments (Inui 2003; Tamura 2007). The burst of the bubble economy, the recession during the 1990s and now finally a wide range of social, political and economic reforms are the context of the profound social change in contemporary Japanese society.

How do children and youth adjust to the changing social and cultural environment? And how can we identify and analyse the most relevant sociocultural and environmental factors and their relationships to each other, which obviously have a strong influence on adolescents’ life and development? Do studies on youth provide us with information about these fields? And which are the key areas covered in recent publications? My research on schooling in Japan and earlier empirical research on Japanese adolescents in the 1990s (Kreitz-Sandberg 1994, 1996, 2002) forms the background for my understanding of Japanese youth.

Youth studies on Japan never disappoint ones curiosity. One of the recent youth phenomena, the yamamba or ‘mountain witches,’ for example, provoke with their dark skins and brightly dyed hair. In a similar trend, young men get into the centre of interest when questioning traditional gender roles with feminizing role images (Iida 2005). However, much of the content in youth studies is less spectacular than front covers of magazines. Youth research aims for example at analysing transition processes, catching the relevance of socialisation agents or describing conditions of living, learning, working or thinking of adolescents. Selected theoretical perspectives allow lifting purely descriptive accounts to a more complex analysis. As an aim, youth studies should describe the world of children, adolescents and young adults in their own perspective.

This article contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of youth studies on Japan by presenting relevant parts of recent research papers in a theoretically structured form. The research on Japanese youth is being analysed according to Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system theory. Recently published articles on Japanese youth were gathered with the help of electronic databases (Selection of material). In order to select and structure relevant topics I apply ecologic system theory (Theoretical perspective). Central topics in the literature are the school to work transition (School to work transition), effects of recent educational reforms (Educational reform) and selected elements of youth culture (Youth culture). This analysis is followed up in the discussion where I actively search for a youth perspective in publications (Discussion and summary of the results). It becomes evident that consequences of social change for the children and youths are only seldom in the focus of interest in the published research papers, a fact that reminds us of the need to formulate research from the perspective of the young people themselves.

Method of this study

This article provides an analysis of phenomena of youth in Japan by means of a literature review building primarily on recent publications in Western languages on Japanese youth. Such publications are easily accessible in connection with the growing trend of electronic publishing. Not only Western observers but also many Japanese scientists publish their research findings in English or other Western languages. This has increased possibilities of Western readers to understand processes of growing up in Japan compared to only two decades ago, when only few studies were exiting on this ‘exotic’ topic (e.g. Rohlen 1983; Duchac 1968; Youth Affairs Administration 1984; Trommsdorff 1983, 1984, 1992; Elschenbroich 1989; White 1993). However, in the last decade a comparatively rich literature on Japanese youth has been published, which provides us with information on a variety of topics. By focussing here on sources published in Western languages a selection is drawn to research that seems to be relevant to Western readers in form of being accepted in international journals or having research funding for driving their respective research topics. In the following I will present the method of the study including the selection of materials, central terms and the choice of a theoretical focus, which helps us both to structure the available information and understand the presented content in its relevance for adolescents’ life.

Selection of material

In order to select relevant topics for this review on youth in Japan I accessed several international databases, which gather information from scientific journals. Electronic databases play an increasingly important role in knowledge accumulation. These sources are often applied as a first step of information gathering on global topics like, for example, youth in Japan. The richest result was in this case produced with the database Scopus (2007).Footnote 1 With the search phrase ‘youth’ and ‘Japan’ and by limiting the results to multiple subject areas with focus on social sciences like sociology and psychology, I received information about 65 articles. A first result seems to be that information on youth in Japan is easily accessible for Western readers. However, after a closer look at the abstracts some articles would not be initially helpful without access to Japanese journals. The Japanese journals found via their English abstracts will be of help for a researcher of the Japanese society with both access to the language and the sources. However, I did not include these 10–15 articles in my search for easy accessible articles. Even other articles, with non-relevant topics were excluded, like papers on literature, or the youth of a known person, or historical studies. I even excluded specific research on for example computerized writing, demographyFootnote 2, Japanese immigrants in the US or broad comparative studies, which included Japan among many other countries and did not focus specifically on Japanese youth. After that about 20–25 articles seemed to be relevant in the broader context of youth studies and education. These were all published between 1998 and 2007.

Recurrent topics were youth and employment (Genda 2007; Ribault 2004; Inui 2003; Brinton 2000, 1998; Genda and Kurosawa 2001), teachers and educational reform (Hooghart 2006; Gordon 2006; Kim 2002), as well as youth, popular and media culture (Tamura 2007; Ishii and Wu 2006; Iida 2005). Single articles touched on problem behaviour like hikikomori (Kaneko 2006) and counselling (Hayes and Kameguchi 2005a, 2005b; Yeh et al. 2003), political and social values of students (Nakamura & Watanabe-Muraoka 2006, Watts and Feldman, 2001) as well as sex education and AIDS prevention (Nemoto et al. 2007; Nemoto 2004). The most prominent topics will be covered in the following analysis, structured with the help of the above mentioned ecological system theory.

Theoretical perspective

As a theoretic dimension I will in the following analysis of youth in Japan apply and discuss Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological perspective of human development (Muuss 1996). This ecological system theory describes an individual’s situation in relation to her or his cultural and social context. According to Bronfenbrenner (1979) the social environment can be divided in four systems; microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. These are often illustrated like concentric circles. In the centre we find the individual. Every level influences the individual’s being and the different systems interact with each other.Footnote 3 In later studies Bronfenbrenner (1989) introduced the chronosystem, with allows including the dimension of time into the analysis. The ecological system theory combines levels of analysis, which were earlier subject of psychology, sociology, anthropology, economy or political science. Therefore it fits the character of present-day youth studies, which are in nature multidisciplinary. The complexity of the theory makes it difficult to apply on empirical studies. However, it can inspire a deeper theoretic understanding of factors influencing the life of youth and is even useful for structuring the diverse information on topics related to youth in Japan.

Central terms

Central terms to be used in this article are youth and youth phase. Their use in the following article can be understood in the context of a short description of the background of this study. Traditionally, youth was seen as a transition between childhood and adulthood, with puberty as its starting point and entrance into family and a professional career as its end (Fend 2003). Youth theories have pointed out the character of youth as an independent phase in life, consisting of a not clearly defined life span from pre-adolescence until young adulthood already in the 1980s (Hornstein 1988). For Western nations youth has been described as highly individualised phase in life. This has, however, been critically questioned for the Japanese situation (Toyama-Bialke 2004). Both in Europe and Japan youth was analysed as an extended life phase, many empirical studies on youth include a wide age group from teenagers to young adults in their late 20s. Pragmatically, in the following I focus on the time from secondary education and higher education to gathering working experiences. This transition is as well as building friendship and taking up sexual relation- and partnerships a central content of youth for a majority of people. However, as far as this article builds on a literature study I have to follow definitions and choices of my diverse material on youth in Japan.

Ecological perspectives of youth development

Early studies on youth in Japan have focussed on topics like youth at school, youth in the family, neighbourhood, friendship and peers (e.g. Rohlen 1983; Toyama-Bialke 1998, 2002; Fukuzawa and LeTendre 2001). These are areas, which belong, in Bronfenbrenner’s terminology, to the adolescents’ microsystem, consisting of activities, roles and relations, in which the individual engages with her immediate context. These studies were important in order to understand the adolescents’ life situation. The microsystem consists of all the agents which even young children are aware of, like for example the family and the school as parts of their immediate environment. However, for ‘the adolescent [...] who can reason beyond direct, personal experiences and think in terms of “principles” and “ideals,” the exosystem and the macrosystem becomes more important’ (Muuss 1996: 322). Therefore it seems appropriate to start this analysis of youth from more complex levels of the ecological environment; and that are in fact the areas being analysed in more recent studies on Japanese youth.

School to work transition

Many of the recently published articles on Japanese youth focus on the work situation. This is not surprising, as employment of youth is a hot topic in connection with the crisis and restructuring of the Japanese economy. Articles on employment of youth in Japan concentrated for a long time on the relationship of school and work (Okano 1993; Demes and Georg 1994; Brinton 1998; Kosugi 2002). The school to work transitions is a central example for the so-called mesosystem, which characterises contact and relations between different elements of the microsystem or parts of the immediate environment of pupils. The character of these relations is relevant for a positive or negative development of the individual (Muuss 1996). Traditional pattern of transition play still an important role. However, the working situation of youths is nowadays characterised by diversifying forms of school to work transitions and increasing youth unemployment.

The employment situation of young people has rapidly worsened during the recession of the 1990s and early years of the twenty-first century. Unemployment rates peaked in 2003 with 12.8% for those aged 20–24 years (Genda 2007). Quota for the 15- to 19 years old are traditionally even higher than for the older youth population (Inui 2003). On top of the group categorized as ‘unemployed,’ Japanese statistics include another group, the so-called NEETs, youth between 15 and 34 years who are ‘not in employment, education or training.’ Furthermore, an increasing number of young people work under insecure working conditions, employed as part-time or temporal staff. Possibilities to enter directly after school or university into a stable working position have been radically declined.

Unemployment of youth is a new phenomenon in the modern Japanese industrial state. Even if the average unemployment rates for 15–24 year olds were always roughly double so high as of the average population, it was only in 1993 that it reached 5% according to the Labour Force Survey (Ministry of Health Labour and Welfare 2004). In the following decade, however, numbers doubled, confronting institutions and individuals with a completely new situation. Statistics by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology show that 70% of the college and university students and 80% of the high school students obtained regular employment directly after their graduation until the early 1990s (Inui 2003). This remarkable number must be seen in connection with the Japanese employment system, where lifetime employment played an important role, at least for male employees. However, a sharp decline of job offers for new graduates is to be observed since the early 1990 along with a rise of part-time employment and unemployment.

Within a decade unemployment rates have more than doubled and most drastic became the situation of high school graduates. In comparison to 1.6 million job offers to 18 year olds in 1992 there were only 240,000 in 2002. It is obvious that this deterioration is related to the overall job marked. Companies protected middle aged and older employees by slumping recruiting numbers (Genda 2005). How are the traditional transfer systems, which for a long time seemed to guarantee a smooth transition from school to work, adapting to this change?

A system in change

In the case of the Japanese employment procedures a tight cooperation between schools and employers secured the allocation of students on the job market. Both institutions were reciprocal dependent. Since the 1960s the so-called ‘new graduate recruitment system’ dominated the school to work transition. ‘Under this system, employers send job offers to schools and colleges/universities under the regulation of Employment Security Law, and schools and colleges/universities offer employment to students in their last academic year’ (Inui 2003: 222).

Kosugi (2002) describes the system as rooted in the pre-war time, when companies addressed their job offers directly to professional schools (jitsugyō gakkō); only in the 1950 it became a mass phenomenon, first for blue collar workers, later for the whole work force. During the decades of high economic growth working agencies functions were reduced to regulating the times when companies were allowed to contact the new graduates (usually after a few months into their last year at a school), but the vital contacts were built on the direct relation between employers and schools/teachers.

‘Japanese high schools receive job application notice from local employers. They then counsel their students about which employer to apply to for post-graduation job. High schools typically recommend only one student for each job, and [...] and there is a strong norm that a student will be recommended for only one job at a time’ (Brinton 2000: 291). Brinton calls this the ‘institutional social capital’ of schools, for which students compete against each other for access. Students have thereby a strong incentive to do well in school, because they compete for the teachers’ recommendation. This is even or especially the case in vocational and low level general high schools. Social scientists have argued that this type of labour market, embedded in the relations between schools and firms is both efficient and meritocratic (Rosenbaum and Kariya 1989), as far as students win by visiting of a specific institution access to a network of social contacts, which clearly extends their personal network and the ‘social capital’ determined by family origin.

This system functioned efficiently until the beginning of the 1990s, as long as there were sufficient job openings for youngsters who wanted to enter the labour market without further studies. But it collapsed when the number of job offers became almost identical with job seekers. The young people who could not find regular employment (about 25% in 2000) shifted their destination to college or university, or they became part-timers or unemployed (Inui 2003: 220). The teachers’ ability to offer attractive job opportunities in local firms has been compromised by changes in the job opportunities available to high school graduates. Many of these jobs were in the past in manufacturing and heavy industry, a declining sector in present-day Japan. Moreover, these jobs are not necessarily seen as desirable any more (Brinton 2000). In sum, we can state that the system has today lost its dominant role but not its whole function both for high school and university graduates, as in 2001 half of 22 years olds were estimated to have moved to regular employment through this [new graduate employment] system’ (Inui 2003: 222).

Recent developments

Both availability and popularity of work in the service sector is increasing, but there the employment patterns are different to “traditional” permanent employment (Brinton 2000). ‘Although the proportion of part-time employment had been increasing since the 1970s as the service sector developed, they were mainly students and married females until the 1980s. However in the 1990s, part-time employment among young people—not only students, but also non-student—increased rapidly’ (Inui 2003: 221). According to statistics by the Management and Coordination Agency numbers have doubled within a decade from 600,000 each for male and female 15- to 24 years olds to over 1.2 millions each in 2001 (Sōmuchō, respective years, in Inui 2003). Today, many young people engage as so-called frītā, the Japanese expression for persons engaging in part-time jobs. The word is a combination of ‘free’ and the German term for worker: “Arbeiter”. Part time does in this case, just as has been the rule for married women, not mean that the working hours are principally shorter, but point at deregulated working contracts, where the employee does not enjoy any type of job security, welfare or paid forms of holiday or sick leave. On the other hand, this type of work, suited the wish of flexibility and independence (Hommerich 2007). Long-term effects were however, that youth engaging in such insecure forms of employment had serious difficulties in entering stable employment in the long term. Finally, deregulated work relations have become a rule for a big part of young people, especially in the service sector.

Unemployment rates in Japan include only people, who are actively looking for work. Statistics include, however, one more category, the above-mentioned NEETs. Different to so-called job-seekers (type 1, equivalent of unemployed in the labour force statistics) NEETs are characterized as ‘non-job seekers,’ divided in two groups; type 2 stands for ‘jobless youth who do not usually search for jobs, although they want to work’ and type 3 for the ‘non-job seekers who, for whatever reason have not sought work actively and who express no desire to work.’ Obviously young people categorized as NEETs obtained a lot of media attention and often are being blamed for their missing engagement for participation in the labour force. Genda’s (2007) detailed analysis of the NEET problem builds on a definition of non-employed unmarried youth aged 15–34, who do not attend school or university.Footnote 4

Characteristics of households to which the youth belongs may influence the type of joblessness. Genda (2007) explains that NEETs can partly be understood in connection with high-income households, where especially discouraged females are more likely not to seek actively work. Youth who are already suffering from a difficult educational career are also more likely to resign in their job search according to Kosugi (2004). Both, gender and class seem to play an important role. But a detailed analysis on these topics, just as on the influence of ethnicity is still missing.

All processes described here, like prolonged education, unemployment, or insecure working conditions have serious consequences for the transition from education to work. This has led, together and in interaction with diversifying forms of starting one’s own family to what Inui (2003: 219; 222) calls a ‘prolonged and complicated transition’ and even an ‘individualised youth transition,’ which even is being compared to the situation in European countries in the 1980s and 1990s. However, there are a few systematic differences, which I took up here, like the specific role and interaction of actors in education and work institutions. In sum, relations at the level of the mesosystem like, for example, contacts between schools and the employment system are obviously changing. But it is too early to judge if and how this leads to convergences with, for instance, European countries or if and which new specific solutions develop under pressure of economic change and social reforms.

Educational reform

Educational policies can, in Bronfenbrenner’s terminology, be described as part of the exosystem, which comprises policies and milieus that influence the individual indirectly. Interestingly enough, ‘educational reform’ is the second topic, which is very prominent when screening recent publications on youth in Japan. This field of research has been present for a long time in the international comparative debate. The reform processes of the 1980s attracted much attention and provoked controversial discussions internationally (Drink 1988; Schoppa 1991a; Lincicome 1993; Schubert 1996; Hood 1997; Lévy Alvarèz 1997; Roesgaard 1998; Cave 1999). The government of Prime Minister Hashimoto (January 1996–June 1998) initiated a major educational reform project, which attempted to match in significance the reforms carried out during the Meiji period (1868–1912) and after WWII under American occupation.

The idea of reform was hardly new: politicians and administrators had been calling for a ‘third set’ of educational reforms since the late 1960s, which nevertheless met with severe opposition from economists and educators. These present reform can be understood as a third wave within more recent reforms of the school system. They relate quite directly to the reform agenda, which premier minister Nakasone initiated in the 1980s (Schoppa 1991b; Kreitz-Sandberg 2000). However, when describing the reforms from 2002, most authors concentrate on the structure and content of the reform (Foljanty-Jost 2004). One of the changes introduced now, which has been already discussed in the late 1960s, is for example introduction of six-year consecutive junior and senior high schools (Teichler 1973; Erbe 2000). The introduction of 6 years of continuous education in public secondary school (chūkō ikkankō) had been highly controversial since the 1960s (Okano and Tsuchiya 1999). While popular in private schools, it is new that this system is introduced within the public school system.

Another significant change is the introduction of topic-based learning (sōgōtekina gakushū)Footnote 5, integrating cross-curricular thematic projects (Hooghart 2006, Kreitz-Sandberg 2000). This was introduced in order to allow interdisciplinary and comprehensive learning. The number of lessons was cut in core subjects like Japanese, mathematics, science and social studies, as well as home economics and physical education by about one hour per subject a week in primary and secondary schools. On top of this, students and parents were granted more freedom of choice in selecting their schools by the year 2002 (Monbushō: Curriculum Council 1998). These shifts in the curriculum present an interesting mixture of measures that have been demanded frequently over the years by opposing interest groups and deserve therefore special attention.

The teachers’ role

The recent literature reviewed here was published up to 5 years after the reform was realised. Their first effects of the reform have been investigated. The role of the teachers and consequences for the teachers have gained new attention (Hooghart 2006). This is not surprising if we take into account that it is teachers who have to transform the policies into daily practice and who bear the responsibility for policy measures to be adapted to the needs of the pupils. More practical discussions, like how to develop lessons for the new period of integrated study are more active within the Japanese education discussion but start popping up in English publications (Umezawa and Nishioka 2001). In the international discussion, however, also other topics are in focus, like, for example, the inability of the school system to take care of children with foreign nationality and other mother tongues than Japanese (Gordon 2006).

Anne Hooghart (2006) investigates the influence of the recent reform on teachers accountability, which includes contractual, professional and moral accountability on the national, prefectural, community, school and individual level. While the national curriculum reform is mainly seen as a top-down mandate, ‘its emphasis on local control of curricular decisions and development of “distinctive schools,” along with well-established patterns of school-based professional development’ (Hooghart 2006, online) strengthens bottom-up mechanisms. It has been described for Japan, that curricular innovations developed on the local level are spread to the regional level through collaborative networking of teachers in the organisation and realisation of curricular content in the teaching process (e.g. LeTendre 2002; Shimahara 2002). Only few decisions on teachers’ reality are taken on the national level. About half of teachers’ salaries derive from the national government and teacher training is partly nationally coordinated. However, most related questions are decided and administered on the prefectural and local level. The educational board of the prefecture controls staff assignment and is in charge of the teaching licences for teachers. Prefectural education centres coordinate both voluntary and obligatory training for teachers. Therefore, Hooghart (2006) argues, prefectures have a high responsibility for employment- and training-related teacher accountability. However, more influential is the local and school level, where the outcomes of the educational reform have to be realised. For example, questions on how to use local resources for the realisation of the integrated study course is relevant in order to let the surrounding community—as intended in the reform—benefit from but also contribute to the public schools.

How do these mechanisms influence the life of youth? On the one hand side we might argue that here (only) the teachers’ reality is in the focus. However, we understand also that this reality is closely interwoven with the daily practices which pupils experience at school. The educational reform policy was introduced as what Bronfenbrenner calls the exosystem, which influences youth indirectly. Its influence depends on elements, described above as interpersonal factors of the (micro and) mesosystem, for example through interaction between teacher, children and youth. These elements become evident in the following description.

Immigrants and schooling

The article ‘Teachers for minority and immigrant communities in Japan’ focuses on teachers’ work with immigrant youth (Gordon 2006). Teachers are challenged to question their pedagogies, practices and prejudice in relation to these youth, whose living conditions and cultural background differs from the majority of Japanese youth. The question of ‘how Japanese schooling is responding to the needs of an increasing heterogeneous urban population’ (Gordon 2006, Abstract) needs to be understood in their socioecological context.

Children to newcomers, who are mostly restricted to industrial jobs and live in subsidised housing projects, are taking on adult responsibility at an early age. They are according to Ninomiya (2002, in Gordon 2006) often subject to instable homes, high divorce rates, and parents who might return to their own home countries. Although 98% of Japanese children continue after junior high to senior high school, this is the case for less than half of immigrant children, and it is said that 40% do not even attend primary school in some school districts. According to Gordon (2006) compulsory education laws do not apply for immigrant youth. Public education does not prepare these youngsters for further or higher education, resulting in ‘the rise of violence, drugs, organised crime and early pregnancy’ (Gordon 2006: 771, quoting Ninomiya 2002). What is being described as a challenge for teachers, who lack special training for educating newcomers and often cannot communicate sufficiently with these students or their parents, must even in a stronger sense be seen as a shortcoming for their pupils. Many of them are stigmatised while the official policy is to treat all students equally. Cultural mediators are increasingly included into the educational process but the overall educational policy does not necessarily answer to their specific needs.

Newcomers and diversity are obviously an educational challenge to actors and the system. This is especially noticeable in case of ethnical minorities, like for example Koreans. 630,000 North and South Koreans live in Japan (Kim 2002). Some of the families have been there for generations. 90% of the children attend public or private Japanese schools, and the remainder goes to Korean schools. Kim (2002) revises in this article on Korean junior high school students by means of a case study on how schooling can shape the cultural identity of children. This provides a first insight on how children actually experience their reality in school.

Youth culture

Youth culture, popular culture and the media are further areas, which get attention in recent articles on youth. These topics are parts of the macrosystem, like social values, political cultures, laws, the nation and its economy. According to Bronfenbrenner (1979) the macrosystem influences the individual less direct, but is constitutive for the society and surrounding in which a person is living. Youth culture is interacting with the development of new technologies and is analysed in research papers on, for example, how young Japanese express their emotions visually in mobile phone messages (Miyake 2007). Comparative studies show that cultural different relation patterns have created different media trends in, for example, Taiwan and Japan, in spite of the standardisation of communications technologies (Ishii and Wu 2006). Topics like expressions of youth in magazines and on the street (Iida 2005), changing school dress codes (Tamura 2007) or drug use and sexual behaviour (Nemoto et al. 2007; Nemoto 2004) shall be briefly introduced in the following.

It is almost impossible to summarize the wide area of youth culture in a few paragraphs. Therefore I decided to introduce and discuss central perspectives based on these five recently published articles.

Dress codes

Youth culture is a field where tensions between a proclaimed individuality interacts with living up to social rules and peer pressure. This is obvious in the gradual change of the usage of school uniforms. ‘Dress codes in Japanese schools consist of uniforms, rules on hairstyle, socks, shoes, belts, ribbons and other accessories’ (Tamura 2007: 463). Dress codes have been used as an educational strategy to promote collective identity and solidarity. In the 1970s schools tried to answer to potential juvenile delinquency by tightening dress codes. In the 1980 and 1990s many schools revised their dress codes allowing students more individual choice.

Tamura’s study builds on fieldwork in Japanese secondary schools during several weeks in the summers of 1998, 1999 and 2002. She points out that in spite of the tremendous volume of research being published on education in Japan, no analysis of the changes of school rules has been undertaken, although this is an important factor of socialisation. The increasing liberality in the dress code answers to the youth’s desire to express individuality through fashion. It fits the reform council’s emphasis on individuality and creativity. The stress on reinforcing the rules against the will of the students, as had been the case in earlier decades, is according to Tamura (2007: 483) even violating the student’s freedom of expression and conflicting with the UN children’s right convention.

In this article the interrelation between the macrosystem and other levels becomes obvious. The overall trend towards more individual freedom of expression interacts with policies on the level of the exosystem as well as relevant communication between different agents in school, and thereby, in the terms of Bronfenbrenner, the mesosystem. All these have a more or less direct influence on the daily routines of the individual, which, in turn, has an active part in these changes.

Changing gender roles

Yumiko Iida claims in the abstract to her paper in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies to ‘explore the significance of this emerging trend of [aesthetically conscious young men and] male beauty by observing and analysing the expressions, strategies and intentions of those young men’ (Iida 2005: 56). A few quotations might contribute to get Iida’s message. ‘I locate the current vogue for male beauty not along this highly specialised artistic tradition [of wakasho kabuki] but within a popular, modern, and capitalist cultural phenomenon that exposes masculine bodies to full-scale commercialization where powerful inscriptional forces of media-constituted aesthetics are at work. [...] In this discourse of male beauty, fashion magazines, beauty industries, and the pop-culture media collaborate together in cultivating a highly sensitized aesthetic consciousness in the mind of the young men, tacitly imploring them to submit to “the cult of male beauty”’ (Iida 2005, 58–59). Here the role of the macrosystem on the male identity is exemplified and the author continues to analyse the new identities of young males where feminine appearance is combined ‘with new images of adult men, such as independence, gentleness and sensitivity’ (ibid.). Youth culture is exemplified in order to develop a cultural theory of national and gendered identities. However, what is missing is a foundation of these interpretations of youth in the young peoples own thinking. Therefore, this approach contributes only limited information on young people’s ‘intentions’ as far as no young person is being asked about what they think or want. Further research on this proclaimed change of gender roles will be needed in order to ground Iida’s observations in empirical evidence.Footnote 6

Globalising sexuality

How about the article by Nemoto et al. (2007) on drug use and sexual behaviour among Japanese tourists, students, and temporary workers in Honolulu? Which information can we gain from this study on young Japanese, their behaviour and thinking? The intention of the study is to provide information about HIV/STD prevention in relation to drug use. The article introduces results from a survey study. However, although the study gathers answers from youths, the intentions or perspectives of the young people play only a secondary role. ‘Because a large number of Japanese youth and young adults travel abroad and many of them engage in sex with other Japanese tourists, local people, and sex workers, these transient Japanese may be infected with HIV while they are travelling or temporary staying in foreign countries where HIV prevalence is high. These transient Japanese may also transfer HIV/STDs to others when they return to Japan’ (Nemoto et al. 2007, 77). Obviously, the interest in this study is, similar to earlier research by Nemoto (2004), less to grasp the reality of these young people but to avoid their negative influence, in this case to prevent a health risk for the rest of the Japanese society.

Mobile messaging

The next example for elements of youth culture is the comparative study of media cultures among Taiwanese and Japanese youth. It builds on a description of the situation in Taiwan, where Internet access is most actively practiced by youth in cyber cafés, and in Japan, where a individualised Internet culture is more common. The usage of mobile phones is significantly different in the both nations, with text messages playing a more central role for communicative purposes in Japan (Ishii and Wu 2006). With help of nationwide surveys and smaller observation studies, the authors can show that while in Taiwan the PC is the core medium for message exchange, in Japan this role is taken by the mobile phone. Taiwanese youth have more friends on the Internet. They also engage easier into direct contact after meeting in the net. In Japan, ‘PC-based Internet plays only a limited role in maintaining social relationships. Friendships in Japan are enhanced via text messaging over mobile phones rather than via PC e-mail. [...] Japanese have a greater network size via mobile mail than via PC mail [...] Though the Internet is a technology that is common across the world, usage pattern vary widely according to the social and cultural background of the users (Ishii and Wu 2006: 109–110).

There is a unique Japanese text messaging culture, which is eased by availability of communication technology. Ishii and Wu (2006) argue that the preference of messaging is rooted in conflict-avoidance tendencies among the Japanese youth combined with low-level self-disclosure and preferences for anonymous communication. The authors link their findings to a strong sense of individualism, which increasingly replaces the stereotypes of Japanese collectivism. We gain an impression how communication technology and surrounding culture, as parts of the macrosystem, interact and facilitate the specific behaviour of young people in the respective societies. Ishii and Wu (2006) present one possible interpretation for the observed differences in the use of global available technology.

Miyake (2007) takes a somewhat different perspective on a similar topic. In her sociolinguistic analysis of mobile mail she investigates how young Japanese express their emotions visually in mobile phone messages (Miyake 2007). Mobile phones have become an important tool of networking and building social relationships. New media are in the Japanese debate often associated with negative sub-cultural trends. However, ‘while Western lifestyles have influenced the way in which young people in Japan look at the world, particularly their sense of identity and their relationship with others, old values are nevertheless preserved and nurtured’ (Miyake 2007: 54). This is the starting point in Miyake’s article, which investigates mobile phone messages as ‘evidence of a struggle by young people to create new forms for representing themselves, and evidence also that a sense of community is generated through the sharing of codes and information’ (Miyake 2007: 55).

Miyake’s article builds on the analysis of mobile messages of 50 female and 47 male university students send in April and May 2004. 658 messages are being analysed for orthographic deviations, pictorial signs, emoticons and graphic symbols. All these elements are applied to fill the written message with emotions or body language in more or less direct ways. ‘Rather than exchanging important information, they enjoy a sense of sharing each other’s emotions and everyday life. In modern urban life, the relationships they have are not based on a physically identifiable, localised community, but on a community of selected interests. As such they are potentially fragile. These writers are very concerned, when writing their messages, not to hurt their interlocutor, and not to be thought badly of’ (Miyake 2007: 69). Miyake continues her analysis that this anxiety is a characteristic of traditional Japanese communication. Using symbols allows the young people to develop a certain boldness without really hurting general social rules in their playfulness.

While Ishii and Wu (2006: 113) argued that talking on the mobile phone was reserved to few close relations, Miyake’s point of view is that ‘messaging can be thought of as being more private than talking with the same device’ (Miyake 2007: 56). The balance between intimacy and distance is important for the medium of mobile messaging as participants ‘can take time to think and plan what to say, rather than spontaneous respond to each other’ (ibid.) and thereby can create a certain distance. Contrary to Ishii and Wu’s (2006) analysis with connected text messaging with an individualised lifestyle, Miyake (2007) views this as the continuation of traditional communication patterns in a technological modernized form.

Discussion and summary of the results

The influence of a variety of sociocultural and environmental factors on adolescents’ life and development could be illustrated in this contribution. It is, however, a highly complex process and we have to be aware that always several factors play a role. There are not only external factors, which influence the individual but also the opposite relation can be observed: It is individuals with their needs and intentions, who influence their environment. In order to catch glimpses of the present-day reality of youth in Japan, I selected some relevant fields in the adolescents’ life. In my selection I was guided by publication activities in mostly refereed papers.

I investigated particular trends in recent publications on youth in Japan and concentrated on fields, on which several articles had been published in the last few years. The first topic was the transitions from school to work, which was analysed as an example for the specific importance the mesosystem, where contacts between institutions play an important role for the situation and well-being of young people. The functions of the system are obviously changing under challenging economic conditions. The second example was chosen from the exosystem: policy studies, and the third example meant to illustrate elements of youth culture as one central part of the macrosystem.

How much information could we gain through these studies about the influence of sociocultural and environmental factors on adolescents’ life and the development of youth? Obviously, the information is limited. The articles are analysing for example that the transition systems are changing, but how this change on the level of the mesosystem is influencing the actual situation of the young people, looking for work is not (yet) included in the descriptions. Neither can we gather any information on how the students experience the system, either when it was still unreformed nor now, after its gradual change. What were and are the consequences of the system for young people? Obviously one effect was that transition was facilitated when the old system was in full use. However, individual choice as criterion for a job application was less important than the recommendation of seniors. The teachers carried a heavy responsibility within this allocation system. Possibly not only the economic recession, but also the value change has contributed to the systems declining influence.

A similar observation can be made for the changes of the exosystem. In general, descriptions and evaluations of recent school reforms in Japan leave no doubt that the trend is going towards increasing flexibility and diversification in the school system (Green 2000). However, I have not found any studies which investigate the direct influence of the reform on the life of the adolescents and which ask how young people experience these changes within their direct environment. Students’ best interests are often judged in accordance with their ability to live up to the expectations in the next entrance exam (Hooghart 2006).

Being interested in youth in Japan, the most important focus would be on the effects of reforms on the life of pupils and students. Did the introduction of six-year high schools reduce the stress of entrance exams or was the age changed just from the 8th and the 9th grade to earlier age group attending primary schools? Do students experience learning more meaningful within the integrated lessons or is the incentive to do well in entrance exams just to a stronger degree shifted from regular schools to the educational industry of preparatory schools like yobikou and juku? In order to answer to such questions we need a critical focus but also a change of perspective within school-studies. Embracing a child perspective with a stronger focus on qualitative methods within school studies would support investigations on the influence of measures (on the level of the exosystem) and on the development and wellbeing of children. Research from the perspective of the children is needed in order to let their voices being heard. This became evident specially if we talk about vulnerable groups like immigrant youth (Gordon 2006), but is even true for ‘ordinary Japanese kids.’

A similar critique applies to studies on educational reform: Young people are almost invisible. Therefore I decided to look at studies on youth culture from a more analytical perspective and included the question of perspective into the description of the material above. The results were mixed. The impression grew stronger that the research approach plays an important role on whether the results will contribute to our understanding of young Japanese’ situations and possibly thinking and intentions. Such studies are still missing within the English language discussion.

Immanent, but not explicit, the change in the situation of youths was evident in this literature study. That connects to the final element of the ecological theory of human development: the chronosystem. Bronfenbrenner (1989) added this temporal dimension with relevance to the analysis of youth by taking the dynamism associated with changing youth generations into account. One could take up topics like value change, transformation of youth cohorts, etc., which are however not primarily visible as topics in the reviewed studies. These aspects, which obviously are important in order to grasp the complexity of changing realities of young people, are still open to future analysis.

Finally, we might conclude that the initial impression of a rich literature about youth in Japan has to be downgraded to a more realistic level. Now, just as 20 years ago, we cannot rely only on journal articles, if we want to follow our interest in Japanese youth. We need to search after contributions published in other media, for example in edited volumes and approach the Japanese discussion. There is a trend from the dominant quantitative studies towards more qualitative studies. This includes a change in perspective, where more often the interests of the young people themselves are at the centre of the research (e.g. Genji 2005; Mizuno 2004).