What Can the Japanese Do?

Yuko Kawanishi wrote a neat article in year 2004, published in Asian Affairs vol:35, addressing the social psychology and mental health of modern Japanese youth.

At the last part of her paper, she wrote, "What Can the Japanese Do?"

"Japan's accoplishments of the last century have been remarkable. From the abyss at the end of WW2 to the hieghts of the success and self-confidence during the period of the 'bubble economy' the people of Japan had worked very hard to achieve their dreams but they might have done so much too quickly.

Many japanese wanted to erase the past from their memory without fully recovering from the war's traumas. The focus was on tangible achievements such as economic growth and material gain, not on such sentiments as individual sense of well-being. It might simply have taken a while, maybe three generations, for the psychological consequences of these too-rapid social changes to surface.

What was happening at home was pushed aside as something too personal or private to discuss. But the social cost of denying the personal has become too big to ignore any longer. It is time to confront domestic problems, becuase the quality of the home is after all crucially linked to the social and political success of any society. For that so happen, the silent voices of children need to be heard. Family relationships need to be worked on rather than taken for granted. The question is: can the Japanese do it?"


Re: Yuko Kawanishi. Japanese Youth: The other half of the crisis? Asian Affairs. vo;. XXXV, no.1. March 2004.



The reason to put this article forward to you is a hope to challenge our view and thoughts about the observation and opinion which had written by Miss Yuko. With this, I hope to open a floor for discussion.

(I'm afraid we still have to use this site and the facebook column for a while until our net builder, Mr. Justin is more settle after he gets marry tomorrow. :-) Congratulations to your wedding with Miss Izumi! お結婚をおめでとう！）