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2007-01-14T02:55:00.000-08:00

The Essay of Chapter 7

　　The main topic White mentioned in this chapter was about sexuality. What I especially found interesting about this chapter was in the paragraph of “Voice of Japanese Teenagers”. In this paragraph White picked up Kazuko, a second –year middle school girl, for example and described the awareness of sexuality of Japanese teenagers. As Kazuko noticed, the big change of relationship between boys and girls will happen between the first and second years in the middle school. I remember that the new topic- about cute girls in same class or in next class- suddenly appeared to our daily conversation, between the first and second years of middle school. Also almost at the same time, boys started to take care about their hair styles. Some of them fixed their hair with hair wax and other dyed their black hair on brown or gold, in order to make themselves look cool to girls. Similarly, some girls also dyed their hair but what majority of girls did at this period was shorten their length of skirt, in order to look prettier. From these experiences, it maybe true that majority of teenagers start to aware of sexuality between first and second grade of middle school. It is also interesting to think about the relationship between boys and girls in high school period. Still majority of both boys and girls try hard to look better to each other, but the topic about girls started to disappear among boys. Some boys having girl friend hesitated to talk about topic of girls because they were likely to been asked questions like, “what is going on with your girl friend recently?” Even some of boys not having girl friend hesitate to talk about girls. If there is no girl in the group, the topic of girls sometime goes to really deep level, so maybe they felt embarrassing. Speaking about girls, the topic of boys does not decline. Girls usually do not speak in depth about their relationship between their boy friend in big group like boys do, so they are less likely to feel embarrassed.

2006-12-22T01:46:00.000-08:00

The Essay of Chapter 6

In chapter6, the author mentioned the formation of groups at school among boys and girls. According to the author, boy’s groups consist of the members who share mutual interests and similarities (more concrete, hobbies), differences are not preferred, or even sometimes excluded. From my experience, author’s argument is true. Usually boys form the distinctive groups about the time when they entered to middle school. These groups could be able to divide in roughly two types. The first group is active group. The members of the group are often vivacious and positive and most of them are belonging to some sports clubs. This group is likely to be the majority group. The second group is relatively passive group. The members of this group are usually less active than the members of the first group and also less sociable. The main hobbies of this group are card games, computer games and reading books. This group will often be the minority group and is likely to be called “otaku” group. The word “otaku” contains some negative images; less friendly, exclusive, having unfamiliar hobbies. It is often the case that the members of “otaku” group are treated badly by the members of the active group and it even sometimes leads to serious bulling.
The main point of girls formation of groups differ from boys one. White claimed, Girl’s groups are not usually made up on common activity but are more concerning about makeup. This is also true; they strongly prefer to stay with someone who has similar personality and habits. The binding among the group members is much stronger than boys. Girls prefer to stay with the members of their group wherever they go to. For example, girls always ask their members to go to bathroom together, and they rarely go there alone. Unlike boys, there are not a group called “otaku” but once a member of group done something against to their group’s preference, she could be ignored by other members and excluded by the group. It sometimes lead to farther serious bulling than boys one.

2006-12-04T15:24:00.000-08:00

The Essay of Chapter 5

The chapter 5 of The Material Child describes the relationships of the marketing industry and the consumers: especially, focused on the teenagers who became the target of marketing industry as a profitable consumer market segment. The book also explains how marketing industry gets close to teens and expands the teen’s market.
According to White, the chief strategies of Japanese marketers to get close to teens is usage of novel methods, which means use katakana to express new trend and nontraditional work characterized by novelty and international flair. I found particular interest in this point. In my opinion, these methods made a large success to attract teens to purchase products, and the effect of the methods is still alive or even becoming stronger these days. For example, in Japan it is often the case that new products are given unfamiliar katakana names which will be able to translate to certain foreign languages, and Japanese companies are importing more and more unfamiliar words that seem attractive and cool to the teens. In fact, these unfamiliar foreign words do sound attractive and cool for teens and therefore those are largely contributing to increase the sales of related products. The funny point about this current is that many teens do not know the exact meaning of those words, even though they are using it in their daily life. Another point that I want to mention is about a material child. It is true that some teens have the tendency to imitate their friend’s ways of clothing, food favors and hobbies. However, this is not often the case nowadays. Growing numbers of teens are trying to get rid of this stereotype and seeking for strong personality. This tendency of seeking own individuality is creating several types of new youth cultures and growing of these cultures will accelerate the youth asking of individuality.

2006-11-09T18:27:00.000-08:00

The Essay of chapter 4

In the book author mentioned about corporal punishment and described that corporal punishment is more likely to happen in juku or yobikou and some private schools than in ordinary public schools. This is not true nowadays. When our grand parents were children, coral punishment was socially accepted as a good method to remedy student’s bad habits or make them to obey school rules. As Japan’s school system of those days was deeply influenced by militarism. However, corporal punishment is no longer accepted these days. More and more people　now consider that punishing students in physical way is child abuse and no more need. So juku or yobikou and privates schools are now really concerned about physical punishment, in order not to lose there customers. As a result, the number of disciplinarian teachers is decreasing and more and more “like a friend” teachers are appearing. Since friendly teachers are not likely to give students strict orders or make them to fix their bad habits, more and more students are being impatient and rude recently. This is one of the biggest problems facing Japan. It is nice not to use physical punishment for fixing student’s bad manners, but not having appropriate punishment is also being a big problem.
Author also refers to senior and junior relationships in the book. Before enter to middle school, students do not really recognize about sempai-kouhai relationships, but after get in to middle school and join a club, students will be set into hierarchy for first time. In this hierarchy kohai have to bow in front of sempai and have to use greetings in polite language. Usually students get used to the new custom quickly as it is necessary to live in this hierarchy. Senior students usually teach how to practice or what to do to junior students. They are playing a role of teacher in the society and usually they are helpful and reliable for junior students. However, there are some senior students fagging or hazing junior students. There is a possibility that these bad treatments will reach to serious level. It largely depends on their senior students whether junior students can enjoy their school lives or not.

2006-11-06T06:26:00.000-08:00

The Essay of Chapter 3

What I thought really interesting about reading chapter 3 of The Material Child was the section describes about the relationship between parents and children in Japan and America.
The book says that Japanese teenagers consider their parents as people they respect most and American teenagers have their respect to their parents too, but public figure such as presidents and rock stars are also able to be their object. But I think recent Japanese teenager’s situation is not same; less and less Japanese teenagers will name their parents as the people they respect. Famous Japanese figures, such as Souseki Natume or Nobunaga Oda are more likely to be named nowadays, though some of them do not know what exactly those giants actually achieved. But it does not mean that Japanese teenagers are losing their respects toward their parents. Most of them simply have not yet recognized how they owe their parents and how they should respect their parents.
Author also mentioned in her book that Japanese children know very little about what their fathers do at work and they usually see fathers on “off time” at home. This fact is largely contributing to children’s unawareness of respects toward their fathers. Once they see their fathers when they are working, it is easy to recognize how their fathers work hard and how they depend on their fathers.
Statistics in the book showed that 56.4 percent of youth in Japan think that the ideal father is friendly and 31.3 percent of youth want a disciplinarian father, while more than 70 percent of America’s children think friend-father is good and only 15 percent want a strict father. Characteristics of fathers are also important fact for their children to respect their parents. Generally disciplinarian fathers are more likely to be respected. As to be respected, a certain degree of mental distance between children and fathers is necessary. Being too close to children will sometimes make it difficult to be respected. From this point, Japanese fathers are more likely to be respected compare to America’s fathers. More and more America’s fathers are considered as their children’s friends rather than the object of respects.

2006-10-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

Hi I made my own blog!!
I wish that someone will give some replies to me笑