Political Consequences of Coping Through Escape:

Japanese youth coping with uncertainty

Rafael Munia

Waseda University

Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies

ABSTRACT

The present paper deals with the theme of coping with uncertainty in the context of the

Japanese youth, particularly concerned with their escape strategies and the political

consequences of the adoption of such strategy. Through the observation of a multitude

of narratives from Japanese students with diverse backgrounds, it can be observed how

such students, when faced with some perceived limitations produced by Japanese

institutions, instead of attempting to promote changes in such institutions, naturalized

such thinking as being simply the Japanese way, choosing instead to escape such

institutions to more international ones that they perceive as freer. Although the rigidity

of the discourse on Japaneseness can appear to be a way to cope with the uncertainty

brought by the contemporary age providing stable and fix identities, what is observed

along this paper is how the symbolic misery promoted by such rigid idea of

national-identity actually act as another source of pressure in the youth, that gets trapped

within a schizophrenic reality in which the national discourse asks them to enact a

single model of Japaneseness that they can’t fit in, and the market discourse asks them

to be global and in a constant improvement that never ends but is in constant becoming,

both being prêt-a-porter subjectivities that exists only in their hyper-real sense.

Additionally, the paper concludes, by adopting such strategies, not only the escape is

not realized, but the institutions are further strengthened by the lack of demands for

change.

Keywords: Uncertainty; Japanese Youth; Symbolic Misery; Schizophrenia;

Japaneseness; Neo-liberalism.

1 INTRODUCTION

Many authors have defined our contemporary times by different terms.

Giddens (1991a; 1991b) and Beck (1992) make use of terms such as Late Modernity

and Reflexive Modernity, Lipovetsky (2004) prefers to use the term Hyper-Modernity,

Bauman (2000) coined the term Liquid Modernity, and Lyotard (1984) popularized the

term Post-modernity. However, in most of the works concerning the matter, this age is

considered the age of uncertainty.

This uncertainty caused by the lack of credibility in modern institutions like

the church, the nation, the state, the party, the science, and so on, leaves societies

victims to a kind of permanent malaise. Whereas Baudrillard (1998) points out the raise

of Consumer societies and Lipovetsky (2004) and Bauman (1999) points to the will to

freedom that leads to uncertainty as the consequences of such times, this present article

aims to point out another consequence emerging from within these uncertain times: the

escape as a political strategy.

This paper situates the political strategy of escape in the context of Japan,

through the analysis of some self-narratives adopted by some young Japanese regarding

distinct subjects. While the works of Ueno (2013) and Yuji (2007) study Japanese youth

strategies in the job market, and the narratives collected by the author’s other research

projects deals with migrant political strategies in Japan, gender making, and national

identity discourses; what can be noticed in all of these narratives is the presence of what

can be called an escape strategy.

In addition to these elements, it should also be argued that the age of

uncertainty is also the age in which the lack of trust in the institution of science, state,

party, and church that Lyotard talked about (1984), gives way to a complete trust in the

institution of the market. Indeed, when the literature on post-fordist societies, such as

Gorz (2010), Berardi (2009), Stiegler (2011; 2013), Marazzi (2008; 2011), Virno (2004),

and Negri and Hardt (2001; 2011), is analyzed, it becomes clear how pervasive that

logic of the market became, determining the way people make decisions, value things,

and describe themselves. Thus, one cannot leave the influence of the market outside of

any societal analysis done in contemporary times. It is in this new schizophrenic order

that this article positions the subject of the Japanese youth, since work, argues Negri

and Hardt, has become biopolitical, which means that “living beings as fixed capital are

at the center of this transformation, and the production of forms of life is becoming the

basis of added value” (p. 132, 2011).

Through this new logic, capital has not taken only control of the physical

labor, but also of the affect labor and the cognitive labor. Through the process of this

immaterial forms of production (GORZ, 2010), knowledge and affect become valued by

the market in as much as it produces commercial value. This not only alters the logic of

production, but alters the very logic of knowledge and information. Knowledge now is

no longer a matter of acquiring culture, nor is it aimed as means of understanding the

societal and political relations that surrounds us, rather, knowledge now has become a

matter of adding value to yourself as a workforce. As capital becomes semiotic,

immaterial, affective, it becomes a force of individuation, shaping people’s

subjectivities and, consequently, their goals in life.

When the shift from physical labor to knowledge labor happens, the

working hours, although officially decreasing in most of the world, actually increases in

the sense that it now takes place outside the work place as well. Through the idea of

constant formation, individuals are encouraged to be constantly adding value to

themselves by training, courses, and the like, making learning experience something

related to work. Also, friendship becomes network, and opportunities to make friends

are now considered events for contact building (BAUMAN, 2003). Besides, the

introduction of the E-mail, and more particularly the Smartphone, has produced an

individual that is permanently connected to the workplace, one call or message away

from his/her boss. The work invades the leisure and the resting time.

That is not to say, of course, that the State is no longer an actor of

individuation, since it still produces narratives of national identity, especially through its

social institutions, namely the school system. Especially in the case of Japan, the

national identity narratives, that can be traced since the Meiji period (KINMONTH,

1982), and perhaps peaked during the phase of nihonjinron (BEFU, 2001), are rigidly

emphasized throughout the schooling experience, passing on an ideology of

homogeneity that is perpetuated in the schools through various techniques (OKANO,

2009; SUGIMOTO, 2010).

Besides the literature studied on the malaise of contemporary societies, as

well as on the schizophrenic nature of post-fordist societies and its new relations with

new forms of labor, the present article also engages narratives from Japanese students,

as it can be seen in the methodology section.

2 METHODOLOGY

The present paper comes from the observation of some Japanese students’

narratives that began to show a pattern regarding their strategies to cope with the

limitations they seem to be facing and the strategies they use, or plan to use, to cope

with the uncertainty caused by them. Originally, these narratives were collected to the

purpose of different research projects, but the recurrent escape strategies adopted by the

respondents caught the attention of the author. Why in an age framed as leaving its

inhabitants lost amidst so much alternatives, have produced as the main alternative for

Japanese people the idea of escaping all due to what was perceived as unsurpassable

limitations?

The narratives used in order to better understand the Japanese youth case

consists both of primary data, as well as narratives already present in other studies. The

narratives collected by the author were not from interviews, nor were structured scripts

used. Instead, the author gave preference to a more organic narrative to be produced by

the students, a narrative that usually flowed naturally and gained density according to

the affection of each student with the experience being described. The languages

utilized were sometimes Japanese, sometimes English, and sometimes Portuguese. The

locality of each student experienced varied, as well as the schooling period that they

chose to mention. Rather than investigating a precise period of education, or a precise

area within Japan, the focus of the narratives were more in moments that brought more

affection from the students in question. The narratives presented were the ones that the

students themselves chose to share regarding their strategies to cope with the

uncertainty they felt about their futures. The link between these narratives, and the

literature presented earlier allow the author to work the following analysis.

3 LINKS BETWEEN THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL DIMENSIONS

When the idea of limitations appeared in the narratives consulted by the

author, although already expected as of the migrants’ speeches, the presence of such

feelings coming from the Japanese youth was quite surprising. Most of the narratives

considered by the author were not from students that have had a lack of opportunities.

In fact, most of them have had international experiences of some sort, and some of them

are even framed by other studies as being “elite Japanese” (UENO, 2013). What, then,

seems to be causing this feeling of limitation that causes so much uncertainty to this

Japanese youth?

Ueno (2013) shows, in her analysis of Japanese female graduates in elite

universities, that there is a pattern among the narratives she had collected. The female

students interviewed showed a preference to work in international companies. When

asked the reasons for such preference, the students seemed assured of their motivations.

They associate International companies with freedom, Japanese companies with rigidity,

International companies with equality, Japanese companies with sexism, International

companies with mobility, Japanese companies with hierarchy, International companies

with meritocracy, Japanese companies with seniority.

The point here is not to attain to whether such descriptions of international

companies and Japanese companies are accurate or not. Rather, it is to show the shaping

of perception and affects of those female students towards what is presented to them as

legitimate means to achieve success. As it can be seem, in this case there are no lack of

opportunity to attain to a legitimate mean, not only that, the students are even

confronted with the question about which of the legitimate means they would chose.

But if this is about the part regarding their means to success, what is success itself to

them?

Through Ueno’s (2013) presentation of her interviewees’ narratives, one

could argue another pattern that her work did not concerned so much with, which is the

idea of the neoliberal self. These students self-narratives seems to incorporate the

tenements of neoliberalism quite well, the idea of knowledge and cultural capital as

added value (NEGRI and HARDT, 2011) to self in the pursuit of a place in the

company, which itself adds value to the individual in society. To understand this, the

description of Negri and Hardt (2011) of biopolitical capitalism as a shift for producing

not only material products, but also life forms, is crucial. When capitalism begins to

function as a life form, dues to its new form of affect and knowledge labors, the process

of individuation begin to be shaped by the logic of the market. People themselves

become products that should be marketed, ironically, to the market. And if on one side

companies advertise their products in order for individuals to buy it, individuals

advertise themselves in order for companies to hire them. It is in this sense that some

narrative patterns appear in the work of Ueno.

Many of their interviewees define their goals in life in terms of not only

financial success, but also in terms of being recognized for their talents. Recognition

especially from two sources, one being the market, since the interviewees want to be

promoted and climb the corporate ladder, thus addressing importance to a place in

which they can get access to quicker promotions based on meritocracy; the other being

of their peers, since many address envy and a desire to compete and prove to be able to

keep up with their colleagues, with some feeling frustrated to see their friends already

working, while they are still just studying, and that they wish to be able to get a job to

keep up with them. Thus, both the market and the peer pressure act as producers of

uncertainty, the first asks them to be constantly improving themselves in a never ending

fashion in order to get a recognition that only exists in its becoming form, they are never

recognized by the market, because the process never ends, and the staircase never

reaches the top; the second constantly demand they keep up, to never be left behind, to

constantly maintain a standard. In the end, they get caught up in a system that does not

allow them to stay slow, but that also makes the goal of reaching an unreachable top,

making them live in constant uncertainty.

One of the bases for those students to prefer international companies rather

than Japanese companies was that it was considered by them that the promotions were

based on meritocracy rather than seniority. Genda Yuji (2007) in his explanation of the

current mismatches between the reality of Japanese youth and the Japanese companies

system has demonstrated the rigidity with which Japanese companies behave.

Very resistant to change, those companies have failed to cope with the

reality of contemporary times. Japanese companies operate according not to the logic of

the neoliberal global companies, rather, it still constantly refuses to hire global human

resources arguing that having to train international student would be troublesome, and it

would be easier to rely on Japanese students who have already embodied Japanese

customs, and therefore, know how to operate in a Japanese company.

What we can see here is also a form of biopolitics; however, it is one form

of biopolitics that relies much more on the national identity discourse than on the

discourse of the capital. The idea of a cultural capital (BOURDIEU, 1998) of knowing

how to act Japanese, relies on a certain model of Japaneseness. A model shaped

especially during the Meiji Era (KINMONTH, 1982), and which model of essentialism

and homogeneity was further shaped by theories known as nihonjinron (BEFU, 2001).

Of the many vehicles utilized to spread such ideology, one of them is of particular

interest to the author: the school. This is explained not only by the theory on the subject

of Japanese education (OKANO, 2009; YOSHIMOTO, 2010) and how education plays

a central role in the production of subjectivities reflecting power interests of those who

shape its curriculum (BOURDIEU, 1998, 2004; GIROUX, 2001), but also since it is the

main location of the experiences shared from the students that the author had contact

with.

One of the narratives worth mentioning comes from a Japanese student that

has been through Relaxed Education1 program during public elementary and junior

high school. Although describing her experience with such pedagogical style as being

free and with no constraints to what she wished doing, she does mentioned that during

that time she felt troubled by her relationship with the children around her, not being

able to made many friendships because of her stubbornness2 and assertive personality

3.

The justification for such outcome, she says, is that, after all, Japanese are a race in

which you cannot go on without reading between the lines4.

Here what first draws the attention is how this difficulty to get along with

the Japanese around is not being considered a problem regarding the school, but rather,

just the way Japanese are. This normalization of Japanese traits as natural goes on when

she says that Japanese culture is the culture of finding virtue in the beauty of harmony

and co-operation rather than individuality, in a way to explain why, according to her,

pedagogical programs that take into account the introduction of diversity would have

little to none effect in the domestic reality. Many aspects in such narrative are worth

discussing. First, how the interviewee considers Japan and the Japanese so naturally

prone to reject diversity and individuality, even though she herself, a Japanese, have

embraced it. This description of the populace as being alien to diversity almost as by

blood, even though not including oneself in such predicament, can be argued to be

already a way to deal with uncertainty?

1ゆとり教育

2考えを曲げない

3我の強い性格

4空気を読まない

On one hand, it could be argued that in a Schizophrenic (DELEUZE and

GUATTARI, 1987; 2009) context of a society divided between the rigidity of the

nation-state and the fluidity of the market, Japanese could be using the rigid narrative of

national-identity to cope with the uncertainty brought by neo-liberalism and the market,

since for Lipovetsky (2005) this contemporary age is the age of individualism, and thus,

the past certainty in a shared identity would be lost. Kosaku (1998) even argues that

such self-narratives of Japanese as something unique, making use of racialism in a sort

of nihonjinron revival, got stronger precisely in the era of globalization and

neo-liberalism as Japanese felt the need to deal with the crescent contact with the

international. He cites especially the business elites as having played a non-negligible

role in popularizing and disseminating these theories under the guise of cross cultural

manuals. He calls cross cultural manuals things like handbooks, English-learning

materials, and glossaries that deal in one way or another with the distinctiveness of

Japanese society in the contexts of business and management practices, everyday

lifestyle, ‘untranslatable’ Japanese expressions and so on. Thus, to rely on a fix and

rigid identity pre-set can be seen as a practical way to cope with uncertainty and relying

on more fix and stable notions of self and society. However, this explanation leaves out

the fact that such rigid identities are not representative of how people really are, and

thus, can be say to be another form of causing anxiety and uncertainty, rather than a

form to cope with them.

The rigidity of Japanese discourses of national identity and what it means to

be Japanese has resisted the changes in the society itself, ignoring the minorities, the

globalizing effects of interconnectivity and mobility and the development of liquid

identities (BAUMAN, 2000, 2001, 2011). Given that, the youth individual is quite

aware of the discourse on Japanese identity, and sees how surrounded one is by such

norms; however, the individual does not necessarily share such characteristics. Since the

idea of Japaneseness in Japan suffers from what Stiegler (2011, 2013) called Symbolic

Misery5, it can be argued that alternative modes of Japaneseness are difficult to be

imagined, so that the inability to cope with such model does not necessarily reflect a

consciousness of difference, but rather, it can reflect an inability of being Japanese.

When one does not feel one shares the characteristics of what is framed as Japanese, but

at the same time is not able to imagine oneself as being part of alternative modes of

Japaneseness, what is left is to imagine oneself as not being able to be Japanese. Thus,

the rigid notion of Japaneseness, rather than comforting, actually produces uncertainty

as well. In other interviewees’ narratives, this could be clearly identified.

In one case, the fact that the student could not thrive in school and work was

related to a perceived lack of Japaneseness. The perception that the source for not being

able to succeed in the study and work life is a lack of a certain cultural capital of

knowing how to behave as Japanese leads to self-blaming. It reflects the same logic of

some of Ueno’s (2013) interviewees: if the other Japanese friends can do it, why can’t

she? She must not be Japanese enough. The fact, of course, is not a lack of

Japaneseness, but a more than natural presence of a different form of Japaneseness that

is not recognized in its difference. Another narrative of a student with international

schooling background, complained about friends who, during a reunion of past school

colleagues, had commented on some of her behaviors as not proper for a Japanese.

Another interviewee frequently mentioned how her family usually told her “but you are

Japanese” as a response to some of her behavior.

5 Misère Symbolique

The fact that many Japanese, even when in contact with different forms of

Japaneseness, still rely on the argument of it not being Japanese can be better

understood by the concept of heteronomous societies from Castoriadis (1997).

According to him, heteronomous societies attribute their imaginaries, and

national-identity is an imaginary as Anderson (2006) shows us, to an extra-social

authority. Not only Befu’s (2001) work show us how the narrative of national identity

often relies more on essentialist views rather than on socially constructed ones, the

narratives presented also show such ideas. It also shows how some Japanese detach

themselves from their access on Japaneseness. The narrative is not constructed within

the argument of how they represent a form of Japaneseness and I represent another,

something that the work of Lourenção (2010) also shows, but rather that such

characteristics are the characteristics of Japan, and I am simply exposing them. In

Lourenção’s study of the machines of Japaneseness6, he argues that the construction of

Japaneseness requires machines that can activate something he calls

becoming-Japanese7. Since such becoming could be activated by different machines,

each machine can, thus, produce different forms of Japaneseness. However, even

throughout his argumentation, Lourenção is aware that this is not how the idea of

Japaneseness is often seem by both the “Japanese” as well as by the “non-Japanese”.

However, the continuation of the first narrative present takes a turn after the

interviewee refers to her experience in high school. Now, she says that, when facing

high school, she noticed what the author has framed to her as Education aimed at

building the ‘right Japanese’8. At this moment she says that the education has shifted

towards a single objective, to get the students inside famous universities, usually Tokyo

University9. She proceeds to explain that this happens because Japan is still a society

that relies on educational background10

in which more than the grades obtained or the

content learned, what matters is which university you attended. Here she gives her

version of what is the Japanese model of success: you go to a good university, you get

in a good company; this is the way11

. Her experience with such ideology is explained

next, when after an open campus visit she felt inclined to join another university, an

international oriented university, after being confronted by some questions after such

visit. However, the new decision to take such university as her goal did not pleased her

teacher who obliged her to take the National universities and the famous private

universities as priority, since, according to her, the university she intended to take was

not famous enough. At this moment she described her feelings as taking a test not for

herself, but for the sake of the school’s reputation.

Again, some conclusions can be taken from this. First, the conceptualization

of Japan as still a society that relies on education background as the most important

form of cultural capital can be argued to show a certain feeling of anachronism in such a

characteristic. To say it is still something means it still hasn’t changed, and it can be

argued that it also demonstrates a desire for such a change to happen, or an expectation

that it already should have. The other conclusion that can be taken comes from the final

6 Máquina de operação de japonesidades

7 Devir-Nipônico

8「正しい日本人」を作るための教育

9 Emphasis added by the interviewee

10学歴社会

11良い大学を出て、良い会社で働くのが正しい

part of such narrative, when the conclusion reached is that the test was taken for the

school, and not for the student. Here it becomes explicit the idea of how the individual

refuses to take it as its goal, framing it instead as the institution’s goal, thus,

differentiating the two categories and already pointing out to some of the limitations felt.

Here again, as in the case of the narratives collected by Ueno (2013), the rigid Japanese

institution acts producing the limitation, and the more international university, as the

international company, acts as an escape opportunity from Japan.

The people in the narratives presented opted to escape from such path of

prestigious schools and prestigious universities because they are pursuing a different

goal than those offered to them as being the goals of the successful Japanese. Their

goals are not the goals centered in a national identity and a rigid discourse of

Japaneseness, their goals are centered in a neoliberal ideology of the successful

individual, that relies on more individualistic goals, but that are still valued in relations

to both their peers and the market. Then the idea of the Schizophrenic is crucial to

understand such phenomenon. The escape here, or what Deleuze and Guattari (1987;

2009) would call the deterritorialization from the national narrative of success, is

quickly reterritorialized in the form of a neoliberal narrative of success, thus, even

though the limitations felt by these Japanese youth regarding the rigid national model

led them to adopt strategies of escape, this is a an incomplete escape, since one can, by

international schools, international universities, and international companies, escape

some Japanese institutions of education (national schools and universities) and work

(Japanese companies). However, the Japanese social expectations remain on the society

at large. What is here produced, then, is not the case of liberation or autonomy, but the

adherence of the individual to two different and conflicting set of expectations, the

national and the neoliberal, thus reinforcing the Deleuzian and Guattarian idea of

schizophrenia and leaving the Japanese youth stuck in a system that has two sources

producing expectations and uncertainties for them to cope with.

4 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

It can be argued, after the theoretical consideration and the analyses of the

narratives presented, that the escape strategy used by the Japanese youth to cope with

the uncertainties presented to them have political consequences. The symbolic misery

(STIEGLER, 2011 , 2013) produced by Japanese schools regarding the models of

Japaneseness, that fails to see the becoming aspect of Japaneseness (LOURENÇÃO,

2010) and its multitude of modes of individuation, ends up transforming the Japanese

society in a heteronomous society (CASTORIADIS, 1997) that sees its characteristics

not as being socially constructed, but rather, as being natural and immutable. If such

categories are considered to be immutable, the consciousness and desire to change them

are unlikely to be produced.

On the other hand, the new forms of labor that demands affects and

knowledge to be at the service of the market (BERARDI, 2009; MARAZZI, 2008,

2011; VIRNO, 2004) produces a biopolitical capitalism that produces life forms

(NEGRI and HARDT, 2001, 2011), and that makes individuals and their knowledge to

be valued according to the values that are given to them by the market (GORZ, 2010).

This is what opens the way to the creation of a new expectations to be

attained by individuals that does not supersede, but appears in addition to the one

constructed by the national-identity narrative. Although, it should be mentioned, this

only represents an incomplete escape from the Japanese youth from one set of

expectation to the other, since society does not exist within only one realm, but rather,

within both of them combined. It is in this Schizophrenic condition (DELEUZE and

GUATTARI, 1987, 2009) that the Japanese youth finds themselves, one in which the

limitations caused by the rigidity of the national norms causes them to escape, but also

to be soon reterritorialized by the market in its neo-liberal form.

Not only are these escapes quickly reterritorialized, but by choosing to

escape such Japanese institutions rather than changing them, the Japanese youth are

emptying such institutions of any presence of different thinking and demand for change.

When the female elite students from Ueno’s study (2013) chose to escape to

international companies because Japanese companies are not considered by them to be

good to female employees, then such Japanese companies no longer have these

unsatisfied women to deal with, demanding changes and proving to be equally capable.

When students that disagree with the rigid models of Japanese schools chose to move to

more international schools and international universities, Japanese schools and

universities no longer have to deal with students demanding their teachers and

professors to take different approaches in class, and such students are no longer there to

serve as an example of difference to their peers. If these institutions no longer have to

deal with dissident thinking, then why would they choose to be more open and less

rigid?

This strategy of escape actually ends up collaborating with the symbolic

misery and forming what could be called ideology ghettos, in which different ideas are

no longer confronted and debated, but are rather separated institutionally from the many

institutions available in the open market of institutions. If more and more Japanese

young people decide to adopt this strategy to cope with the uncertainties brought about

by the schizophrenic nature that bombards them with expectations to be rigidly

Japanese and flexibly International at the same time, preferring to live in a smaller

world with only like minded people and excluded from difference, then they should

know that the consequences of such choice will be a further strengthening of the now

unchallenged ideas from a Japan they chose to escape from. At every step they take

back from these institutions, these institutions quickly take a step forward occupying the

now free territory. It will be a time that the youth will no longer have enough space to

take impulse and push those rigid institutions away back to where they were before.

Every day those institutions go unchallenged, is a day they got stronger. Perhaps it is

time to start occupying their space and challenge them.

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