DIJ NEWSLETTER

DIJNEWSLETTER

ISSN 1433-6685

Information from the German Institute for Japanese Studies

DIJ Newsletter FEBRUARY 2006 1

27

February 2006

The legal norm looks different. Natu-rally, Japan also has a road traffic act(dōro kōtsūhō), and it isn’t even all thatdifferent from the one in Germany. Itstipulates that traffic lights apply to allroad users (§7), that all vehicles includ-ing bikes must drive on the left-handside of the road (§18), and that stop-ping on an intersection or a pedestriancrossing and within 5 meters of one areforbidden (§44).

An offence against these rules re-sults in harsh punishments – at least intheory, that is. Ignoring a red trafficlight can cost a cyclist 50 000 Yen orlead to 3 months imprisonment atmost. Motorists, too, can be made topay large sums for an offence againsttraffic rules: The highest possibledrink-driving charge, for example, hasjust recently been upped to 500 000Yen. And the road traffic act even ap-plies to taxi drivers.

But before 8 p.m., hardly a taxi

driver turns on his lights. Traffic signs,pedestrian crossings, and parking pro-hibitions are often ignored by every-one. But, if you look closely enough,there is a system in what seems liketotal inordinateness: unwritten normsthat markedly diverge from the writtenlaws.

Right of Way for Mothers

Some offences against traffic rules areso common that they’ve become con-vention. If nearly everyone thinks “Imight not make it across the lights be-cause of that lame duck,” then a lightthat has turned red within the last 3seconds is virtually still green (in Ger-many the fine increases after a second).Accordingly, the start of the greenphase is also delayed – an importantmeasure of security especially for pe-destrians.

Social factors play an important

role in regard to road conduct. And sotaxi drivers have their own specialrules: They’re allowed to roar over anintersection just a little bit later thanothers, can take their liberty with rightof way, and are allowed to change lanesabruptly and without signaling. Mosttaxi drivers are elderly gentlemen inill-fitting suits. Their average age lies atabove 60 years. The generation, then,on whose back Japan managed to be-come the economic number one. Aninadequate pension system forcesthem to drive taxis today. “Somehowyou could feel sorry for them!” A caseof a collective bad conscience?

Mothers with heavily laden bicy-cles, 2 children plus groceries and anumbrella balancing on the wrong sideof Dvthe road without their lights on.Ditto. They’re the hope for the future.Those children are important (for ourpensions, so that we don’t end as taxidrivers). We’re grateful to the mother.But drive carefully now.

This discrepancy between theoryand practice, between written trafficlaws and practical conduct on thestreets can be found not only amongroad users, but also within the policeforce – who should, after all, watchover the rules being followed.

Table of Contents

Title Story 1

Current Research 3

DIJ Events 3

DIJ Publications 5

Working papers 7

Book Review 7

Other Matters / Outlook 8

German Institute for Japanese StudiesManaging editor: Harald Dolles3-3-6 Kudan-Minami Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0074, JapanTel.: +81-3-3222-5077Fax: +81-3-3222-5420E-mail: [email protected]: http:�www.dijtokyo.org

All the Wrong Signs

By Isa Ducke and Natascha Thoma

“But bicycles are allowed to go when it’s red!”, the white haired lady callsfrom her scooter. She sounds almost angry. We ignore her shooing gestureand send her a friendly smile.

In Tokyo, bicycles are also allowed on the footpath, or on the right-handside of the road, or to drive without lights at night. That, at least, is thepracticed norm.

Picture by Isa Ducke

2 DIJ Newsletter FEBRUARY 2006

It isn’t uncommon to see a policemancycling along on the wrong side of theroad. And in most cases traffic police-men ignore smaller violations of theroad traffic act such as stopping in themiddle of a pedestrian crossing. Theleeway they have leaves room for ar-bitrary actions by the police – for ex-ample when they make sure that bicy-cle couriers and motorcyclists stick tothe written law more rigidly than oth-ers.

Chaos or Everything Half as Bad?

The written and effectively practicedtraffic rules differ more in Japan than inmany other countries. By not interven-ing, Japanese transport policy under-lines this difference. Does such a systemlead to chaos and arbitrariness? Orcould it possibly be that things workbetter than in places where everyonesticks to the laws?

That legal and practical normsaren’t congruent isn’t that unusual. InGermany, too, it is regarded as absurd

for a pedestrian to stop at a lonely redlight in the middle of the night. Butthese differences usually apply to thelaws with the least consequences andlowest fines. Perhaps noisy teenagersare charged 5 Euro for disregardingred lights more often than elderly la-dies in Germany. That is arbitrarinesstoo, but not on the same level as asystem in which even massive speed-ing, reckless driving, and ignoringsomeone’s right of way with poten-tially fatal consequences can bejudged as falling “within the [unwrit-ten] norm” by the police.

The damage to property and per-sons by unlawful road conduct in Ja-pan appears astonishingly low: Thenumber of accidents may be continual-ly on the increase, but the number ofroad deaths has decreased in the pastfew years – not least due to the drastictightening of the laws. Compared withother OECD countries, the figures evenappear low.

But these numbers are to be takenwith a pinch of salt. In Japan, a road

death is classified as such if the persondies within 24 hours of the accident (inmost OECD-countries the timeframe is30 days). The number of road accidentslisted in Japanese statistics only in-cludes those with damage done to per-sons. Accidents with property damageare usually not reported to the police atall to avoid higher insurance rates.

In addition to the danger on lifeand limb come the disdainful delays,inconveniences, and breathing difficul-ties that result from traffic jams andincorrectly parked cars. But is it all justabout personal displeasure? Our ownobservations have shown that there arenever less than 3 parked cars on To-kyo’s streets per kilometer of no park-ing zone. The police force tries to fightthem with halfhearted campaigns of“Let’s park correctly!”-slogans.

Unfortunately, hardly any studies onthe damage to the economy exist. Ac-cording to estimates of the TransportMinistry, labor time lost due to trafficjams alone amounts to 30 hours perperson and year. A total of 3.8 billionhours – although a third of all pas-senger kilometers are covered bytrain.Mutual consideration in traffic natural-ly improves road safety. But an across-the-board high level of tolerance re-garding offences against the law hasnothing to do with consideration. Onthe contrary – it heightens the risk foreveryone. And the unwritten, prac-ticed norms are especially hard tograsp for foreigners, while the dualnorm system also leaves leeway for ar-bitrariness. Precious labor time is un-necessarily lost.

For 2006, we hope that the policeenforce the new traffic laws more rigid-ly. We will continue to stop at red trafficlights, even on our bicycles, and weresolve to enlighten white haired ladieson scooters on the road traffic act infuture.

One cannot park on this street. Picture by Isa Ducke

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Dead Accidents Injured

Road accidents and victims in Japan, 1995–2005. Source: National Police Agency, http://www.npa.go.jp

Killed per 100,000 of population

Accidents involving injury permillion passangerkilometers

Austria 12 5.26

Denmark 8 0.09

Germany 8 0.39

Greece 19 0.53

Japan 7 0.77

Norway 6 0.13

United Kingdom 6 0.30

United States 15 0.29

Road accidents and victims in selected OECD countries. Source: OECD 2005, http://www.oecd.org


Transfer of Institutional Characteris-tics and Management Practices inSports — From European Footballto the Development of ProfessionalFootball in Japan

In this exploratory research project,Harald Dolles (DIJ) and Sten Soder-man (Stockholm University, School ofBusiness) will place professional foot-ball in Japan in the context of the globalspread of the football business. Euro-pean football clubs were largely ownedand run as a hobby until the 1980swhen they became a large, high-pro-file, for-profit industry. Top teams lefttheir traditional local areas, and havenow become national and globalbrands. They have created a fan basearound the globe, and with increasedcoverage of the games on local TV net-works worldwide, international sup-porters are able to follow their teamsand favourite players. Geographicalmarket expansion especially towardsEast Asia has opened up new possibil-ities for merchandising and sponsor-ship in the football business, and con-siderable amounts have been offeredby top teams to attract the best playersworldwide.

When, in the late 1980s, the idea ofa professional football league started tomaterialize in Japan (the so called J-League), foundation committee mem-bers made an extensive study of pro-fessional sports models in the USA andEurope, finally deciding on a modeltailored to their preferences. By exam-ining the implementation as well as theimmediate and sustainable success ofthe J-League during their first decadeas a neglected research example,Harald Dolles and Sten Soderman willchallenge existing assumptions about“the game” in Europe with the institu-tional arrangements, various interests,and parties involved in the practiceand consumption of football in Japan.This may shed light —also with refer-ence to other industries — on the con-ditions as well as the necessity for ad-justments in transferring institutionaland organizational practices abroad.

A conceptual framework of profes-sional sports management is elaborat-ed on with Japan in mind. This net-work of value captures identifies anddefines the business parameters of pro-fessional football that vary from thoseof any other business. The frameworkincludes the following dimensions: (1)the product and its features, (2) the var-ious customer groups, and (3) the vi-sion of the future of the club that iscentral to different levels of strategy

aggregation. Knowing how these valuecapture dimensions are interlinked issignificant and has practical relevanceand importance. To advance the empir-ical analysis further the value captureswill be organized along two additionaldimensions: the extent of “virtuality”as well as the spatial spread into local,regional, and international or globalbusiness. Finally, two dominatingtrends in the football business will beelaborated upon: (1) exploring globalmarkets, and (2) developing the indi-vidual club as a global brand.

Following DIJ Working Papers areavailable on this research project:

05/6 Harald Dolles and Sten Soder-man: Implementing a ProfessionalFootball League in Japan – Chal-lenges to Research in InternationalBusiness

05/5 Harald Dolles and Sten Soder-man: Ahead of the Game – The Net-work of Value Captures in Profes-sional Football

DIJ and Institute of Asian Affairs(Hamburg): Environmental Dia-logue of German and Japanese CivilSociety Actors(Tokyo, February 7, 2006)

Environmental protection is a much-discussed topic, and when it comes upin Japan, reference is often made toGermany as a role model, or “environ-mentally advanced” country. On theother hand, Japan can also offer someimpulses for the German environmen-tal discourse.

As a part of the initiative “Germanyin Japan 2005/2006”, Isa Ducke fromthe DIJ organised a symposium withpanel discussion, bringing together ex-

perts from both the research communi-ty and citizens’ movements to discussconcrete environmental measures thatcan be implemented by the citizens ofboth countries.

In the morning sessions, four ex-perts from Japan and Germany intro-duced the environmental movementsin their respective counties. They gavebroad overviews and introduced ex-amples of work done by environmen-tal activists. The afternoon session be-gan with a keynote speech by writerand environmental activist Alex Kerrthat was the starting point for an in-tense panel discussion in which otherspecialists joined the presenters. In di-alogue with the audience, the panelistsdiscussed what environmental activ-ists in both countries could learn fromeach other. Topics included not onlythe differences between Japan and Ger-many and the applicability of strate-gies in each country, but also the poten-tial for international cooperationamong citizens active in environmen-tal movements.

DIJ and Japan Investor Relationsand Investor Support Inc. (Tokyo):Mergers & Acquisitions – Reshapingthe Industrial Landscape in Japanand Germany (Tokyo, February 27, 2006)

Mergers and acquisitions of enterpris-es and business units play an increas-ingly important role in Japan and Ger-many, though the merger intensity(measured as the transactions’ overallvolume in relation to a country’s grossnational product) is lower than in a lotof other developed countries, for in-stance the Netherlands, Great Britainand the U.S. The reasons for this are tobe found in different inter-firm rela-tions and management structures.Nevertheless, the Japanese and theGerman economies are undergoingdrastic changes that are influencingmergers and acquisitions.

This was thestarting pointfor this confer-ence whichdealt with thequestion of howthe latest devel-opments in le-gal systems, incapital marketsand in bank-firm relation-ships are influ-encing mergersand acquisi-tions in Japanand Germany.

Current Research

DIJ Events

Environmental dialogue of German and Japanese civil society actors


The venue began with lectures onthe framework for mergers and acqui-sitions in Germany. Christian Kirchner(Humboldt University) took a criticallook at M&A-related developments inGerman and European communitylaw. He argued that while German le-gal developments closely follow thosein European Community law, they arenot exactly the same in all aspects. Eu-ropean Community law facilitatescross-border mergers but enforcesstrict merger-control rules, and thetake-over law will create a well-de-fined market for corporate control inEurope (and in Germany). The indus-trial framework, namely the dissolu-tion of Germany’s industrial relationsas they were when they constituted“Germany Inc.”, was explained byMartin Schulz (Fujitsu Research Insti-tute). Obviously, Germany’s tradition-al links between financial institutionsand manufacturing companies areweakening – at least with regard toshareholdings. Combined with this is ashift from domestic restructuring tostrategic investment, and the buildingof EU-wide production and distribu-tion networks.

In the second session, two casestudies showed how companies actu-ally pursue mergers and acquisitions –not only in Japan and Germany, but ona worldwide scale. James Minney(Meiji Dresdner Asset Management,MDAM) explained the investor’s per-spective, stressing that mergers and ac-quisitions have to increase shareholdervalue, and that for MDAM, corporategovernance, especially increasing themonitoring function, is essential for thedevelopment of M&A. MargretSuckale (Deutsche Bahn AG) ex-plained how the once state-monopolyrailway developed into a modern lo-gistics service provider, through acqui-sitions amongst other things. An expla-nation of the economic rationale

behind Deutsche Bahn’s acquisition ofthe American company Bax was givenalong with practical examples from theintegration.

The afternoon program consistedof a panel discussion and an extensivequestion and answer session. The pan-el was comprised of German and Japa-nese company representatives and re-searchers who shared their views onmergers and acquisitions. Martin Ar-nold (PricewaterhouseCoopers) in hiscomments on the new Japanese corpo-rate law and tax laws stated that thenew measures will generally allow formore flexibility in implementing reor-ganizations in Japan. However, majorparts of the new Japanese CorporateLaw which are of relevance for foreigncompanies planning to engage in M&Atransactions in Japan have been de-layed by one year – which may giveJapanese companies the opportunity toprotect themselves from takeovers.

Jochen Legewie (CNC Japan) em-phasised that communication is cru-cial for the success of industrial merg-ers – both at the time of the announce-ment and even more so during the fol-lowing weeks, months and years. Inthe initial stages, the focus lies on ex-ternal communications. But successfulintegration is only possible with thecareful implementation of an effectiveinternal employee communicationsprogram.

Yoshio Osawa (Mizuho Securitiesand J-IRIS) elaborated on one of themost spectacular M&A cases in Japan’srecent history – the take-over bid ofLivedoor for Fuji TV. Osawa said, how-ever, that the Livedoor case was ratherabnormal for Japan’s industrial struc-ture and capital market.

Marcel Tyrell (Wharton School,University of Pennsylvania, and Goe-the University, Frankfurt) stated thatthe German financial system was un-dergoing a transition from a bank-

based system to amore capital mar-ket-oriented fi-nancial system.This process is on-going, and inter-estingly enough,U.S.-based invest-ment banks likeGoldman Sachsand Morgan Stan-ley, as well as theDeutsche Bank,are stepping uptheir GermanM&A activities.

Tomomi Yano(Pension FundAssociation Ja-pan) elaborated

on the role of pension funds in mergersand acquisitions, pointing out that thedevelopment of the stock market in Ja-pan has an enormous influence on thelayout of M&A. Yano suggested thatthe Tokyo Stock Exchange should bereformed – in order to further improvethe situation.

Masaru Yoshimori (University ofthe Air, Emeritus Professor, YokohamaNational University) spoke on “WhyJapan Should Not Imitate the Anglo-Saxon System”, with particular refer-ence to the idea that managers and em-ployees together create the value of thecorporation, and that M&A attempts,friendly or hostile, will not lead to anenhanced corporate value unless theyincrease the welfare of corporate em-ployees first and only later increasecorporate and shareholder value.

The conference, jointly organisedby DIJ, Andreas Moerke, and Japan In-vestor Relations and Investor Support,Inc., was part of the initiative “Germa-ny in Japan 2005/2006”. We gratefullyacknowledge the financial support ofPricewaterhouseCoopers and the lo-gistic support provided by the EU-Ja-pan Centre for Industrial Cooperation,the German Chamber of Industry andCommerce in Japan, and JETRO. Thepresentations will be made availableon the DIJ website.

DIJ-Forum: Glenda Roberts, Profes-sor, Waseda University: Work/lifebalance in corporate Tokyo: WhoseWork? Whose Life? Whose Balance?

(December 15, 2005)

Since the early 1990s, in its efforts toshore up the birthrate, the Japanesegovernment has put forth numerouspolicies designed to help families har-monize work and family life, and hasencouraged firms to implement thesepolicies. One could say that the gov-ernment is trying to revolutionizeJapanese gender practices. GlendaRoberts, through analysis of casestudies from two large firms in Tokyo,has explored the extent to which har-monization is possible for career em-ployees, and her lecture traced thedifferences in corporate environmentand attitudes toward employee de-velopment in the two firms. Besidesexplaining differences in rationalesfor implementing policies, Robertssought to document some of the gen-dered aspects of work/life balance,pointing out the reasons why piece-meal attempts toward gender equali-ty do little to achieve a real quality oflife for male and female “corporatewarriors.”Tyrell, Legewie, Arnold, Osawa, Yano, Yoshimori, Moerke


DIJ-Forum: Katsuyuki Yakushiji,Chief Editor of the monthly maga-zine RONZA (Asahi Shinbun): For-eign Policy and Nationalism in Con-temporary Japan

(January 16, 2006)

While Prime Minister Koizumi waspartly successful in reforming the Japa-nese economic system and the organi-zation of the LDP, his foreign policy putdiplomatic relations with China andSouth Korea at great risk. In particular,his visits to Yasukuni Shrine were criti-cized as both a means to glorify theAsia-Pacific War and as symbolic actsto justify the Japanese invasion and col-onization of Asia. Mr. Koizumi’s insist-ence in this matter and the ensuing re-fusals of both Chinese and Koreanheads of government to meet with him,point to the seriousness of the situationand the danger of Japan becoming in-creasingly isolated in Northeast Asia.In his lecture, Yakushiji argued that theJapanese public needs to acknowledgethis development as a homemade his-torical problem. Still, many Japanesedon’t agree with the claims made byChina and South Korea, but insteadharshly criticize both countries. Manyweekly magazines and TV tabloidshows have stirred nationalist feeling,releasing a virtual flood of emotionalwritings strongly rebuking Japan’sneighbouring countries. Politicianshave been catering to the spreading na-tionalist trend. To see a real change inJapanese public opinion,Yakushiji ar-gued, sufficient education on Japanesewar-time history in Asia is indispensa-ble. In his lecture Yakushiji explored thehistorical and political background ofthese phenomena and suggested someways to deal with foreign policy andnationalism in contemporary Japan.

DIJ-Forum: Jean-Pascal Bassino, Re-search Fellow, Maison Franco-Japonaise: Regional Inequality in Ja-pan: Income, Health, Life Style, andStature

(February 9, 2006)

Bassino made a presentation about re-gional inequality in 20th century Japan.Japan’s high-speed economic growth inthe second half of the 20th century wasaccompanied by a rapid convergence inregional income. The main causes ofthis income convergence were migra-tions and the accumulation of publiccapital in rural areas, catch-up in pro-duction technology, and a narrowing ofthe gap in human capital. However, in-come is only one measure of welfare;other indicators such as as life expectan-cy, nutritional status, health conditions,

and the average stature of children andadults can also be used to assess varia-tions in the biological welfare of the Jap-anese population. Because the averagestature of a population reflects the cu-mulative influence of the nutritionalstatus and health conditions during ges-tation, infancy, childhood, and adoles-cence, it is one of the best indicators ofbiological welfare.

Annette Schad-Seifert, GabrieleVogt (eds.): Japanstudien: Jahrbuchdes Deutschen Instituts für Japan-studien „Deutschland in Japan“[“Germany in Japan”], vol. 17. Mu-nich: Iudicium, 2005, 318 pp. (ISBN3-89129-380-1; ISSN 0938–6491)

On the occasion of the initiative “Ger-many in Japan 2005/2006” volume 17of Japanstudien is dedicated to the re-lations between Japan and Germany inthe modern era. Since the Meiji periodboth countries have enjoyed continu-ous periods of contact that have led toprocesses of mutual reception and co-operation in culture, science, econom-ics, and politics. This volume shedslight on the historical background ofthese processes on the Japanese side byexamining the changes in interactionswith Germany in modern day Japan. Afurther topic that is addressed is theJapanese perceptions of Germany thathave shaped the recent processes of re-ception and cooperation. Published inDecember 2005.

Introduction: A. Schad-Seifert, G. Vogt:Deutschland in Japan – Zwischen vonSiebold und der Maus [Germany in Ja-pan – Between von Siebold and themouse].Contributions: E. Franz: DeutscheMediziner in Japan – ein Beitrag zumWissenstransfer in der Edo-Zeit [Ger-man medical scientists in Japan – medi-ators of knowledge transfer in the 18thand 19th century] • U.M. Zachmann:Imperialism in a nutshell: conflict andthe “Concert of Powers” in the Tripar-tite Intervention, 1895 • H. Fuess: Deut-sche Jesuiten in Japan [German Jesuitsin Japan] • A. Moerke: Schlagwort„Nicklisch“ – zur Repräsentanz einesdeutschen Wirtschaftswissenschaftlersin japanischen Nachschlagewerken[Keyword “Nicklisch” – on the appear-ance of a German management scien-tist in Japanese encyclopedia] • H.Menkhaus, K. Yamauchi: Die japa-nische Beschäftigung mit dem deut-schen Rechtswesen [The Japanese en-gagement with the Japanese lawsystem] • M. Penney: Rising sun, ironcross – military Germany in Japanesepopular culture • S. Nartschik: Guten-berg in Tokio: Japanische Rezeptioneines deutschstämmigen Kulturerbes[Gutenberg in Tokyo – the Japanese re-ception of a German cultural heritage]•I. Ducke: Deutschland als Vorbild imjapanischen Umweltdiskurs [Germanyas a role model in Japan’s environmen-tal discourse] • R.F. Wittkamp: CulturalTurn in der Literaturtheorie? Beobach-tungen zur Neuauflage von IwanamiLiterary Studies und dem „SonderbandLiteraturtheorie“ [Cultural turn andtheory of literature – some remarks onIwanami Literary Studies and the sup-plementary volume Theory of Litera-ture] • W. Schwentker: Max Webers„Die protestantische Ethik und derGeist des Kapitalismus“ nach 100 Jahr-en – Perspektiven der Sozialwissen-schaften in Ostasien. Bericht über einSymposium an der Universität Osaka[Max Weber’s “The ethic of protestant-ism and the spirit of capitalism” after100 years – perspectives of social sci-ences in East Asia. Report on a sympo-sium at the University of Osaka] •Rezensionen [Book Reviews].

Florian Coulmas, Patrick Heinrich(eds.): International Journal of theSociology of Language 175/176.Changing Language Regimes in Glo-balizing Environments: Japan andEurope. Berlin, New York: Moutonde Gruyter, 2005, 324 pp. (PrintISSN 0165–2516; Electronic ISSN1613–3668)

What are the consequences and con-comitants of globalization in the field

DIJ PUBLICATIONS


of language? Answers to this questionvary with the languages and the re-search domains in question. The van-tage point of this special issue is theconcept of language regimes, looselydefined as sets of habits and attitudes,legal provisions, and ideologies. Japanis at the centre of the discussion, pro-viding as it does a case where the ef-fects of intensifying global interdepen-dence are strongly felt. Ever sinceJapan embarked on a course of rapidmodernization in the final decades ofthe nineteenth century, its governmenthas operated under monolingual as-sumptions and made great efforts toinstall a monolingual language regimestressing homogeneity and a uniformstandard. In our days, both the lan-guage regime that has been in placethrough the better part of the twentiethcentury and the underlying assump-tions are being undercut by develop-ments originating outside, and havingrepercussions beyond, Japan’s borders.Among the many aspects of Japan’slanguage regime, which was function-ally well-suited for modem industrialsociety and a catching-up economy,but which is loosing its relevance in theemerging postmodern knowledge so-ciety, are the presumed identity ofstate, people and language; the exclu-sive status and the comprehensivefunctional range of the national lan-guage; the linguistic standard of rightand false keyed to an ideal writtennorm; and the assumption of discretelanguage systems.

The articles in this special issueshow that as Japan is getting to termswith growing internal linguistic diver-sity and with the need for more exten-sive communication across nationalborders, language services, languagepolicies, language-related industries,

and language preferences are beingsubject to adjustment – some in a piece-meal fashion, some more abruptly.Similar changes have been going on fordecades elsewhere, especially in West-ern Europe, which therefore and de-spite many obvious differences servesas a useful plane of reference for manycomparisons.

Globalization has many faces, andchanges of language regimes inducedby it will continue warranting observa-tion and analysis. The InternationalJournal of the Sociology of Language isan obvious place to do this. With thepresent double issue we hope to shedsome light on relevant issues and stim-ulate further discussion. The seed con-ference took place on three sunny daysin the spring of 2004 at Duisburg-EssenUniversity. It was generously support-ed by a grant from Stiftung Volk-swagenwerk which is gratefully ac-knowledged.

Contributions: F. Coulmas: Changinglanguage regimes in globalizing envi-ronments • G. Extra, K. Yagmur: Socio-linguistic perspectives on emergingmultilingualism in urban Europe • T.Katsuragi: Japanese language policyfrom the point of viev of public philos-ophy • T. Taki: Labor migration and thelanguage barrier in contemporary Ja-pan: the formation of a domestic lan-guage regime of a globalizing state •J.C. Maher: Metroethnicity, language,and the principle of Cool • P. Backhaus:Signs of multilingualism in Tokyo – adiachronic look at the linguistic land-scape • M.G. Noguchi: Politics, the me-dia, and Korean language acquisitionin Japan • F. Inoue: Econolinguistic as-pects of multilingual signs in Japan •A. Shikama: Japan as a host country:attitudes toward migrants • K. Hara:Regional dialect and cultural develop-ment in Japan and Europe • P. Hein-rich: Language ideology in JFL text-books • T. Caroll: Beyond keigo: smoothcommunication and the expression ofrespect in Japanese as a foreign lan-guage • C. Galan: Learning to read andwrite in Japanese (kokugo and nihongo):a barrier to multilingualism? • Y. Ando:Japanese language instruction and thequestion of “correctness” • C. Hohen-stein: Interactional expectations andlingusitic knowledge in academic ex-pert discourse (Japanese/German) •J.V. Neustupný: Foreigners and theJapanese in contact situations: evalua-tion of norm deviations.

René Haak, Markus Pudelko (eds.):Japanese Management. The Search

for a New Balance between Conti-nuity and Change. Houndmills, Bas-

ingstoke, New York: Palgrave, 2005.280 S. (ISBN 1-4039-4194-7)

Japanese management is currentlyconsidered to be in crisis. This bookanalyzes the degree to which the Japa-nese management model is changing,in order to regain its competitiveness.It brings together up-to-date researchon this important topic by a number ofthe best known American, Asian andEuropean scholars of Japanese man-agement. A broad variety of manage-ment areas such as strategy, corporategovernance, globalization, organiza-tion, finance, HRM, production, inno-vation, organizational learning and re-tailing is covered.

Contributions: M. Pudelko, R. Haak:The current state of the Japanese econ-omy and challenges for Japanese man-agement: an overview • D. Methé:Continuity through change in JapaneseManagement: institutional and strate-gic influences • R. J. Ballon: Organiza-tional survival • S. L. Beechler: Thelong road to globalization: in search ofa new balance between continuity andchange in Japanese MNCs • R. Dore:Innovation for whom? • K. Teramoto &C. Benton: Organizational learningmechanisms for corporate revitaliza-tion • L. Nottage, L. Wolff: Corporategovernance and law reform in Japan:from the lost decade to the end of his-tory? • J.C. Abegglen: A perfect finan-cial storm • M. Pudelko: Japanese hu-man resource management: from beinga miracle to needing one? • R. Haak:Japanese production management: or-ganizational learning at the confluence


of knowledge transfer, technology de-velopment and work • M. Pudelko: Or-ganization – continuity vs. change: thekey dilemma for Japanese manage-ment.

05/7 Harald Dolles and Niklas Wilm-king: International Joint Ventures inChina after WTO Accession: WillTrust Relations Change?

Atsushi Miura: Karyu1 shakai. Arata-na kaiso1 shu1 dan shutsugen [Societyof the lower reaches. The emer-gence of a new social class]. Tokyo:Kobunsha, 2005, 284 pp., 780 Yen(ISBN 4-334-03321-1) [三浦展、「下流社会。新たな階層集団の出現」光文社

新書、2005]

This book is about the ongoing re-dif-ferentiation of Japanese society. Theauthor looks at it from below. Karyū

means ‘lower reaches of a stream’, aterm he uses to signify the new classwhose appearance he announces in thetitle of the book. He does not speak ofa new underclass, since the reconfigu-ration of society that he and severalother social scientists detect differs inmany ways from the class society ofearly capitalism that that term clearlycalls to mind.

Rather than by exploitation anddire poverty, the karyūshakai is charac-terised by its members’ lack of energyand willpower to get on in the world. Itisn’t destitution and misery, but com-placency with the minimum level ofmaterial wellbeing Japan’s affluent so-ciety offers even to those consideredlosers. Being fed up with cutthroatcompetition and the need to strugglejust to keep up with the neighboursdistinguishes a growing segment of theyoung generation who thus react to thechanges brought about by neo-liberalreforms and at the same time spurnthem on.

As others have done before him,Miura, a well-known non-fiction writ-er, points out the rapidly growing dis-parities of income and class conscious-ness. Karyūshakai is an elegy to themiddle class society which celebratedequality of opportunity and steady ad-vance if only you were willing to workhard. But dedication alone can no long-er guarantee improvement of one’s liv-

ing conditions, and, what is more, in asociety where a high level of comfort istaken for granted many don’t havestrong incentives to exert themselves inorder to get ahead. If you just refrainfrom assuming the responsibility ofraising children and paying for theireducation, you can lead a relativelyeasy life as a freeter. Who needs a Por-sche, after all! A computer game offersjust as much satisfaction.

The picture of Japanese society thatMiura paints is a sad one, both becausethe painful effects of neo-liberalist re-forms suffered by the socially weak be-come quite apparent, and because hisview of society is so pathetic. It is theview of a marketing specialist who pi-geonholes people in terms of their con-sumption habits. Young women are“brides”, “regular office ladies”, “mil-lionaises”, “girls”-or gyaru which isn’tquite the same-and “dried fish”, a ref-erence to the heroin of a manga wholeads of a secluded life. Their malecounterparts as classified by Miura arejust four types, “young executives”,“LOHAS” (devotees to a Lifestyle ofHealth and Sustainability) “readers ofthe magazine SPA!”, and freeters.Whether you belong to one or anotherof these types depends on your prefer-ence of brand products, on whetheryou patronise convenience stores anddiscount shops or have a taste for ex-pensive restaurants, etc.

If this is the society we live in it isdepressing indeed. Miura has certainlycollected a lot of data in support of hisview. Yet, his conclusions are rathercrude as are the criteria he proposes todetermine social class. If you are satis-fied with a computer game instead ofsetting your sights on a Porsche andworking long hours to get one, youbelong to the karyūshakai. Other charac-teristics are “the five Ps”, personalcomputer, pager (mobile phone), playstation, potato chips and pet bottle. Ifyou indulge in these pleasures you be-long to the karyūshakai or never-climb-ing society of those who will not orcannot work hard to climb the socialladder.

This book is interesting not just be-cause of its many pertinent, if some-times gloomy observations about Ja-pan’s materialistic hedonistic society,but also because it testifies to the factthat the Japanese are concerned aboutthe phenomena he describes, that is,the emergence of a new social stratifi-cation. The book quickly became abestseller. The first print run was soldout within days after its release in Sep-tember 2005, and it has been reprintedten times since.

(Florian Coulmas)

Ko1taro1 Akizuki: Arienai nihongo[Impossible Japanese]. Tokyo: Chi-kuma Shinsho, 2005, 321 pp., 720Yen (ISBN 4-480-06224-6 C0281) [秋月高太郎、『ありえない日本語』、ちく

ま新書、2005]

Imagine the following situation: Twoyoung people in a convenience storewho are eagerly praising a certain con-venience food item as “Isn’t it not good(yokunakunai)?” are interrupted by amiddle-aged man trying to figure outwhat this double negated question issupposed to mean. “So what is it, goodor bad?” he wants to know. This scenefrom a recent television commercialserves as the starting point of KōtarōAkizuki’s book Arienai nihongo (Impos-sible Japanese). It deals with intergen-erational communication problemsand a question that is probably as oldas language itself: why older people –in Japan as elsewhere – apparentlydon’t understand much of whatyounger people say. The reason forthis, as Akizuki clearly states from thestart, is not the often lamented decay ofthe Japanese language, but a compli-cated mixture of sociodemographicfactors interacting with linguistic uni-versals of change common to every liv-ing language.

Take as an example the term thatgave Akizuki’s book its name. Arienaiis normally used to express the unlike-lihood of a future state of affairs occur-ring. Young people, however, are in-creasingly using the term to indicatethat present circumstances are not inline with what they expected them tobe. The communication gap (zure) be-tween older and younger people re-sults from the fact that the two groupsof speakers have different conceptionsof what the term arienai should refer to.For the former it can only be used tomake propositions about the future,whereas for the latter anything that isunexpected can be arienai.

It would be easy to interpret thissemantic expansion of arienai as symp-tomatic of an apparent disregard forreality among Japan’s post-bubble gen-eration of freeters and NEETs, but Aki-zuki gives several examples to showthat the subjectivisation of linguisticexpressions is not at all unique to to-day’s young people but is actually ageneral semantic trend.

Other terms common to youngpeople’s language discussed in a simi-larly enlightening way are nanige ni(somehow, somewhat), which is aback-formation derived by de-negat-ing the term nanigenaku; yabai (danger-ous), an originally negative term in-creasingly endowed with positivemeaning; and uzai (unpleasant, dis-

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tasteful), a neologism used to expressdiscontent with a situation one has nopower to alter.

In addition, Akizuki devotes threechapters of his book to the linguisticand sociodemographic background ofrecent changes in politeness forms: thesentence ending janaidesuka (isn’t it?)intended to imply a shared speaker-hearer knowledge which in realitydoesn’t exist; the recent spread ofyoroshikatta deshōka (Might I … ?) infamily restaurants and other chain busi-nesses; and a general tendency of drop-ping addressee honorifics (tameguchi).The basic problem here, as Akizuki con-vincingly argues, is not a general disre-spect by younger people towards socialhierarchies, but an increasingly anony-mous social organisation of everydaylife in which there are many situationswhere such hierarchies are no longerclearly recognisable.

A noteworthy point is the empiricalbias of the book. Self-declared otakuand subculture linguist Akizuki drawson a rich corpus of data reaching frommanga bubbles and web diaries to thepoems of the Man’yōshū and e-mailsin his personal mailbox. This variety ofdata allows Akizuki to capture some ofthe most current problems of intergen-erational communication in Japan to-day. The strength of the book is Akizu-ki’s insightful analysis of theseproblems, which takes into consider-ation both linguistic factors such asease of articulation, semantic bleachingand universal politeness strategies,and sociodemographic factors likepower differences between old andyoung, changing employment practic-es, growing impersonalisation of ev-eryday interaction, and female emanci-pation.

Akizuki succeeds in explainingvery complex phenomena in very sim-ple terms. The plain and lucid style ofthe book makes Arienai nihongo a pleas-ant and profitable read for everyoneinterested in language change, sociol-inguistics, and/or demographics inpresent day Japan.

(Peter Backhaus)

Dissertation Fellows

Susanne Brucksch, “Patterns of Coop-eration Between Environment-NGOsand Firms in Japan” (04.2006–09.2006).

Sabine Haensgen, “Witnesses of Baku-matsu-Age (1853–1868) Kawarabanfrom Edo” (05.2006–02.2007).

Bettina Lockemann, “Viewing the Ex-otic. The European View towards Ja-pan in Contemporary Artistic Docu-mentary Photography” (04.2006–06.2006).

Maria Mengel, “Cheerful-TransientWorld of Japanese Love in Anime”(03.2006–09.2006).

Bettina Rabe, “Human Rights Devel-opment in Japan During the UnitedNations Decade for Human Rights Ed-ucation 1995–2004” (05.2006–02.2007).

Cosima Wagner, “Object History andSocial Change in Japan After 1945 withregard to Household and Entertain-ment Robots” (03.2006–04.2006).

DIJ-Events

DIJ and Development Bank of Japan(Tokyo): Biotech cluster in Germanyand Japan: examples of successful in-novation and industrial policy. Confer-ence on April 21, 2006, DevelopmentBank of Japan. This conference is partof the initiative “Germany in Japan2005/2006”.

DIJ-Forum: Carolin Funck, Professor,Hiroshima University: Ageing tourists,ageing destinations: tourism and de-mographic change in Japan (March 2,2006). This forum will be held in co-operation with the German Associa-tion of Social Science Research on Ja-pan (VSJF).

DIJ-Forum: Klaus Vollmer, Professor,Munich University: Images of Japa-nese society presented in the “NewCivic Textbook” by Tsukuru-kai. Solu-tions for demographic challenges andsocial change (March 23, 2006). Thisforum will be held in co-operation withthe German VSJF.

OTHER MATTERS /OUTLOOK

Published by: IUDICIUM VerlagGmbH, Hans-Grässel-Weg 13, D–81375München. Printed by: AZ Druck undDatentechnik GmbH, Heisinger Str. 14,87437 Kempten. Publication dates: eachJune, October, February; not on sale inbookshops.

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