- Invention of Childhood
- Premodern notions
- Modern notions
- School: A Separate World
- Trouble in the Ranks
- "Family Game"
- "Sannen B-gumi Kimpachi Sensei"
- "Urusei Yatsura"
Social Nature of "Childhood"
- What is a child? What is an adult? Are the distinctions the
same everywhere and in every era?
- What are some of the reasons (or lack thereof) to distinguish
between adults and children?
- Phillippe Ariès : "Childhood is a social artifact, not
a biological necessity"
Invention of Childhood
- In Europe before the 15th century, children were seen as
"miniature adults"
- Viewing children as distinct from adults an idea that began
with the wealthy and gradually spread thru society
- Greater need for literacy
- Decreasing need for unskilled child labor
- Modern economic and political systems (capitalism &
nation-state) entrenched distinctions between:
- Public/private
- Production/consumption
- Male/female
- Adult/child
- Childhood as privileged space of spontaneity, play, freedom,
and emotion as opposite & complement of adult discipline, work
and rationality
Factors in Rise of Postwar Youth Culture in Japan
- "White collarization"
- Education as "labor"
- Increasing numbers of nuclear families
- Declining birth rate
- Rising incomes and standards of living
- Youth as new market for mass media & manufacturing
School: A Separate World
- "With one step inside school grounds, a minor becomes an
'adult' or full member of the society that makes up the
school…"
- "If we, members of a different [adult] society, try to
enter, we will only meet resistance. We cannot obtain any good
results." '
The School System: Cradle of Youth Culture?
- Tokugawa precedents
- Modern developments
- 1872 central government established network of primary and
secondary schools (Why?)
- 1900 tuition requirement dropped
- 1947 educational reforms along American lines
- The school system today
- 9 years free compulsory education; range of high schools,
vocational schools, JCs, universities
- Strict exam system and reliance on cram schools
The Japanese School System
- Strengths
- Social access and mobility
- Near universal literacy
- How to pass on middle class success
- Seemingly meritocratic training & selection of elites
- Teamwork, community and consensus building
- Strong identification with specific class
- Weaknesses
- Early tracking does not allow for different development
rates
- Exam system: "memorization not creativity"
- Strengths => Weaknesses?
"Sannen B-gumi Kimpachi Sensei"
- 1979 TV drama set in shitamachi junior high
- Star: Takeda Tetsuya, folk singer & actor
- Multiple spin-offs in music, TV, & movies
- Recent revival as part of nostalgia boom
- Vision of school society as…? What kinds of problems?
What kinds of resolutions?
"Urusei Yatsura"(AKA "Lum")
- Artist: Takahashi Rumiko
- Manga: 1979-1986 (34 volume collection)
- Animation: 1981-1986 (36 volume collection)
- Movies, OVAs, etc. (Recommended: "Beautiful Dreamer"
1984)
- Vision of school society as…? What kinds of problems?
What kinds of resolutions?
Fantasy and Reality (Shigematsu)
- Fantasy as the "non-real"
- Gap between what is ordinarily possible and what can be
imagined
- Mass media fantasy as part of material reality
- "Culture Industry" with economic and political clout
- Gap between mass mediated fantasy and personal fantasy; act
of reading as act of interpretation
- Fantasy (phantasy) as psychic reality
- Window into subject's perception of external reality
- Mapping out internal, structured, but not necessarily
harmonious & often conflicting, desires in the mind