The development of technology brought civil surveillance system. People can easily get connected on the Internet and concentrated on specific topic or person. This has positive and negative aspects.

In positive views, this structure enables citizens to monitor actions of the power including the government and major corporations. When misconducts occur, not just TV news and newspapers but each user of the Internet can make articles and share. More importantly there’s cases internet users share what mainstream media don’t cover. Especially countries like Japan where the investigative role of journalism is weak needs this role so that people can notice what’s going on behind the wall of reality. Notably, several investigative organisations of journalism appeared like Democracy Now! in the United States and The Korean Center for Investigative Journalism (KCIJ) in South Korea. In recent years, these more investigative media not sponsored by the major corporations play important roles in journalism as well .

From negative aspects, there’s tons of excessive condemnations and concentrations of attentions to certain topics and people. As an example, when celebrities or famous youtubers got flamed, people on the Internet all at once begin to search and visit websites with some information violating privacy. Then some of internet users tweet or post negative comments directly to the person or other websites. As time passes, the scale expands, but the problems are that the more it spreads, the less understood the essential of a topic is, and the existence of people just wanting to boo celebrities.

The emergence of the Internet, especially social media, allows us to get united quickly and share our opinions. It also has the fonction of monitoring reality. But there’s some questions of excessive amount of people just condemning and making the situations chaotic.

Upload: 11 January 2019, Last update: 17 October 2020

In Japanese, there’s a unique phrase “kuuki wo yomu” that literally can be translated as “read the air”. It’s a custom long existing in the society and unique aspect of it.

After Japan started the modernization to catch up with the industrial revolution in the West, they took the measure of homogenization in factories or education which then became successful and because of this, Japan could develop as the current Japan. In the meantime, this have established the tradition of obedience. So obedience is related to the custom of Kuuki wo yomu and shared among most of Japanese. This is the beginning of reading-air culture in Japan.

As Japanese tend to be more conservative, they always pay attention to others almost all moments of the time when they are with people including friends, parents, and colleagues.

In those time, they “read air”. Simply this means behaving to be suited to the scene. It would be easier to explain this notion by illustrating examples of not reading air.

For example, in a class at school, a student raise his/her hand and mentions opinions a little bit far from the topic discussed then. Some students might feel or say he/she should read the air. Another is that conversation among friends, one started to talk another topic suddenly and disturbing the atmosphere means he/she doesn’t read the air.

This “reading air” culture is fitting oneself into a scene or to follow majority. However, it’s not necessarily good to read air, there are a lot of cases people need to mention their opinions even though it may disturb the atmosphere.

Upload: 8 January 2019, Last update: 10 February 2019

One of the concerns super-aging country has is the number of total votes occupied by the elderly. One-Person One-Vote principle is important in democracy, but in the near future (or even now) we lose the balance of age more and more.

There’s no doubt that we should and must pay our respects for the elderly, but as a matter of fact, what matters is that the older generation would be the bigger part of votes.

The problem is that election will be unbalanced. When we divides people into groups, we can find some categories like age, class, etc. People in the same category tend to have the same sense. For example, the historical event people in the same age had is not experienced by the later generations. We can find those information on the Internet, by reading books or other means, but it cannot reach the point of actual situation. This signifies bias among the same generation to some extent.

Some people say that the problems of aging-society could be solved by the advancement of technology. This is partly true, I would say in terms of labour shortage, the technology would help it. However, the unbalance of election would still remain as a important issue.

It may seem that older people having more knowledge than the younger are more appropriate for votes. But the older could prevent the further development of younger people by their perspectives. Also as a matter of fact, the younger generations have more future than them. This unbalance is negative to decision by majority. We may need to find another way for future decision-making.

(Assume the opposite case the number of the younger is larger than the older, that’s the same in terms of unbalance of votes. Also just in case, I would like to emphasize that we must have the best respect for the older generations and this article is not offensive to them.)

Update: 5 January 2019, Last Update: 5 February 2019

Beginning of a year, Japan has a road relay race called Hakone Ekiden. About 20 teams from universities in Kanto region can participate in the race. 10 members from a team joins the race by handing a sash one after another and each runs about 20 km. This is a symbolic new year event. A lot of student runners hoping to be on the race work really hard throughout entire university life or even from their childhood.

This year, a first runner from one of the teams fell down and sprained his ankle, but he continued the race. If he had stopped it, the race for his team would have ended. The meaning of handling a sash to a next runner is huge for a team. That’s why he continued to run. Not just for the following runners, but also for the entire team.

According to Yahoo! News which cited an article of Japanese sport newspaper SPORTS HOCHI[1], the runner was told to take 6 months for recovery of his ankle. It also says that from April, he is supposed to run for a company.

In Japan, there’s some sort of atmosphere that those who sacrificing themselves for others is what should praise.

But is it really a good thing to dedicate themselves for others even though in this case he got a heavy injure taking 6 months to recover? Although on the race he continued running, his team should have stopped him and the race. Or for the future cases, it would be better to give the directors of the road race the authority to stop a runner who looks getting an serious injury. He wanted to do his best and actually made his best race for team, but it’s not good that the society praise his action because in the future if others encounter the same case, they would do the same. In the worst case, some might think from such precedent cases that they have to continue the race. To prevent this self-sacrifice-for-team case, I would suggest that the society or people surrounding athletes must stop those actions.

This kind of case is what we should end for the future. Runners might want to continue, but people surrounding them should not permit it.

[1]https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20190104-00000167-sph-spo Accessed 4 January 2018

Upload: 2 January 2019, Last update: 2 February 2019

What the most important is the value of the very present, it isn’t either the one in the past nor the average in lifetime.

But it is different from Kohaku-uta-gassen and seniority in Japan.

Japan has been traditionally having a song show called Kohaku-uta-gassen at the end of each year. Many Japanese families watch it and prepare for new year. In the show, well-known singers divided into male and female teams compete each other. This program always invites relatively more experienced and veteran singers even if some of them didn’t come front in the year. Why do this way?

Presumably it might be because of the generations who prefer to watch this, the director puts more experienced singers in order to make this suitable for the elderly. Or since this is a part of culture, it would be better to have a wide generational range of singers in order to create a show suitable for all generations of Japanese. This can encourage and preserve the custom of Japanese watching this before new year.

Whatever the truth is, I think this selection of singers has to do with the employment system, particularly seniority, in Japan.

The fact that this show has quite a number of veteran singers is related to the sense of value in Japanese society. The following part explains it linked with workplace situation.

In the selection of singers at this song show as well as the field of business in Japan, what is evaluated is that how much they contributed to Japan’s song world or what they have achieved in the life-scale. It’s not whether they have become the timely singer of the year or not. In fact, the accomplishments of each singer throughout their life is one of the most important factors, but what I want to emphasize here is the fact that some of singers who didn’t so much influence the year can be on the show if they are experienced and have achieved great jobs before. Those who select the singers evaluate on not a-year-basis but life-span achievements.

This culture is similar to the seniority in Japan because they put more focus on the contribution in the life-length rather than the very this moment. That’s why many Japanese companies taking measure of seniority promote those who with more time they spent at the company. There are some of those who should have been evaluated more and I feel kind of strangeness in this point. Because value is not put on the one right now, but it is evaluated in the whole-past basis.

Since this show is conducted every year, I don’t think it’s a good idea to choose singers in terms of life-time achievement. This prevents the development of younger generation and I guess there’s similar situation at Japanese companies as well.

I do not have intention to condemn the show, but I think there’s relationship between the selection of singers at the show and the seniority of employment in Japan. Especially what they evaluate and put more values on. This is much related to a society level.