"Individuality” As a Moral Expression in Japan

Sociology has long been interested in individualization or individuality as social phenomena. Classical sociologists found individualization among social changes in modernization. It is said that there has been this process in Japanese society, too. 

     This paper examines how “individualization” and “individualism” has been talked about, not among sociologists, but among lay people in Japan and explores how people conceive of “individualization” and “individualism” and how they make use of those concepts to understand their everyday life.  Those words are not only theoretical terms but also everyday words.  This way of approach is based on the idea Ibarra & Kitsuse (1993) proposed as an ethnography of moral discourse; a constructionist approach to social problems that focuses on social processes in which a social problem is defined and discussed. 

     The words “individualization” and “individualism” in Japan are vocabularies often used to problematize social phenomena, people, or events. For example, a movement to change the civil law to allow women to keep their name after their marriage used to be criticized as excessive “individualism.”  Eating a meal alone, especially in the case of children or young members of a family, drew attention in early 2000‘s as “ko-shoku (individual or solitary meal or eating)  and is thought to be a problem of individualization that has weakened family bonds. These vocabularies convey moral meaning and they are “vernacular constituents of moral discourse” (Ibarra & Kitsuse 1993).  

     By examining how those words are used in moral discourse, I would like to argue how they work for people to approve or disapprove of social conditions, behaviors, and social changes.  Talking about “individualization” or “individualism” is a speech act that participates in constructing social realities.