Investigating Identity: Gender, Overseas Experience, and Japanese Youth

ABSTRACT

Identity is prominent in academia, despite it being difficult to define and measure due to its dynamic and multifaceted nature. In Japan, awareness of the make-up of Japanese youth is increasingly crucial as Japan becomes a more internationalized and ageing society. This paper examines, by identity mapping and discriminant analysis, the cultural identities of 94 Japanese youth. While strong Global identities separated the respondents with from without overseas experience, ties to National identities and Relationships were found respectively for males and females. This paper suggests that regarding the study of cultural identities, gender does matter – at least in Japan.

KEYWORDS:

• Identity maps
• discriminant analysis
• Japanese university students
• cultural identities
• gender
• overseas experience

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank her research group members for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Defined by Hopkins (2010) as being aged between 16 and 25 years.

2. Some respondents were recruited as part of a separate study (Yoshida & Utsuno, 2017), where Identity Maps were obtained but not analysed, some were from a previous study by the same author (Ogawa, 2016), and some were new to this study.

3. Since many respondents had lived in more than one country, the total number of overseas stays is more than the total number of respondents with overseas experience.

4. 832 / 846 (9 codes x 94 sheets).

5. More specifically, references to Hokkaido indicate a regional identity. However, this is also connected to this student’s national identity, as evident in his quote.

6. Overseas experience (or lack of) was not recorded; most were unlikely to have experience living overseas.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erina Ogawa

Erina Ogawa, an Associate Professor at Daito Bunka University, is a New Zealander who has lived in Japan for more than 20 years. Her master’s degree in Communication Management from Massey University in New Zealand examined the cultural identity choices and strategies of parents of multicultural children in Japan, and her doctoral research through Toyo University in Japan was a mixed methods study of the internationalization of the cultural identities of Japanese university students. She has written multiple articles on the topic of multicultural identities, particularly of Japanese youth, including multicultural youth. She also has publications on educational manga, as well as on beliefs, strategy use and confidence in English language learning.