Stress factors and mechanisms to coping in modern Japan

1.3 Labor Sphere

Historically Japanese had a specific viewpoint on trade and business. In the beginning of Tokugawa period (1600-1856) Japanese government developed the theory of Neo-Confucianism in order to reinforce the state's unity. Neo-Confucianism regarded the state as a macro family, where interactions between individuals derived not only from the notions of demand and supply, but rather from the mutual feeling of duty between elders and youngsters. Such idea of state as a family or even as a solid body was continued in the pre-war militaristic era in the concept of kokutai (����)or literally �state-body�.Daikichi Irokawa. The Culture of Meiji Period. -Princeton University Press, 1985.P. 249. Respectively, influence of Neo-Confucianism directly touched the economic strata of Japanese society. Unlike Western enterprises, Japanese companies were supposed to be primary concerned not over the profit, but over their contribution to the social well-being. Thus a company was not a separate institution, it was perceived as an element of the body, as a concerned relative in macro-family, duty of which was to care about the society as a whole, and only after about its own interests.Tomio Imanari. Inside Japanese History: A Narrative Story. - M. E. Sharpe, 2002. P. 32-33.

At the same time, Japanese companies also operated in the similar family-based form. Analogically with usual Japanese family, Japanese company had a purely stated hierarchy of youngsters and elders, and submission of the first to the second was undeniable. This submission, in which individual practically rejects his or her own will and completely absorbs the opinion of superiors, was compensated by the vital for Japanese feeling of belonging. The feeling of belonging and the notion of parent-like care of employers to the employees not only survived after the Second World War, but also became the core pillar of Japanese economic miracle that flourished since the beginning of 1960s.Ian Buruma. Inventing Japan: From Empire to Economic Miracle. - Phoenix, 2005. P. 37-42. Indeed, Japanese employers demonstrated the exceptional levels of diligence and loyalty that was maintained by the company's attitude towards faithful staff in the form of lifetime employment.Isao Takei. Japanese Business Culture and Practices. - Iuniverse, 2005. P. 81-82.

It should be mentioned that from the viewpoint of average Japanese worker of the economic miracle era, his or her loyalty to the company and concerned attitude were even more important than practical efficiency. Japanese companies as were more interested in faithful, than productive employers that could dedicate their lives to the company and be trustworthy. The notion of trust also derived from traditional Japanese duality of uti (��) and soto (�O) or inner and external, where individual's ability to blend into the group, be submissive and faithful were estimated extremely high.Scott North. Deadly Virtues: Inner-Worldly Ascetiam and Karoshi in Japan. - Current Sociology (59), 2011. P. 152-153. Therefore employers believed that as long as they stay faithful to the company a wealthy life was guaranteed to them, while companies were interested in employers who may be not productive or properly educated, but who could show complete tolerance to company's ideology and could preserve company's face and honor at all costs.Frederick F. Reichheld. The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force behind Growth, Profits and Lasting Value. -Harvard Business Press, 2001. P. 149-150. Such attitude was disputable because it required life-time investments into employers that cost serious additional expenses to companies' budget, however still was acceptable while Japan was in the phase of stable financial growth. Nevertheless, after post-war prosperity sever economic shocks occurred in 1990s, bringing social and cultural maladies that stay uncured and generated utterly stressful atmosphere of Japanese modern work environment.

Previous decade of 1980s was characterized by an excessive influx of investments into property market, which created a colossal numbers of loans based on speculations, giving birth to a so-called Bubble Economy. Consequently, in the begging of 1990s this Bubble occasionally collapsed, leading to the reduction of pace of economic growth, significant financial losses and complete reversal in employee - employer relations.Koichi Hamada. Japan's Bubble, Deflation, and Long-term Stagnation. - MIT Press, 2011. P. 51-52.

While a family-like format of Japanese companies dominated the minds of both workers and bosses, irresistible economic changes introduced new types of workforce that could no more fit in traditional frames. Those new types were non-standard employers or hakenshain (�h���Ј�). Before touching on them, another, more disastrous group should be mentioned - so-called NEETs (�j�[�g) or individuals with �No Education Experience or Training�. NEET individuals are living symbols of post-1990s period. Economical worsening did not allow them to get decent education or work experience, while most of the companies refused to hire them due to their lack of connections to any educational institutions. Acquiring work in Japan is regarded as a gradual process starting from school. If a person for this or that reason did not have an opportunity to get a school diploma, such individual automatically minimizes opportunities to become employed.Roger Goodman, Imoto Yuki. A Sociology of Japanese Youth: From Returnees to NEETs. -Routledge, 2012. P. 1-4. Being unemployed in Japan consequence not only in financial degradation, but also to a severe psychological stress of being socially excluded, as unemployed person has no belonging to the core element of Japanese social structure - a company. This situation for Japanese individuals results in destruction of self-believe, because Japanese socialization presupposes self-evaluation from external sources. Thus, if person has no cohort belonging, i.e. is unemployed, the feeling of self-rejection can reach critical scale. In 2013 the number of NEET people surpassed the figure of six hundred thousand, making 0,5% of Japan's population.Huffington Post. �j�[�g�̎�҂U�R���l(Huffington Post. NEET youngsters make 630 thousand). - 19 June, 2013. URL:http://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2013/06/18/neet_survey_n_3458889.html ���t�{�B�����Q�T�N�ŁB�q�ǂ��A��Ҕ���(Cabinet Office of Government of Japan. White Paper on Children and Youngsters.2013 Edition). URL:http://www8.cao.go.jp/youth/whitepaper/h25honpen/pdf_index.html

NEETs were not the only ones who faced difficulties in the new era. Companies themselves came across emergent problems. Japan as a country and its population during last two decades noticeably diminished their purchasing power, new rivals like South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan appeared on the international business arena, while Japanese companies had to accustom to modern economic environment that was not stable anymore. One of the possible solutions was to introduce new management practices, as far as Japanese companies became more open to the foreign world.Tetsuya Iida, Jonathan Morris. Farewell to Salary. The Changing Roles and work of Middle Managers in Japan. - The International Journal of Human Resource Management (19), 2008. P. 1073. For example, after a turnaround from near-bankruptcy an automobile titan Nissan sold nearly half (44,3%) of its stock volume to French Renault in 2002, which unavoidably implemented unusual Western practices to traditional Japanese management.Thomas Loska. Strategic Alliances: The Renault & Nissan Alliance. - GRIN Verlag, 2013. P. 3. As a result, a life-time employment system that was no more affordable for Japanese companies had to be revised. However it could not be reduced completely, as life-time employment derived from broader perception of company as a quasi-family, where the loyalty and productivity of �youngsters� was inspired by the feeling of care by �elders� and vice versa. Such business ethics could not be canceled, therefore most Japanese companies tried to reach a balance by retaining the biggest possible number of standard staff members or seishain (���Ј�), while mixing them with previously mentioned non-standard employers or hakenshain. Tetsuya Iida, Jonathan Morris. Farewell to Salary. Op.cit. P.1073.

The co-existing of two different employers group in Japanese work place of modern era created the source of constant tension that originated in Japanese business culture. To understand the meaning of this tension a closer definition of seishain and hakenshain should be presented. Seishain employers are ones that are perceived to work for a long term for the company by the company's management authorities. Commonly they have no work length boundaries, i.e. they are not supposed to be fired. Seishain employers thus represent the survived element of life-time employment system, who completely dedicate themselves to a company in exchange for the life-long economic and social guarantees.Norio Kambayashi. Japanese Management in Change: The Impact of Globalization and Market Principles. - Springer, 2014. P. 125-126. On the contrary, hakenshain are rather the products of the modern era. Being concerned about excessive spending due to financial turbulences, since 1990s Japanese companies started to hire some employers on the basics of new conditions, contractual ones. Haken(�h��) literally means �to be dispatched�, such workers are sent to Japanese companies by employment agencies when a temporary necessity in them takes place. When the working contract ends, hakenshain get fired, if their service is not prolonged.Huiyan Fu. An Emerging Non-Regular Labor Force in Japan: The Dignity of Dispatched Workers. Glossary of Terms. - Routledge, 2013. P.3. Generally speaking, hakenshain are only part of a bigger group of non-standard workers that include keiyakushain (�_��Ј�, contract workers), hijokin (����, part-time workers) and others, but for the sake of the study we focus on hakenshain, as their feature - being hired on the contractual grounds - is, perhaps, the most representational one. Between 1986 and 2008 the proportion of non-standard workers in Japanese companies increased from 17% to 34%.Asano Hirokatsu, Ito Takahiro. Why has the Fraction of Non-Standard Workers Increased? A Case Study of Japan. - Scottish Journal of Political Economy (60), 2013. P. 360. Nowadays they settled in nearly one third of Japanese business space, thus becoming an inseparable part if companies' scenery.

Such non-standard workers may be thought to be quite standard for Western experience. Except several German companies, most of Western companies hire their employees on the contractual base, which is thought to be a pattern of rational economic behavior. However in Japan �rational� as a concept is only partly applicable to operation of the company, while the true notion of Japanese business is dominated by feelings: devotion, duty, sacrifice and shame of workers. Apart from being rational and efficient, it is even more crucial to have a proper attitude towards company as well as to occupy a proper position in company's hierarchy.Kawanishi Yuko. On Karo-Jisatsu. Why do Japanese Workers Work themselves to Death? - International Journal of Mental Health (37), 2008. P. 67.

Short-term, dispatched and external hakenshain fail to fit into these unofficial demands. The presence of this kind of workers represents a sort of cultural paradox for standard Japanese employees. On the one hand, hakenshain work for the company and communicate with other workers, however, on the other, they take only part of the responsibilities and do not postulate themselves as �family members� due to their short term work. Thus hakenshain frequently become the target of bullying at the workplace.Maureen F. Dollard. Psychosocial Factors of Work in Asia Pacific. - Springer, 2014. P. 202-204.The index of this kind of bullying reaches 15,5% among Japanese companies.Tsuno Kanami, Kawakami Norito. Socioeconomic Determinants of Bullying at the Workplace: A national Representative Sample in Japan. - Public Library of Science, 2015. P. 2.

Apart from bullying, hakenshain generally receive little engagement into working process. Company management cannot trust them serious business, putting their position into company to the level of unskilled workers. The distance between standard employees and hakenshain is also emphasizes on the linguistic level. The study by Tsuno and Kawakami found out that in some Japanese companies the appeal to non-standard employees is reduced to the formula �haken-san�, ignoring the individuals name and actually depersonalizing the worker. Such attitude shows that hakenshain is occasionally invalided on the personal level and has little chance to become a group member, which may be extremely stressful realization for such Japanese individual.Ibid. P. 11. Moreover, non-standard employment is characterized by the lack of protection from labor laws, making hakenshain vulnerable enough to feel sharply unsecured. In the end of 2008 financial crisis, nearly 250 thousand non-standard workers lost their jobs by the end of 2009.Asano Hirokatsu, Ito Takahiro. Op.cit. P.360. Asano and Ito suspend that Japanese management authorities do not recognize hakenshain as full value workers and can easily sacrifice their positions to protect good relations with seishain.Ibid. P. 385-386.In other words, if some problematic financial situations arise, non-standard workers are basically used as preserve buffer and economic cannon fodder, while their future is not perceived as an issue of company's concern. This attitude, a complete antipode of life-long employment and care system results in serious stress disorders among hakenshain: lower job satisfaction, poorer self-rated heath and depressive symptoms.Inoue Akiomi, Kawakami Norito. Organizational Justice and Psychological Distress among Permanent and Non-Permanent Employees in Japan: A Prospective Cohort Study. - Springer, 2013. P.266.

This situation is closely connected to the status of woman in Japanese workplace, as more than half of female employees work on the non-standard basics.Yuasa Masae. Japanese Women in Management. - Asia-Pacific Business Review (11), 2005.P. 197.In addition to this, average Japanese woman earn only 66,5% of man's month profit, while the number of female legislators, senior officials and managers rise only to 9% in total.Ibidem.P.196.Such low positions derive from traditional perception of women as a house-keeper that still survived in modern era. Though many public officials including Prime Minister Abe did many efforts to propose the working potential of women�񑊊��@�B�������P�����{��(Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet. Let the Women Shine in Japan (Official Proclamation)). URL:http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/headline/women2013.html, employers still stay rather critical in terms of females' company role. Women are perceived as house caregivers, and this attitude badly combines with the sacrificial nature of Japanese business. Concretely speaking, Japanese workers are supposed to sacrifice their leisure time, including one spent with family, if a participation in company's affairs is necessary. On the contrary, Japanese women indeed pay a lot of attention to the house issues: even among female seishain, 60% of them on average do 90% of housework tasks.Yuasa Masae. Op.Cit. P.200-2001. Therefore, as home responsibility may conflict with work arrangements, women are commonly regarded as secondary workers, with little training put in the and low promotion opportunities.Wei-hsin Yu. It's Who You Work with: Effects of Workplace shares of Women and Non-Standard Employees in Japan. - Oxford University Press, 2013.P. 27. Due to this, women in Japan stay unappreciated with little working potential realized.

Paradoxically, not being a hakenshain or woman in Japan does not decrease the nervous tension connected with work, and even may lift it to the critical, nearly deadly scale. Working as a seishain may be a traumatic business. According to the research by Nishiyama and Kino, the spread of psychological disorders among company workers (17-18%) is significantly higher than among general Japanese population (5-12%).Nishiyama Akira, Kino Koji. A Survey of Influence of Work Environment on Disorder Related Symptoms in Japan. - Head & Face Medicine (8), 2012. P.1.Furthermore, Japanese workers commonly work more than their counterparts in other developed countries like USA, UK, Germany and France.Ibidem. Their research also found out that approximately 60% of Japanese enterprises have at least 1 employee with mental health problem, and the number of such workers increased in 30% between 2008 and 2010, the period of recent post-crisis breakdown.Ibid. P.2. �����J���ȁB�ߘJ�����ɌW�铝�v���� (Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Statistic Materials Connected with Karoshi). URLhttp://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/05-Shingikai-11201000-Roudoukijunkyoku-Soumuka/0000069063.pdf :

Risk of working at Japanese companies is not reduced to mental illnesses. The survey of Cabinet office of Japanese government for year 2014 demonstrates that most suicide-prone group of Japan are full-grown matures in the age between 40-49 years (4,471 cases).���t�{�B�����Q�U�N���ɂ����鎩�E�̏󋵁B�N��ʁA���� (Cabinet Office of Japanese Government. State of Affairs with Suicide through 2014. Separation by Age, Cause). URL: http://www8.cao.go.jp/jisatsutaisaku/toukei/h26.html Those were basically adults who have already spent dozens of years under the working system. Traditional Japanese culture developed an outstanding attitude towards suicide that lacks sinful meaning that can be spotted in Christian context, but rather is regarded as decent salvation from shame by Japanese individuals. Interestingly, if in Japan adults produce the highest risk of killing themselves, in Western countries the suicide peak is discovered among young adults who only started to work.Kawanishi Yuko. Op.cit. P.63.

The mention of severe stress that causes mental illnesses and even suicide gives an opportunity to cover the most specific aspect of modern Japanese work environment, a karoshi (�ߘJ��) or death from over-working. Karoshi was firstly recognized by Japanese society in the beginning of 1990s. If was characterized by death caused by mental of physical devastation that originated in excessive work pressure.John Garrick, Carl Rhodes. Research and Knowledge at Work. -Routledge, 2002. P. 111. The stunning aspect of karoshi is that Japanese employees tend to show extreme hard working spirit during the whole history of post-War Japan; however the first lethal cases appeared only after the collapse of bubble economy. Thus it may be suggested that karoshi is not a consequence of Japanese hard working in a nutshell, it is rather a result of collusion between traditional perception of work that proposes critical perseverance and modern economic conditions, where being persistent is not enough to endure.

This suggestion possibly explains why karoshi is the most dangerous for employees who fully accepted the Japanese working culture. In such terms, the pictorial example may be the case of Kamei Shuji, a successful stock salesman who died from heart attack in 1990, creating one of the first incidents that were defined as karoshi by the officials.Scott North. Op.cit. P. 147-148. Peter S. Fosl. The Big Lebowski and Philosophy. - John Wiley & Sons, 2012. P. 217. Weeks before he passed away Kamei set records in his productivity, working 15 hours day shifts (from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.). Unfortunately, on 1 October 1990 Tokyo Stock Exchange collapsed, making it practically impossible for Kamei to fulfill the financial promises he gave to his customers. Nevertheless, instead of searching for alternative paths for refunding, Kamei continued to repeat the same procedures with even more diligence to maintain the company's face and client's trust. Eventually, being unable to reverse the situation despite all his devotion, he reached and finally crossed the brink of total devastation.Scott North. Op.Cit. P. 147-155.

It is likely to imagine that in the era of economic miracle the steadiness of Kamei Shuji's spirit could solve his problems. However this era has finished and in modern post-Bubble Japan the sacrificial nature of Japanese business culture, its semi-ritual persistent practices are already clashing with complicated economic reality and may lead Japanese employees to nervous and physical degradation and in some cases even to the fatality.

Since the economic crisis of 1990s and the start of the post-Bubble era work in Japan shifted from cultural pillar to stressful abnormality. Historically Japanese work culture was rooted in the perception of company as a �macro-family�, where the devotion and loyalty of employees were supported by the life-long care of employers. After the collapse of Bubble economy a significant group of NEETs was introduced that possessed none opportunity to find occupation and thus fulfill their need for belonging. Simultaneously, Japanese companies started to employ haken shain, a new type of contractual work force, who due to their marginal position became an object of constant bullying and had little psychological and financial secure. Nevertheless, haken shain nowadays form more than one-third of Japanese work force. Changes in work environment did not improved position of women as well, who continued to be regarded as secondary workers with minimum senior positions received. Respectively, standard workers or seishain demonstrated an increase in nervous disturbances and suicides. Their new work conditions are characterized by karoshi or the �death from over-working�, when sacrificial nature of Japanese employees collides with worsening economic reality, leading a worker to physical and nervous devastation.

Part Two. Mechanisms of Coping in Modern Japanese Culture

2.1 Ijime

Some modern Japanese mechanisms of coping with stress a closely connected with the notion of violence and aggression towards the others, with ijime being a pictorial example of them. Ijime (������) stands up to be one of the most striking phenomena of current Japanese school system. In the beginning of 80s Japanese schools faced the rise of physical aggression among the students. This tendency demanded a firm inferior of school administration into the class' inner affairs, while a more severe punishment for physical violence was introduced, and even police officers were asked to frequently visit schools for monitoring. As a result, already in the middle of this decade such violent tendency slowed down. Mitsuru Taki. Basic Knowledge of Bulling Issues. -International Conference on School-bullying Prevention in Taiwan, 2011. P. 1-2. Still the demand for violence, a necessity to ease frustration through brutal actions continued and in order to satisfy it the new social mechanism, ijime, was formed.

The nearest equivalent of ijime in the Western world may be the bullying, while the most obvious difference between them is the attitude towards the physical aggression. In ijime it is highly unfavorable. Such attitude is based on the traditional Japanese view over social normality, where public and unsophisticated demonstration of violence, such as unarmed fight, considered being shameful and unacceptable. Joseph Adamson, Hilary Anne Clark. Scenes of Shame: Psychoanalysis, Shame, and Writing. - SUNY Press, 1999. P. 170. Therefore ijime settles on indirect, mostly psychological aggression, with the dominant role of verbal offence, status violation, ignorance and isolation. Moreover, sometimes ijime carries a playful element in it, which makes it more

difficult for an outside observer to distinguish children's game from the violence it hides within. Mitsuru Taki. Op.cit. P. 1-2.

The example of such game is the activity that was organized in one Tokyo school in 1987. While the target of aggression, a 13 years old student was out of the room, the group of his classmates set a fake funeral for him by putting flowers on his desk with picture of him with a mourning frame. After this they signed a posthumous letter. When the boy knew what happened, he hung himself. Yoshio Sugimoto. An Introduction to Japanese society. - Cambridge University Press, 2003. P. 136-138. By shaping their actions in the indirect form (the victim was literally in the different place) aggressor managed to perform the act of ijime that was much more secretive than a usual beating and no less harmful.

The responsibility to prevent such actions relies on the teacher, the role of whom in the Japanese school life is very important. In Japan, it is mandatory for the teaching supervisor not only to transmit knowledge, but also to measure the emotional and psychological condition of students; if ijime occurs, the teacher is usually the first person to be informed. Motoko Akiba. Bullies, Victims and Teachers in Japanese Schools. - University of Tsukuba Library, 2010. P. 372. �X�g�b�v������. ���v�f�[�^(Stop Ijime. Statistic data). URL: http://stopijime.jp/data/ Meanwhile, ijime is complicated to be spotted; its indirect nature makes it difficult to clearly state the level of danger, therefore some teacher may hesitate to take control actions. Moreover, if situation is too hard to be solved peacefully, teacher may try to ignore it and leave the children to themselves, as public revealing of class disturbances can jeopardize the reputation of tutor.

Such assumptions are capable to explain why some of the Japanese teachers stay unalarmed about the ijime incidents among their students until the very suicide of the victim. Anonymous pool that was compiled after the suicide of the 12 years school girl in Yamagata prefecture in 2013 demonstrated that more than a hundred students knew about the ijime undertaken by her classmates. At the same time teachers claimed that they had no information about it. Japan Daily Press. Over 100 classmates knew of bullying incident. January 22, 2014. URL: http://japandailypress.com/over-100-classmates-knew-of-bullying-incidents-in-latest-student-suicide-case-2242880/ The same imprudence was shown by the teacher from Nagoya prefecture whose 13 years old student mortally jumped from the roof in 2014 after his classmates consistently pushed him to the suicide. Despite of this, several classmates of the deceased boy admitted that the teacher knew about his problems and refused to help. Some of the students even remembered the moment when the teacher was present at the time children told the boy to kill himself. Japan Daily Press. Nagoya committee concludes 13 year old's suicide was direct result of bullying. March 13, 2014. URL: http://japandailypress.com/nagoya-committee-concludes-13-year-olds-suicide-was-direct-result-of-bullying-3146562/ Thus although the role of the teacher in the Japanese class is influential, he or she are not always effective in monitoring the ijime issues.

What are the main sources that generate ijime and why we include it into the group of coping mechanisms? According to Tamaki, Japanese students mostly appreciate the members of the group who are able to maintain the harmony and unity of the group. These students become the unspoken leaders of the class; the other children try to imitate their behavior and do not join with them in an open confrontation. Respectively, students whose behavior or appearance do not fit into the group standards or who do not wish to take part in the activities of the group are considered to be potential sources of conflict and therefore are expelled from the group. As a consequence, students begin to discriminate and persecute those who do not resemble them, while the class leaders represent the sources of the aggressive behavior. Tamaki Mino. Ijime (Bullying) in Japanese Schools. - University of Queensland, 2006. P. 1-2.

Such description is similar to the Western pattern of group violence with the structured hierarchy within a group, a number of leaders, legitimately controlling the waves of violence and oppressed individuals whose role is to carry on an excessive amount of group stress. Nevertheless, Japanese experience shows some differences.

According to the survey by the �X�g�b�v������ (Stop Ijime NPO) among the Japanese and English school children in the period of five years, the number of bystanders in the class who participate in bullying or ijime by watching someone being oppressed without trying to help them is stably growing both in Japan and England. Yet in Japanese example, the number of such bystanders is visibly higher. �X�g�b�v������. ���v�f�[�^(Stop Ijime. Statistic data). URL: http://stopijime.jp/data/

Meanwhile, the number of defenders or students who try to stop the aggression and protect the violated ones is different. In England it shrinks until the beginning of the middle school and then starts to regain growth, while in Japan the downfall continues, reducing the number of defenders nearly in three times. Ibidem.

If one of the main objectives of ijime is to extract foreign and hostile elements from the group, an important aspect of this mechanism becomes its public nature. Aggressors in ijime seek not only to hunt down their victims, but also to achieve the largest number of witnesses or bystanders in the frame of violence, as their silent presence can legitimate, or even approve their actions. Tamaki Mino. Op.cit. P.3. In fact, the bystanders are the largest part of those who are involved in ijime, while the number of direct aggressors may be a small group of two or three people. The misbalanced proportion of aggressors and bystanders carries a basic contrast to bullying, where the number of actors is narrowed to a few individuals who do not require open publicity of their actions. Thus, in case of ijime the vast majority of class participates in the violence, while the number of uninvolved pupils remains minimal. Yoshio Sugimoto. Op.cit. P. 137.

The reason why ijime demands the big number of bystanders and why it is always executed in the group and never on the t�te-�-t�te level was explained in the study by sociologist Taki Mitsuru.

Taki conducted six researches in a group of junior school children during the period of three years. After the estimations were completed he discovered the striking evidence of absence of aggressor and victim's sufficient criteria in groups as well as the fact that in ijime aggressors and victims frequently switch their status. Taki Mitsuru. 'Ijime bullying': characteristic, causality and intervention. - National Institute for Educational Policy Research, 2003. P. 5-6.

Though the number of children who played the role of active aggressors (more than once a week) remained stable (approximately 6-9% of students), the researcher could not find a single child who stably violated others in all the six surveys. In addition, the percentage of those who were stable aggressors in five surveys did not surpass the digits of 0,6%. Respectively, the number of children who never participated in ijime during the whole research time also did not surpass the digits of 16,3%. In other words, more than 87,3% of students at least once in a term violated or tolerated the violation of their classmates. The results implied that there were only a few stable ijime aggressors among the majority of occasional ones. Ibidem. At the same time, the similar survey about ijime, yet from the position of victim discovered that nearly 80% of students were at least once violated by their classmates. Taki Mitsuru. Basic Knowledge of Bullying Issues. - International Conference on School-bullying Prevention in Taiwan, 2011. P.5-6.

Thus such situation appears: the proportion of aggressors remains stable, meaning that there is always a couple of students who commit ijime over the others, but the number of those who were constantly aggressive is minimal. The majority of group participates in ijime, acting aggressively towards the others, and the same big proportion becomes the target of the aggression.

Such data questions the suggestions by Tamaki Mino. The lack of stability within the group of aggressors or victims, the lack of criteria that locks individuals inside these groups makes it complicated to form firm strata of violence distributing leaders. Similarly, it is troublesome to state that ijime operates to oppress foreign elements, students who do not fit into the group normality; otherwise nearly four fifths of the group becomes abnormal, which jeopardize the nature of the group itself. Moreover, an approximate equality in proportions of aggressors and victims demonstrate that most of the students managed to play both of the roles during the group history, while the actual difference between the two groups is quite vague.

Therefore it is permissible to suggest that the superficial function of banishing and punishing the victims within the ijime may appear to be secondary. The members of the group seldom choose the continual target for violence and constantly change the victims of aggression. The criterion which operates to choose the victim, if the concept of miserable outsiders does not play the key role, is problematic to discover. It is possible to assume that in such situation the members of the group seek to evenly spread the violence inside the collective, provided that the roles of aggressors and victims are assigned in the similar evenly way. In this situation there is no constant victim or permanent aggressor that could harm the homogeneity of the group.

In the modern Japanese school system, as was demonstrated in the first part of this work, the excessive control over the student life, the never-ending fatigue and the omnipresent restrictions result in the massive scale of psychological frustration of children. Martin C. Barell. A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the American and Japanese Educational Systems. - The University of the State of New York, 1992. P.1-7. Considering the fact that in Japanese school children are predominantly taught to study together, to work together and to solve their conflicts together it is logical to suggest that they would also relief their stress on the collective pattern. Ryoko Kato Tsuneyoshi. The Japanese Model of Schooling: Comparisons with the United States. - Psychology Press, 2001. P. 158-160. From this point of view, ijime should be regarded as a complicated mechanism of stress reducing and coping. Due to this ijime demands a vast number of bystanders who by their presence emphasize the collective and not individualistic nature of the occurring. The reason for the long seizure of a member of the group as the target of ijime, falling out of the collective and the introduction of the nakama hazure or renegade's strata may be interpreted here as a peculiar break of the mechanism, when the relationships within the group shift to the personal level. In a perspective, if the mechanism does not improve and the psychological pressure does not decrease, this can lead to the negative consequence, such as a suicide. Thus the teacher's role in this situation is not to eliminate the ijime mechanism completely as it is vital for collective stress coping needs, but to control its operation and secure it from degradation. Consequently, teacher may ignore ijime and keep it away from public observation, if the psychological pressure and relieved stress are disturbed evenly.

As a result, ijime represents a complex collective mechanism of stress reduction, the functioning of which is based on the indirect psychological aggression, while its legitimacy is advocated by the non-personal nature of the occurring and the permanent shift of the participants' status.

2.2 Kireru

The coping mechanism does not always operate based on a well thought system of behavioral acts. In some cases, in terms of extreme pressure on individual's mind, a mechanism can start automatically, executing itself in a spontaneous way. This may be true for kireru (�L����), when in the frames of a hostile environment an unpredictable burst of aggression breaks out. Roberta E. Pike. Japanese Education: Selective Bibliography of Psychosocial Aspects. - Jain Publishing Company, 2007. P. 427.

Kireru is a mechanism of losing self-control, which can be quiet usual for a person in a stress situation. Some occasions that are similar to kireru can be easily spotted in one's daily experience, especially in Southern Europe and Russia. The difference of Japanese phenomena is that from the first glance kireru does absolutely not fit into Japanese model of socialization. It appears to be some sort of a cultural abnormality, bearing norms that are opposite to the common Japanese ones: spontaneity, unrestraint, dissipation. The other visible distinction is its individualistic nature. When most of Japanese cultural norms are gathered around the notion of group, kireru moves to another direction. It does not only push a person to the individual, self-oriented act, but also rotates him or her against the group, demonstrating an outstanding for Japan scale of individual autonomy.

Nevertheless the specific nature of kireru was determined not by the external influence, yet by the peculiarities of modern Japanese society, especially in the realms of school and domestic life.

The sources of kireru in the Japanese school environment can be discovered through the comparison with the American educational system. One of the key features of US school model is its positive attitude to the conflict between the students. Minor disputes and clashes are considered to have efficient potential as they can reveal possible tension on the early stage, help pupils to exchange opinions, relief the frustration, etc. In other words, they are considered as a lawful and unavoidable part of communication within the group. Undoubtedly, sometimes a conflict can evolve to the more aggressive condition, thus American tutors often act as conflict moderators between the involved hostile students. Ryoko Kato Tsuneyoshi. Op.cit. P. 158-160.

On the contrary, Japanese approach defines conflicts as a negative phenomenon that jeopardizes group's unity. For this reason Japanese teachers do not focus on the conflict resolving, but rather on the conflict preventing and detailed tactics to avoid collisions. One of the main methods here is the maximization of convergence of pupils within a single class, pushing and sometimes forcing to the constant common activity, during which children begin to see themselves as a constituent part of the team, rather than separate entities. Due to this if a conflict arises, its resolving is not executed in the separate space with direct participants and a moderating teacher, but in the classroom where the whole group is trying to resolve the conflict from the perspective of common interests and relations, but not from the personal one. Ibidem.

Besides this, as was displayed in the previous chapter, pupils themselves can ease mutual frustration by the means of regular ijime. Nevertheless, such methods put student into an inseparable position to the group. If teachers false to settle down the conflict during the class' brainstorming and if the mechanism of ijime seizes a student as a constant target of isolation, transforming his or her status to nakama hazure, such student does not remain practically no legitimate tools to let the stress go. In this case this student as an outspoken renegade will not get access to the group discussion of the problem, he or she will lose the position in the scope of collective coordinates, will become an external element within an inner centric system, and, without proper abilities to resolve the issue on the personal level, will start to generate stress until kireru will inevitably burst out.

The same problem was exhibited in the study by Murata from Nagoya Gakuin University. According to him, the pillar motive of Japanese teaching routine is the process of accustoming student to the concept of self-endurance or gambare, so that he or she would be able to fit into the adult social relations, where keeping one's face and controlling one's actions are crucial. At the same time, the practice of schooling for restraint may not be very efficient, since it is based on the overwhelming learning process and the constant control of individual's behavior by teachers and class members, leaving little personal space and leisure time for the student. In addition, such student is taught to regard speaking up and complaining about stress issues as a shameful act. Consequently, this leads to a further accumulation of stress, which in combination with a rather limited ability to release inner frustration forms an "explosive" side of the child in Japan.���c��Y.�L�����҂���(Murata Sadao. Kireru Children). URL: http://www2.ngu.ac.jp/white/Libra/pdf-files/kanpo111.pdf

Another source of kireru, according to Independent, is the lack of home discipline. Japanese fathers rarely come to home at daytime, spending much less time with their children than Western counterparts. The Independent. Japan reels under onslaught of children who �snap� and kill. December 23, 2000. URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japan-reels-under-onslaught-of-children-who-snap-and-kill-627573.html This is proven by the UN data. It appears to be that the average time Japanese fathers share with their children reaches the digits of three hours per day which is indeed lower than in other countries. Masako Ishii-Kuntz. Sharing of Housework and Childcare in Contemporary Japan. - United Nations, Division for the Advancement of Woman, 2008. P. 63.The lack of father's presence in the infant's life may have a negative impact on child's psychological condition, cutting him or her off the one of the vital channels of emotional support and relief. Japanese mothers meanwhile draw an opposite picture, spending noticeably more time with their children. On average they spend seven and a half hours per day, which is more than twice longer, comparing to fathers. Ibidem. Such amount of care may be excessive, producing the phenomenon of kahogo no haha (�ߕی�̕�) or hyper caring mothers. These mothers actually inhibit the emotional development of the child, by the perpetual guidance not letting an infant to bear responsibility for his or her actions. As a result of such treatment a child can become an intemperate and truly infantile adult. Susan D. Holloway. Woman and Family in Contemporary Japan. - Cambridge University Press, 2010. P. 39-42.

Besides this, for a better understanding of kireru it is necessary to trace how children themselves define the phenomenon. For this aim in 1998 a survey was conducted among 1200 Japanese children from the age between thirteen and fifteen. Masashi Fukaya. Mukatsuku (Anger) and Kireru (snapping) among Japanese Youth. - Benesse Educational Research Centre, 1998. URL: http://www.childresearch.net/data/school/1998_03.html stress japanese culture

First of all, a question was asked about how often do children lose control and snap into the kireru state. On the one hand, nearly one half of the children told that they either never experienced kireru in their lives or fell into it only a couple times totally. On the other, a quarter of children admitted that they do lost control couple of times a week, while 17% of responders provided data that they do it nearly every day. Therefore, kireru phenomenon is not spread among all children in Japanese society, yet the proposition of those who experience it is rather high.

The next question was dedicated to the interpretation of kireru. The set of the most common answers showed that children defined kireru as an uncontrolled aggressive behavioral act aimed on the destruction of the surrounding objects, as well as on the verbal and physical violence over the others. Basically, such definition does not contradict the concept of this phenomenon produced previously. Yet the results of the last part of the survey appeared to be nearly paradoxical.

When children were asked to provide the concrete examples of kireru, the most popular answers happened to be such innocent acts as inappropriate shoe wearing (52,3%) and coming home late (24,4%). Considering more or less serious misdemeanors, including smoking, drinking alcohol and shop lifting, they occupied only the bottom line of the rating. Thus, the results were inconsistent: though the majority of children defined kireru as an aggressive and destructive act that goes beyond tolerable social normality, most of the actual cases were far away from being even legally punishable. Therefore, an apparent disparity between the interpretation of the phenomenon and its manifestation was discovered.

The possible explanation of this finding may be the fact that in Japan the notions of dangerous and unacceptable are vividly sharpened. According to the study by Kerr, one of the most common words used in Japanese public sphere are kiken (�댯) and abunai (��Ȃ�); the meaning of both is close to the concept of danger. Practically every moment in Japanese social life is complemented by the warnings in the form of aisatsu (���A), messages and admonitions that through omnipresent activity create a normality that states a practice of constant obedience to the rules as a sole provision for social harmony. Consequently, for Japanese children the notion of kireru as unacceptable and aggressive behavior starts directly past the boundaries of the stated set of rules and is prolonged even to the spheres of legally not punishable actions. Alex Kerr. Dogs and Demons. Chapter 13, After School [Electronic edition]. URL: http://books.google.ru/books?id=2s0flQOos6wC&pg=PT348&dq=dogs+and+demons+gentle+flowers&hl=ru&sa=X&ei=xf8_U42RCIuCzAOmzILYAQ&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=dogs%20and%20demons%20gentle%20flowers&f=false Thus this stress coping mechanism for the majority of children is manifested in the relatively peaceful formation. Nevertheless, if social conditions that provoke kireru are not improved, in some cases being extended to adulthood it can evolve into a more brutal form.

In these terms the incident of Tomohiro Kato is noticeable. On the 8^th of June 2008 25 years old Kato crashed a van into the crowd of pedestrian at the Tokyo district of Akihabara. Killing three pedestrians with the crash, he left the van and stabbed twelve more people, four of whom after died from the received wounds. Latter on this incident became famous as �Akihabara massacre�, shaking Tokyo that had a reputation of the secured city. Roman Cybriwsky. Historical Dictionary of Tokyo. - Scarecrow Press, 2011. P. 19-20.

The Kato's experience may be relative to the notion of kireru. He never had a criminal record, and before the events acted as a law abiding citizen. After graduating from prominent school, Kato did not manage to find a decent occupation, finishing at the cheap labor force unit where he could not fit into the collective. Blaming parents for mistreatment, he lost his ties with the family. Without being able to find a frustration relief in communication or group identification, Kato gradually degraded to the condition of social exclusion that, according to Asahi, became the primal cause of his actions.�����V���B�u�e�Ƃ��܂������Ă��Ȃ��v�@�����e�^�ҁA�Ǘ��[�߂�H[Asahi Newspaper. I wasn't well with my parents, told Kato Tomohiro; Intensified isolation?]. June 11, 2008. URL: http://www.asahi.com/special2/080609/TKY200806100282.html

Thus Kato Tomohiro incident demonstrates that in group-prone Japanese society an individual can release inner frustration in anti-social, anti-collective way, if such individual lacks connection to the group identification. This may be true for both childhood and adulthood stages, yet in student years the premises for kireru are postulated systemically by the peculiarities of domestic life and Japanese school system, i.e. untaught conflict solution skills, exalted self-restrain and inability to legitimately ease tension outside the group boundaries. All of this can provoke kireru, a spontaneous stress coping mechanism.