Homogeneity is a myth. Diversity, on the other hand, has become a buzzword in Japan and elsewhere. It can be understood as both a chance for society to become more open and tolerant, or as a risk to grow heterogeneity and inequalities.

This panel discussion will reflect what diversity means for a society and how this is connected to the reality of everyday life. By focusing on issues of identity, gender and sexual orientation in Japan, Germany and beyond, we bring together two activists and a scholar who address multiple dimensions of diversity.

Job satisfaction in Japan has become a widely-debated issue, especially since research findings indicated that it ranks among the lowest in the world (e.g. Hipp and Givan Kolins 2015).
Moreover, surveys suggest that compared to other aspects of life, such as family or education, Japanese are least satisfied with their working lives (Holthus et al. 2015).

At the same time, global megatrends and market forces are reshaping Japanese workplaces, for example in the form of international mergers and acquisitions, which lead to direct confrontations of different cultures and elicit inevitable changes to the existing work culture. So far, however, the implications of such changes for organizational cultures and employee satisfaction have rarely been addressed in qualitative research. My study aims to provide a deeper understanding of the interrelations between job satisfaction, globalization and culture and asks to what extent job satisfaction interacts with and depends on culture.

Medical instruments and technologies can be used to manipulate the human body, ranging from general devices with extremely low risk to such ones highly invasive to patients. Many technologies and electronic appliance nowadays in use; however, took their roots in the second half of the 19th century and increasingly merged into clinics and hospitals during the following century. At present, there can be observed a thrust of technological progress at high pace in the field of biomedical engineering and medical informatics, which contribute additionally to new configurations in in the human-device interplay in Japan.

In order to explore the issues arising from the clinical practices vis-à-vis applications of the (then new) medical devices”, the workshop casts light on their various aspects. The participants will address features regarding the historical, legal, socio-structural, engineering and bioethical conditions and consequences of the interplay between humans and medical technologies or instruments, respectively health care practices in contemporary Japan.

In the popular imagination of contemporary Japan, the so-called ‘Bubble Economy’ of the late 1980s has become a place of nostalgia by itself. In it, the 1980s live on as a spectacular feast with endless excitement and seemingly bottomless resources, while contemporary Japan seems mired in dearth and boredom of the everyday. Of course, things were not quite what they seem, as 1980s Japan was also a deeply neurotic society, beset by anxieties and fears that were shared by many cold-war societies, but in part also entirely local. Thus, studies of the culture of the period either focus on the sense of loss and of nostalgia for vanishing traditions (whatever their claims to authenticity) or on the relentless commodi­fication that went hand in hand with it but seemed strangely disconnected.

Not that long ago, the term “Japanese career women” almost had been a contradiction in itself. Times have changed and Japanese women pursuing a career is a much talked about topic in politics (“womenomics”) and the media. But has the situation really changed for career women “on the ground”? What are their opportunities and what are their challenges? To what extent are profes-sional expectations and expectations in their private life contradicting each other? And finally, are contradicting expectations resulting in identity conflicts and what are the strategies to cope with these conflicts?

These are questions to be addressed in the presentations. The presentation by Markus Pudelko is based on more than 70 interviews that he has conducted in Japan over the course of several years.

Various works have argued that ageing societies’ increasing dependency ratios provoke generational conflict over scarce financial resources. In post-industrial economies, younger cohorts face disadvantages in the labour market and regarding the generosity of the welfare state compared to previous generations. However, there has also been the tendency to alleviate these imbalances through informal inter-generational family transfers. Comparing Japan and Germany – two of the fastest aging societies worldwide – this presentation investigates whether and to what extent the family can serve as a bulwark against potential generational conflict.

With regard to demographic and household-financial dynamics and policy responses, the presentation will compare differences in the capacity of families to serve as an inter-generational safety net.