U Tokyo Liberal Arts Program

2015/3/26 -3/27

Comparative sociology plays an important role as a mirror in which it discovers oneself through others. However, as sociology is not a subject which can prepare the condition in a laboratory, it is difficult to carry out such a comparison. In this lecture, I am going to introduce one example of a method of a comparison in sociology.

There is an argument in which East Asia (the culture area of China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan) is said to have common characteristics. However, I am going to make it clear how different each country is, regarding gender and I will explain what kind of peculiarities Japanese society has.

If we could find the difference between Chinese society and Japanese society, we could not identify what aspects created the difference. We cannot specify whether it is due to the difference of social systems (whether it is socialism or capitalism), the level of economic development or their culture.

 I am going to make clear the characteristics of the three cultural spheres in East Asia (the culture area of China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan) from the viewpoint of gender while referring to the capitalistic countries of Taiwan and Korea. I will talk about the working patterns of married women and work for old people. I would like to show that there are points in common regarding gender among the societies where there are cultural similarities which go beyond the differences of social systems.