日本人における成人社会化の基本特性

社会的経歴の分析を通して

抄録

This paper aims at clarifying the “emic” features of adult socialization in the Japanese. The case studies of their social careers seen from interpersonal nexus were carried out. We found that their careers, in typical cases, were entirely influenced by their personal relationships with seniors, bosses, and sponsors, in both external (occupational) and internal (moral) aspects. Therefore, their career pattern was named “Jen (interhuman)” type in contrast to the western self-reliant “individualistic” form. The adult socialization in the Japanese is also deeply rooted in the Japanese value of “Jen-ism”, the counterpart of which is the “individualism” of Westerners.
We define socialization as the social process which leads to “morphostasis” and/or “morphogenesis” in the social system consisting of individual members, by way of the mediate process of their social learning and personality development. It means the process by which the social system could be ensured in terms of personnel or manpower resources to achieve its own functional requisites to maintenance or advancement. And so it is the main effect of adult socialization for adult members to make a functional contribution to the achievement of social requisites mentioned above by means of reorganizing their own personal identities. Adult socialization is not an anticipatory socialization, but a “retrospective socialization” having a feedback property. Analysis of social careers would be the methodological strategic base for the study of that socialization.
The points to be examined in the individual social career as relational locus in a human nexus are as follows:(1) the human factors affected to his turning points of life, (2) his significant or referent persons and their sponsorship, (3) his belief-value system on human beings and human relation. “Social careers” is by no means a culture-bound conception peculiar to the Japanese, but a universal one adaptable for westerners as well.
In this paper we analyzed the case of Buzaemon ShindO (high official of governmental corporations) as a typical “Jen” type of career being modal in the Japanese, as contrasted to the exceptional case of Saburti Hirata (Japanese physician emigrated to the United States) as a representative “individualistic” type, along with the case of Benjamin Franklin. Concerning the Tenk O (forced ideological conversion) as an internal turning points, the cases of Fusao Hayashi (writer) and RyiitarO Nagai (professor and politician) were dealt. A powerful influence on the conversion was exerted on both of them by their career teachers.
Lastly it was suggested that the concept of “social careers” was an operational tool having a wide availability in the behavioral sciences beyond the study of adult socialization.