<Miles Jackson>-----
>
>
> On Mon, 1 Apr 2002, Greg Schofield wrote:
>
> > I can assure you that TV in Japan makes what we get in Australia (which
> > is mostly US TV) look mild and petit vis a vis violence. Yet Japan is
> > undeniably one of the least violent countries in the world (as per
> > personal assaults).
> >
> > I thought the purposes of these experiements was to show a causual
> > relationship between representations of violence and socially expressed
> > "violence"? In which case Japan does offer a direct contradiction.
> >
>
> --Only if the U. S. and Japan are equivalent in every other way, besides
> prevalence of violent media. The difference in aggressive conduct
> could be due to any of numerous cultural and/or historical factors that
> overwhelm the causal effects of media violence. The media hypothesis
> is typically stated "media violence is one of many causal factors that
> provoke real-life aggression". Thus the Japan case (or any cross-
> cultural research) provides no clear evidence in favor of or against the
> hypothesis.
>
> Miles
i don't know about cross cultural research, but it seems to me kids are pretty violent here. they have channels to express their violence that even the school system supports: senior/junior relations expressed through verbal violence (a function imbedded in language) or physical violence (ijime pb, club life etc). my image of japanese society is one of regulated violence. it seems to be a violence with less 'collateral dammage' than the one in france (afaik) or the us (that you seem to discuss). i mean by collateral dammage everything that breaks the rule (ie yakuze killing commoners, kids beheading other kids etc). but the intended dammage is very real and not discussed at all in the main stream. well, no, they say there is an ijime pb but their solution is to say 'let's be nice to each other', not to actually question the senior/junior structure.
jc helary