What is Seken: Conformity within Society

Society is a group of disciplined individuals who are able to make decisions for themselves based on humanity, morality and rigorous calculation of cost and benefit analysis for the good of the whole as well as individual. On the other hand, seken (the world) of Japan is a homogeneous narrow view of the world in which people are bound by various relationships, such as blood kinship, marital kinship, prefecture of origin, university, or work place. The hypothesis of this book is that there is no society as such in Japan but only seken is in the mind of Japanese people. Society is an assembly composed of independent and self-reliant individuals working together, while seken, the source of conformity, is the world of human relations under which people are connected and bound by unwritten rules and regulations. The Law of Equal Employment Opportunity for Women is examined to show how it has been watered-down in Japan. Discrimination against female and repeat applicants for medical schools are reported. The protection systems for the whistleblowers are changing, and the roles of laws in the society is decreasing and the conforming pressure is affecting more in people’s mind. Comparisons between society and seken are discussed for clarification from variety of viewpoints, after presenting definitions. Analogy of “360-degree Folding Fan” for Japan’s seken can present useful imagination, as the concept of the world is nebulous but certain to exist in the Japanese mind.