Cultural environment for social learning and adaptation in different countries - A comparison of minority foreigners and majority foreigners

Abstract

Before WWII, number of foreign people was not large in Japan. But after the war, it grew larger and now we have total of 2,011,555 foreigners (in 2005). There are some majority groups such as Koren (598,687), Chinese (519,561), Brazilian (302,080), and Filipinos (187,261). At the same time, there are minority groups such as Bangladeshi (9,707) and Iranian (5,769). Organizing local communities of such people and those of them with Japanese people plays important roles for their life in Japan. Information systems and communication devices such as the PC and the cell phone may play one of the key roles for maintaining such communities. Some people think that the use of such devices and systems may differ for majorities and minorities. Majorities can organize a local community far easily than minorities and will have more chances to meet friends face-to-face. They also have chances of getting information on their own country via the satellite TV, newspapers and magazines and other media. On the other hand, minorities may have only a small linkage with people from the same country. In such a case, the website on the internet or the cell phone may be important for them. Based on this hypothesis, we conducted interviews with and did research among Japanese Brazilians as the majority and Iranians as the minority to specify how the information system can serve a useful tool for their life and their social learning to adapt to the target society. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.