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“Culture,” Computer Literacy, and the Media 269

the ease of sending mail and anonymity of the medium encouraged
people to use casual and blunt language. The theme of anonymity
appears again in a recent article in the Yomiuri Shimbun (Takenaka
1998). The article quotes Professor Okuno of Kansei Gakuin Univer-
sity as saying that media that bring families together in one room,
such as the TV, are giving way to individual media, such as the mo-
bile phone, e-mail, and pagers. The article goes on to discuss the de-
velopment of “individual media” as a danger to the family, and
concludes with Professor Okuno’s warning that the living room—the
center of Japanese family life—may become empty in the near fu-
ture. Articles such as these suggest that Japanese people fear that
CMC will disrupt traditional patterns of behavior that reinforce in-
group solidarity through direct human interaction. The importance
of group solidarity in the company and schools remains strong in
Japanese life. The adoption of individual patterns of communication
thus presents a challenge to the solidarity of the group that Japan-
ese institutions may not accept easily. A Japanese computer entre-
preneur in Silicon Valley noted in a recent article in the New York
Times that “Japan is a place where the ties between people are very
strong and people like to do business with the people they know per-
sonally. The Internet is about networking strangers to talk to each
other” (Kotkin 1999).
Another prevailing theme in Japanese writing on CMC is social
instability. A recent article in the Asahi Shimbun, a major national
daily, presented several case studies of women, mostly homemakers,
who used e-mail and chat rooms to develop new social networks, in-
cluding relations with men other than their husbands (Asahi Shim-
bun 1996). The article insinuated that CMC tempts women into
cheating on their husbands, an ironic charge in a society where
pornographic abuse of women is so prevalent and accessible. The
Japanese legal system has recently come to the defense of those who
feel victimized by CMC language. In a landmark court case in 1997,
the Tokyo District Court ruled that a posting on the “Feminism”
BBS in NIFTY-Serve, the largest commercial Internet provider, con-
stituted libel (Asahi Shimbun 1997). The case concerned a comment
by a male participant in the BBS who said that a frequent female
participant who asserted feminist views would “probably end up get-
ting a divorce because she is so stubborn.” The woman sued NIFTY-
Serve, the manager of the BBS, and the poster of the message. The
judge ruled that because a BBS is open to all members of NIFTY-
Serve, that the comment “lowered the public image of the victim,”
which constituted libel. The court said that the BBS manager and