IV.3 Today's Japanese society
Today, Japanese society changed into a western society, even if it has preserved some of its characteristics that we have seen before. But Japan has always done the same, with China or the USA, in all its history, and the result of this is the society we know (a little...) today.

So, in every aspects of Japanese life, we see this mix. For example, in sport, even if Sumo is still appreciated by people, base-ball remains the most popular sport (22,700,000 spectators), followed by American football (5,520,000 spectators). But typical Japanese sports are not abandoned: the Sumotori are still almost considered as demigods, Judo, issued from Jiu-Jitsu, itself derived from Sumo, has many followers, like Karate or Kendo... On the other hand, famous Mangas keep a big place in the Japanese reading (In general, the Japanese are very big readers). Until "
Titanic", a cartoon, called "
Mononoke Hime" was first at the Nipponese box-office...
In the same way, its economy has undergone, for the last five years, a crisis which it can't get out. The job for life has disappeared and unemployment begins to be very worrying. However, with their character, the Japanese are wrestling with this new situation they haven't known before. And this is a real revolution there. For the first time in its history, in 1997, the state was obliged to allow interim employment in areas it never happened, such as research... Today, 20 per cent of workers have part-time jobs and a lot of people just have "arubeitos" (derived from Arbeit, which means, in German, work), little jobs, such as sandwich man or leaflet givers, hoping to find a real one...