approach is to teach responsibility by providing greater choice and thus allowing individual diversity to flourish" (Rohlen, 1995, p. 123).
Another feature of American culture is philanthropy. Americans are noted for their willingness to volunteer their time and their money for various civic, political, charitable, and religious causes: "Toquevelle noted more than a century and a half ago that the strong American sense of individual efficacy, confidence, and responsibility had fostered an unusually vigorous association life in the country" (Ladd and Bowman, 1996, p. 126).
In contrast, the Japanese place more value on the household system and extended family, which shifts their focus away from group membership and volunteerism. This accounts for the overall lack of interest by the Japanese for associational activity; 64 percent of Japanese do not participate in voluntary organizations compared with only 18 percent of Americans (Ladd and Bowman, 1996, p. 128).
A major difference between Japanese and American culture concerns gender relations. Unlike the United States, where the career of a full-time housewife is considered somewhat demeaning, Japanese women experience fulfillment from this role, some considering it to be the ideal lifestyle: "A 1996 survey, for example, found that 37 percent of Japanese women strongly believed that a home and children were what women really wanted; 7 percent of American women agreed" ("Free," 1997, p. 40).
With such a significant percentage of Japanese women professing the belief that woman's place is in the home it is not surprising that Japanese parents show a marked preference for educating their sons at the expense of their daughters. A 1993 survey of Japanese parents found that 70 percent desired a college education for their sons, while only 35 percent felt their daughters should be college educated (Ladd and Bowman, 1996, p. 73). This subordination of women carries over int...