The Development of the Self in Japan

In this paper, I examine the development of the self in Japan amidst the prevailing collectivist theories and philosophies. Previously, most of Identity Development research has been conducted in the predominately individualist societies of the West. The Eriksonian Stages of Identity Development emphasise the sense of self as an individual-but-social nature. However, some more recent research conducted after Erik Erikson’s death in 1994 tend to focus on the individual aspect at the sacrifice of the social. This research pool has also received criticism due to much of it having been done in Europe and the United States and thus may not be generalisable to other cultural contexts in the East or the West. Therefore, it is largely unknown whether or not highly collectivist societies such as that of Japan inhibit the development of the Self. Consequently, the purpose of the present paper is to analyse the relationship between self-identity development in Japan – and the prevailing collectivist philosophies therein – in order to confirm the generalisability of the Eriksonian notion of the Self to East Asian contexts