ABSTRACT
Mobile phones, or keitai, have become an indispensable item of daily life for the youth of Japan. This chapter focuses on the position of keitai in Japanese society and the ‘keitai culture’ of Japanese youth, particularly since the new millennium. After the popularization of the mobile phone in Japan in the mid-1990s, the core user group shifted first from older business people to people in their twenties, and then to teenagers, creating a unique keitai culture among these two groups of youth users (Hjorth 2003a; Ito 2005a; Matsuda 2005). After presenting a brief sketch of the transformative circumstances sur-
rounding keitai since 2000, this chapter introduces characteristics of the ‘mature’ stage of keitai culture using two aspects of keitai culture: (1) the impact of keitai mail (email exchanged via mobile phone) on the Japanese language; and (2) the rise of the keitai novel, popular among teenagers. Through an analysis of discourses on societal concerns regarding youth and keitai, this study concludes with an examination of regulations and policies under consideration aimed at managing the use of keitai by Japanese youth. What emerges from this examination is a society premised by the use of
keitai and in which there exists a negotiating process between youth, who appear to be the most adapted to such a society, and a keitai culture that has matured in some ways, yet is still in the midst of formation and development.
