U

These two terms designate in-group (uchi) and out- group (soto) relations. When Japanese society is characterised as group oriented, what is often being described is the network of in-group and out-group relationships that determine the dynamics of everyday life across complex axes of proximity and exclusion. The most significant and long-term in-group relation is to family, but others operate with varying degrees of influence at different stages in an individual's life cycle. A university cohort, particularly from an elite university, can become a crucial uchi network that creates not only lifelong obligations and responsibilities but also offers extensive opportunities from career prospects, to promotions to arranged marriage. The workplace will also become a central uchi network, although this is more true for men than for women, who have a pattern of shorter non-career-track employment in which workplace relationships are more limited to job duration.