ABSTRACT
Many of the problems facing a modern society are experienced as transnational or global and are conceptualized in terms of ‘risk’ and as something that threatens not just some vague or far-away global society, but also local communities. Japanese moral education clearly reflects this concern with its emphasis on defining what is specifically ‘Japanese’ and what constitutes Japanese ‘tradition’, but it is also reflected in the attempts to strengthen the ‘social glue’ of Japanese society by strengthening the role of the community and emphasizing relations to people as well as nature and the sublime. Perceptions of risk and anxiety are not just the result of transnational and global flows, but are also, of course, born out of specific local or national experiences. This phenomenon has already been touched upon in relation to Robertson’s idea of local manifestations of identity in the face of globalization: who are ‘we’ and how does this ‘we’ relate to a global history and future? Todorov’s collective identities similarly are described as being called upon to transform by various pressures, pressures to which they tend to react defensively, demanding the maintenance of “original identities”.
