Sleeping through Class to Success

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Japanese high-school students often study until late into the night and sacrifice their sleep in order to pass entrance and other exams. On the other hand, they often take a nap in the (late) afternoon, and daytime napping or inemuri is widely tolerated. This article asks what cultural and social sense it makes to keep students up for studying, when they cannot concentrate on what is being said in class. It examines notions of time and diligence based on the ethnographic findings and analyses sleep, especially inemuri, from sociological perspective. KEY WORDS • diligence • high school • Japan • sleep • time

Considering cross-cultural differences in sleep duration between Japanese and Canadian university students

“…This rather pronounced cultural difference in sleep duration is consistent with some other cross-cultural comparisons (e.g., [ 35 – 37 ]), and is not easy to dismiss in terms of other accounts. For instance, while many have noted the Japanese penchant for napping (e.g., [ 66 ]), this cannot account for the cultural differences that we observed in their night time sleep duration. Although, on average, our Japanese sample napped for 15 minutes and 4 minutes longer than our European-Canadian and Asian-Canadian samples, respectively, the magnitude of these amounts are dwarfed by the differences in nighttime sleep where our Japanese sample slept 46 minutes and 64 minutes shorter than our European-Canadian and Asian-Canadian samples, respectively.…”

“…In contrast to this perspective, Japanese culture maintains quite different attitudes towards sleep. There is a commonly held view in Japanese culture that sleep should be sacrificed in order to lead a successful life, and such sacrifice leads one to become morally fortified [ 66 ]. For example, the anthropologist, Ruth Benedict, noted in her classic 1946 ethnography that Japanese viewed sleep as something that was more akin to a luxury than a necessity, highlighting that: “One is to consider sleep apart from questions of recuperation, rest, and recreation” ([ 67 ], p. 180).…”

“…For example, the anthropologist, Ruth Benedict, noted in her classic 1946 ethnography that Japanese viewed sleep as something that was more akin to a luxury than a necessity, highlighting that: “One is to consider sleep apart from questions of recuperation, rest, and recreation” ([ 67 ], p. 180). Similarly, a common expression among Japanese students preparing for their notoriously difficult university entrance exams is that one will “pass with four, fail with five ( yontou , goraku ),” which refers to a belief that sleeping more than 4 hours a night will leave insufficient time for studying [ 66 ]. Indeed, there appears to be far less concern about the consequences of too little sleep among Japanese compared with Americans (e.g., [ 68 ]).…”

“…Accompanying this apparently normative belief among Japanese that sleep can be sacrificed, is a compensatory tolerance for public napping. It is acceptable, and often expected, for people to doze off in public places–a behaviour known as inemuri , which translates literally as “to be present and asleep”; [ 66 ], whereas napping would seem to be done more in private in the West. For example, Japanese journalists once documented that 40 members of parliament were asleep during sessions, and quite remarkably, when asked about it, several seemed to take it for granted [ 71 ].…”

Culture and Healthy Eating

“…This is not the case with smoking or sleeping. In Japan, sleeping more than others can signal that one is not diligent (i.e., has not stayed up to work or study; Steger, 2006), and smoking may be seen as traditional or normatively appropriate, especially among men. Because Japan is a culture that places especially great importance on adherence to norms (Gelfand et al, 2011), Japanese who are interdependent might be reluctant to quit smoking or sleep more.…”