Naoko Okuyama

Education and Pro-Family Altruistic Discrimination Against Foreigners: Five-Country Comparisons

We measure differences between altruism toward a family member and toward an unknown foreigner using hypothetical questions in internet surveys across five countries: Germany, the US, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan. Our analysis shows that people in all five countries exhibit greater altruistic tendencies toward family members compared to their behavior toward foreigners. However, the degree of discrimination differs across countries. It is lowest in Germany and largest in Japan; the remaining three countries fall within this demarcated range. Further analysis shows that correlation structures between education and altruistic discrimination differ widely. In Germany, people who have spent less time in education exhibit lower altruism toward foreigners compared to toward family members. However, in Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, people with higher education levels tend to discriminate against foreigners. The degree of discrimination is insensitive to the educational background in the US sample.

Giving in Japan: The Role of Philanthropy in Strengthening Civil Society

Japanese philanthropy and civil society extends as back as the 7th century, in the form of public benefit corporations. Until the Edo era (around 1600), religion greatly contributed to the development of the Japanese philanthropy and civil society. In the Nara period of the 8th century, Buddhist monks carried out fund-raising activities called Kanjin — the collecting of individual donations called Houga to support the maintenance and construction of public infrastructure such as bridges, roads and irrigation and riparian works (Imada, 2006). Kanjin conducted by the expert monks with Kanjin-cho, the prospectus for collecting donation, was a popular way of fund-raising for (re-)construction of public infrastructure.