UC San Diego

In this thesis I describe intimacy-building practices in Japanese adolescent friendship and argue that participation in these hones a sense of power characterized by elaboration of the subordinate role. A sense of power informs self-, other-, and interactive- regard, and friendship experience is thus vital to Japanese individual well-being and interdependent sociality. Friend relationships encourage a construal of self that is socially relativistic (Lebra 1976), sociocentric (Rosenberger 1989), relationally defined (Kondo 1990), and interdependent (Markus and Kitayama 1991, 1994). In the course of fieldwork at a suburban Tokyo junior high and high school for long-term absentees, I found that speaking practices, talk and enhanced talk, were means of generating intimacy among students. Talk was characterized by a self-disclosing speaker and empathetic listener, and talk indexed that peers had formed a friendship. Enhanced talk brought friends closer. One element of enhanced talk was friend talk, but with maximum disclosure. A second element was agonistic interaction, which entailed a speaker telling a listener about the listener and leading the listener to correct action and perspective in a frank, emphatic manner. In students' descriptions of talk and enhanced talk, they elaborated the subordinate role in the speaking dyad. Although speakers and listeners exercised power in talk and enhanced talk, students identified with the powerful listening role. A sense of power is derived from and informs practices of ethical sociality, morally elaborated and culturally valued interactive repertoires. In Japan these include empathy (DeVos 1973; Lebra 1976; Tobin 1989), amae (dependence) (Doi 1971; Lebra 1976; Yamaguchi 2004), group affiliation (White and LeVine 1986; White 1987; Tobin 1989; Fukuzawa and LeTendre 2001), and presentation of will (White 1987; LeTendre 2000; Tsuneyoshi 2001). Friend intimacy-building practices may be considered another domain of ethical sociality