Multiple Literacies and Multimedia:
A Comparison of Japanese and American Uses of the Internet

Taku Sugimoto
University of Tokyo

James A. Levin
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Cite as: Sugimoto, T., & Levin, J. A. (1999). Multiple literacies and multimedia: A comparison of Japanese and American uses of the Internet. In C. Self & G. Hawisher (Eds.), Global literacies and the World-wide Web. London: Routledge (pp. 133-153).

This chapter explores multiple literacies realized by new multimedia, based on case comparisons of Japanese and American uses of the Internet. The analyses of the cases will range from relatively superficial issues like different emoticons used by Japanese and American users of e-mail to issues raised by web-based electronic publishing. We will examine some of the ways that uses of the Internet for communications, self-expression, and learning are culturally grounded.

Recently literacy has been viewed as a complex set of social and cultural practices rather than as a neutral technology of reading and writing. According to Street (1995), the concept "literacy practices" "refers to both behavior and the social and cultural conceptualizations that give meaning to the uses of reading and/or writing" (p. 2). At the time when many new information technologies are being developed, it is important for us to look carefully at how we "behave" when using such technologies and how we conceptualize meaning through our uses. Print literacy has sometimes been viewed as a neutral technology of reading and writing. So too, new information technologies, such as e-mail, World Wide Web, multimedia, and hypermedia, are sometimes viewed as neutral. But this chapter presents evidence that this is not the case.

First of all, new technologies are created in specific cultural and social contexts. The uses and conceptualizations of those technologies reflect, intentionally or unintentionally, the cultures they were created in. And when they come to another socio-cultural context, the technologies often bring with them the cultural and social ideologies and value systems.

But in many cases, a culture which imports a new technology from another does not just adopt the technology unchanged along with the ideologies and value systems embedded in it but instead adapts it so that it fits into their own cultural values, cultural ways of thinking and behaving, and so on. The goal of this chapter is to document differences between American and Japanese uses of Internet-based technologies, and to understand these differences as a process of adaption of technologies developed in one culture to be more appropriate for the other.

When new technologies are developed, they carry with them certain idealizations on the uses as well as conceptualizations of them. But examinations of how people actually use those technologies in situations often reveal multiple realizations, most of which are quite different from the idealizations (Bruce & Rubin, 1993). In most cases, such realizations in actual situations have emerged from bottom-up in grass-roots activities, not given from top-down in an authoritative way. Authoritative idealizations and actual realizations often conflict, which results in those realizations developing in "hidden" places. Such hidden literacy practices reveal important aspects of our social and cognitive natures.

In the first section of this chapter, we look at two examples of the Japanese culture importing literacy technologies from other cultures. From these two cases, we will support the position that literacy and communication technologies are adapted, not adopted. In the following section, we will analyze differences in e-mail discourse among Japanese and among Americans to show that uses of e-mail technologies are culturally grounded. In the third section, we will consider differences of literacy practices on the World Wide Web in Japan and in the United States. Through these case analyses, we will conclude with discussions on the importance of our framework of conceptualizing the relationships between technology and literacy.

Literacies in Japan: Distinctions between adopting and adapting literacy technologies

Japanese letters

Japan has a rich history of importing foreign-made literacy technologies and adapting them to enrich their literacy practices. An important historic example is the importation and adaption of the Japanese writing system. In spite of major differences between the Chinese and the Japanese languages, Japan imported Chinese characters for writing, then adapted them into quite a different orthographic system. The current Japanese language uses three different systems of characters.

The first one is called kanji which is the set of morphograms that originated in China. Kanji characters are now used to write nouns and verb roots, and other content words in the Japanese language. For several centuries after Japan imported Chinese characters, they wrote Chinese sentences instead of Japanese sentences by using those characters. Therefore, writing was used only in limited situations, mostly in formal occasions. Lay people did not use writing in everyday situations. But literacy gradually became used widely and the inconvenience of writing Chinese characters became salient. This led to the development of new ways of writing Japanese sentences using Chinese characters and later the development of new characters.

A kanji character can be read with its Chinese pronunciation or it can be "read" by saying the Japanese word corresponding to it in meaning. For example, when the kanji character meaning "wave" entered the ancient Japan, it could be read as "pa" (note 1) which was the Chinese word having the meaning "wave," or it could be read as "nami" which was the Japanese word meaning "wave." This is similar to an English speaker's reading "etc." as "and so on" or "e.g." as "for example." The first kind of readings are called "on-yomi" while the second are called "kun-yomi." A new way of denoting sounds of Japanese words was developed using the Chinese character meaning "wave" for another word which had a sound "pa" in it (for example as the first letter for "pana" ) See Figure 1.

There were many kanji characters which have the same or similar "on-yomi," and initially different characters were used by different people to denote the same Japanese sounds and words. But they were gradually standardized. In addition those characters were simplified. Kana characters, original Japanese characters denoting Japanese syllables, were created in this way. Each kana character represents a vowel or a syllable (a consonant followed by a vowel), with an exception of n which consists of a kana character though it is a consonant.

There are two kinds of "kana" characters. One is called hiragana. These characters were made by transforming kanji characters so that several strokes in original kanji characters were written continuously as one stroke and some strokes were omitted. For some time after hiragana characters were created, they were supposed to be used only by women. In the Heian period (between 10th and 12th centuries) many literary pieces were written by Japanese women using hiragana. One notable genre of literature in this period was the literary diary. Essay-like literature in the form of diaries flourished in this period. On the other hand, men at that time were supposed to use only kanji characters. One male writer named Ki-no Tsurayuki wrote a diary literature called "Tosa Nikki (The Tosa Diary)" in 935 by using hiragana, but he pretended (or had to pretend) to be a woman to use hiragana.

In current Japanese writing, only portions of sentences can be written in kanji. For one thing, many words are known only by sounds, not in kanji. Many words which originated in Japan have no kanji. Also, hiragana letters are added to Chinese characters to show their Japanese declension. Japanese adults write and read several thousands kanji characters, but of course it takes time to learn such a large number of characters. Thus children use fewer kanji characters in their writing than adults. Because kana characters denote sounds (syllables), Japanese children's literature is written using hiragana. When readers do not know kanji characters, they can use hiragana. But if adults use too many kana in their writing, they are regarded as childish. This cultural perception is one of driving forces to push children to learn kanji literacy (Hatano, 1995).

The third series of Japanese characters are called katakana. Most words originating in Western countries are written in katakana. Katakana characters were basically parts of kanji characters. When Japanese men used only Chinese characters in writing, they often wrote small letters beside Japanese sentences as supplementary notes to help in reading them. For example, declensions were often added in small letters so that Chinese characters could be read in Japanese contexts. In writing these small letters, they came to omit parts of those Chinese characters for simplifications. Katakana characters were made in this way.

As you can see from this description of how hiragana and katakana were born, these two systems of syllabaries in Japanese were used differently from the start. Hiragana characters were used mostly by women to write diaries, poems, literary works, and so on, while katakana characters were used mostly by men to supplement official texts, imported Chinese writings, and so on. Until the end of the World War II, most authoritative documents were written with kanji and katakana, instead of kanji and hiragana. Katakana had long been regarded as authoritative, official, and masculine compared to more casual and feminine hiragana. Hiragana and katakana now have different functions but do not have status or gender related differences.

In this way, the characters used in the Japanese language, which are essential technologies for literacy practices in the Japanese culture, originally came from the Chinese language and culture, but the current form of Japanese characters are the result of adaptive processes that progressively modified the foreign technologies to fit into another cultural context.

New literacy practices among Japanese youths: Pagers

Recently, many new technologies for writing and communication have been developed, including word processors, computer networks, satellite TV, cellular phones, and pagers. Most of these have originated in the United States. But as these technologies entered the Japanese culture, they have created new literacy and communication practices different from the U. S. counterparts as well as those in Japan before these technologies. Some of these technologies created new forms of literacy in the Japanese culture.

For example, pagers were initially used in the United States in 1958 and they were imported to Japan ten years later. The pagers used at that time were called the "TP-type" (Tone only Pager), which were very simple, beeping when someone called phone numbers for specific pagers. These were used almost exclusively in the business world. Employees working outside their offices were given pagers by their companies so that they could be called to make calls back when necessary. For twenty years or so, this technology saw almost no advancement.

But since the 1980s many functions have been added to pagers. For example, in 1982, a new type of pager was devised which could make two different tones. A pager of this kind made a tone when someone called a certain number, and another tone when someone else called another number for the same pager.

The most notable feature devised was the capability of displaying numbers on pagers, which is called the "NP-type" (Numerical Pager). This function was added so that people could tell what number to call back. And in the business world, this type of pager is used exactly in this manner. But Japanese youth showed great creativity in developing new literacy activities by using the NP-type pagers. They communicate with their friends who have a pager with this capability by pushing numbers on touch-tone phones. They conduct telecommunications with friends by using pagers!

For example, if you get a message "39," it means "thank you." If a message "88951" appeared on your pager, your friend is waiting for you to come. What are the secret codes behind these numbers? In Japanese the number 3 is read "san" and 9 is read "kyu." In the Japanese language the sound "th" does not exist and when they pronounce the "th" sounds in English words they usually use "s" or "z" as approximations. So, "39" can be read "san-kyu" which can be associated with the English phrase "thank you." For "88951", readings of numbers 8, 9, 5, 1 are "hachi," "kyu," "go," and "ichi" respectively when they are read by themselves. But when these numbers form phrases, they are read in many different ways. 8 is sometimes read "ya," 9 is sometimes "ku," 1 is sometimes "i," and so on. Now what does "88951" mean? In this "code," the first 8 is read "ha," from the first letter of "hachi." The second 8 is read "ya," another reading of the number 8. 9 is read "ku." 5 is read "ko," unvoiced version of "go." 1 is read "I." So the phrase "88951" is read "ha-ya-ku-ko-i." And "hayaku" means early, soon, quickly and so on. "Koi" means "come" (in commands or orders). So "88951" means "come quickly." These may sound very complicated, but many Japanese high-school and undergraduate students enjoy communicating with friends by using this method.

This technology together with methods of coding messages created quite new literacy practices among Japanese young people. The technology itself (the feature of displaying numbers on pagers) was not originally designed for the purpose of realizing this kind of literacy activities for young people. Its original aim was to make business contacts more convenient. But young people found a new way, quite different from original intended purpose, to use this technology and made it an integral part of their culture. (Note 2)

In the Japanese culture, people often read numbers to make sense out of random sequences of digits. For example, many butchers have their store phone numbers ending with "0298." "0" can be read "o" from its similarity of the English alphabet "o." Two, nine and eight can be read "ni," "ku," and "ya" respectively from Japanese readings of these numbers. So "0298" forms a "meaningful" Japanese word "o-ni-ku-ya" which means "butchers." This way of playing with numbers to make sense is well grounded in the Japanese culture. In the same way, Japanese young people feel comfortable with, and even enjoy, playing with numbers on pagers.

This use of pagers among Japanese young people is a good example of how new technologies can create new literacy practices. Exchanging short messages with special codes using numbers is an innovative use of NP-type pagers.

In the United States, there are also some ways of using pagers outside of the originally intended contexts. For example, pagers have been banned in some U. S. schools because they have been used in drug dealing. The perception of pagers among educators in the United States is thus related to crimes which they do not want their students to be involved in. Some Japanese schools prohibit their students from bringing pagers to schools too, but for quite a different reason. They do so to prevent the students from being engaged in enjoyable little conversations all the time.

Some English words can be displayed by using numbers. Children sometimes play with hand calculators to type 14 and look at it upside down to read it as "hi", for example. But this way of using numbers to "write" messages is not widespread in the United States. And pagers capable of displaying numbers are rarely used to exchange messages by using this way of making sense out of series of numbers.

In spite of the differences discussed above in literacy activities related to pagers and numbers, we can see some important characteristics in uses of communication technologies in the United States and Japan. For one thing, communication media help form and establish certain discourse communities. A pager is an important medium for communication among young people in Japan, while it is sometimes a tool for drug dealing in the United States. In these two cases, the same tool is used for quite different purposes. But the tool has a common function in these two cases. It separates insiders and outsiders. Those who share the tool are insiders while those who do not are outsiders.

Summary of this section

This section has looked at two examples of bringing foreign-made writing and communication technologies into Japanese cultures. These two cases have important similarities.

The processes of importing these technologies can be regarded as those of adaption, rather than those of adoption. "Adoption" implies using something which is created by another in the same manner intended by its developers. In the two cases described in this section, however, the Japanese culture "adapted" what was created in another culture in ways different from its use in the original cultural contexts. Instead, it has modified the uses as well as the conceptualizations of them in the process of taking them into the culture.

Modifications in such adaptation processes emerged in grass-roots practices among lay people in a bottom-up fashion, not in a way imposed top-down. In many cases, different subcultures use the same technology in quite different ways, each of which is deeply grounded in the context of the subculture.

Literacy practices in E-mail on the Internet

In this section, we will discuss two facets of literacy practices that differ between Japanese and American uses of electronic mail. The first one concerns the ways that people state their identities (names and affiliations) in electronic mail. The second one concerns the use of emoticons in electronic mail. Differences in e-mail represented in these two aspects of discourse features show how the same communication medium is used differently in different cultures.

Moran and Hawisher stated "when we argue that e-mail is a new medium, developing its own rhetorics and languages, we mean that although new, it is intimately related to its ancestors. In its gene pool are all former and current modes and styles of human communication, written and spoken" (Moran & Hawisher, 1998). And those "ancestors" are culturally grounded. In this section we demonstrate how cultural ancestors are related to current e-mail rhetoric in different cultures.

E-mail formats

Electronic mail is one of the most widely used function of the Internet. On e-mail people use more colloquial styles than in postal mail. E-mail communication has some elements shared with postal mail as well as with telephone conversation.

Letters sent through postal mail have certain conventional formats. For example, English letters often start with "Dear .....," and end with "Sincerely yours." Similar patterns can be found in Japanese letters. For example, many letters start with "Haikei" and end with "Keigu." And it is usual that some seasonal greetings are at the beginning of letters.

But e-mail messages are usually more colloquial than postal letters both in the United Stated and Japan. Many U. S. messages start with "Hi, how are you doing?" or something like that, which is more similar to telephone conversations than written letters.

Many Japanese people start their e-mail messages by stating their own names and affiliations, like "This is Sugimoto @ U of Tokyo" (). A sample of a Japanese e-mail message is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: A sample e-mail message in Japanese.

This may be a reflection of Japanese ways of communication and Japanese culture, for social affiliations and statuses are often important in communications in Japanese culture. Even when they have their names and affiliations in their signatures at the end of e-mail as well as their names together with their e-mail addresses and their domain names which indicate their affiliations in many cases in the headers at the beginning of messages, they often feel uneasy if they don't mention their names and affiliations at the beginning of the message bodies.

It is interesting to compare this custom of starting e-mail messages among Japanese people with that of the U. S. people. Table 1 shows an analysis of how people write their names and affiliations in messages posted to newsgroups. We randomly selected 50 messages from each of eight groups, four each from Japanese and US newsgroups. As you can see from this table, it is very rare for Americans to start their e-mail with their own names. It may be because they feel it is enough to write their names at the ends of messages. Or it may be because it is easy for them to find the "From:" line in the headers to identify the senders of messages. But it is more interesting that it is only in special cases Americans give their affiliations in e-mail messages except in signatures at the end of messages.

Table 2 shows how many people use "signatures" in their messages in the same samples used above. There is a tendency that more people in Japan use signature files in their messages than in the United States. But the use of signatures are not different between the two cultures.

This way of starting Japanese e-mail messages may have developed because e-mail headers have many lines with Roman letters, some lines which make sense but with other lines that make no sense to ordinary people. So it is very hard for Japanese people to find the "from:" line among the header.

Another explanation of this way of starting Japanese e-mail is that this custom originated with e-mail, chat and bulletin board communications in "paso-kon tsushin" (literally, personal computer communication). "Paso-kon tsushin" is network communication using Japanese commercial network-service companies (similar to America Online or CompuServe in the US). These services started their operations in 1980s and had been growing in popularity until displaced by the Internet. These network companies now offer Internet connections but still many people enjoy their forums and see usefulness of using information services provided by them. In the Japanese "paso-kon tsusin" world, it is the custom that users communicate with each other by using pennames, or "handle names" as they call it. In the headers of e-mail messages as well as postings on bulletin boards, only nonsense strings of alphabetic characters and digits (user IDs) appear as the identities of the senders. So each sender states his/her handle name at the beginning of his/her message so that readers can identify who wrote it. Even though readers do not usually know who this person is in the real, they can identify him/her in the on-line world. Handle names or nicknames are much easier to read and remember than strings of random characters and numbers. So it is natural (or at least they feel it is) that they want to give their own names at the beginning.

Anyway, it is not clear where the custom of giving names and affiliations in the form "(name)@(affiliation)" at the beginning of e-mail messages came from, but there are possible sources of this custom in pre-existing Japanese culture related to communications using technologies.

It is interesting to note that there are at least two writing formats that use this format of forefronting name and affiliation. One is the "letterhead" used in formal paper-based business letters and memos, which usually contains the name and institutional affiliation of the writer. The other format is formal writing such as this very chapter, which puts the authors' names and affiliations right at the beginning after the title.

Emoticons in e-mail messages

In e-mail communications people sometimes use "emoticons" to add emotional flavor to their written texts. In e-mail communications without non-verbal cues, people sometimes overreact and express their emotions too strongly. So-called "flaming" is often a problem in newsgroups and listserves. Emoticons (simple character sequences that express emotions) are intended to soften the tones of written messages and to avoiding unnecessary confrontation and arguments (Sproull & Kiesler, 1986). Both Japanese and US emoticons are intended to have this same function.

But many emoticons are different between the two cultures. The basic smilie is :-) in the US. The basic smilie is (^_^) in Japan. Both of these represent through Roman characters a smiling face. The most obvious difference between these two emoticons is that while the US smilie is rotated to the left, the Japanese one is upright. Many people who first see the US smilie have to be told that it is a sideways face.

There is another, more interesting difference between these two emoticons, which most people who know both of these emoticons are often not aware. According to an American English dictionary (Random House, 1991), to smile means "to assume a facial expression usu. indicating pleasure, favor, or amusement, but sometimes derision or scorn, characterized by an upturning of the corners of the mouth." The American smilie emoticon represents exactly the smile in this definition with an "upturning of the corners of the mouth." But the Japanese smilie emoticon has a straight mouth. Many Japanese use a variation of the standard Japanese smilie emoticon, which is just (^^) without a straight line in the middle, which does not have a mouth at all. So it is not smiling in the American sense.

A generally accepted Japanese translation of the English word "smile" is "hoho-emu" (in the verb form). Etymologically, "hoho" means "a cheek" and "emu" means "smile." So literally, Japanese people smile with their cheeks. But the Japanese emoticon (^_^) does not seem to smile with its cheeks. Apparently it smiles with its eyes. How is this so? One explanation is that Japanese people actually smile with their eyes. There are some phrases in Japanese whose meanings are similar to "smiling," like "me o hosomeru" (literally "narrow one's eyes") and "me ga waratteiru" (literally "one's eyes are smiling"). Another explanation is that in many cartoons and animations (manga and anime) smiling faces are depicted as having the ^ ^ shaped eyes. Of course facial expressions in cartoons are exaggerated, but they are often reflections of the surrounding cultural realities. At least it can be said that Japanese people perceive this shape of eyes as part of smiles.

In this way, even though these two cultures have emoticons having a similar function in e-mail communications, they are quite different in their shapes. Both originated from their own cultures.

There is another interesting thing in Japanese uses of emoticons. The most frequently used Japanese emoticon is (^_^;) or (^^;) which has "cold sweat" on the side of its face. Ways of using this "cold sweat" smile reflect Japanese styles of communication. The most typical use of emoticon (^_^;) or (^^;) is when Japanese writers are afraid they are saying something too strongly. It is an expression of the Japanese cultural value of modesty in communication.

Table 3 shows the result of an analysis of uses of emoticons on netnews groups both in the United States and in Japan. We chose four news groups in Japan on a variety of topics ranging from education (fj.education), books (fj.books) to jokes (fj.jokes) and travels (fj.travel). We chose four news groups in the United States on similar topics (k12.chat.teachers, alt.books.reviews, rec.humor, and rec.travel.usa-canada). From messages posted on each group during a one month period, we randomly selected 50 messages. And we counted the numbers of emoticons appearing in those messages.

From this analysis, it is evident that some of the Japanese writers used "American" emoticons, such as :-), ;-) and so on, but most Japanese use Japanese emoticons instead of American ones. On the other hand, no Japanese emoticons appear in the U. S. messages. Even though some books collecting emoticons published in the United States list one or more of Japanese emoticons (for example, Sanderson (1993) lists (@@) as "You're kidding!" and (^^)y-~~~ as "smoking"), it does not seem that they have yet entered the American cyber culture. Also we can see more different kinds of emoticons in Japanese messages than in the U. S. messages. Japanese people use many different emoticons having cold sweat (;), v-sign (v), and so on beside smiling faces.

Uses of emoticons in these two cultures are thus quite different. The general function of emoticons are similar, but the specific forms and uses differ. Emoticons were originally born in the United States but those unique to Japanese culture have emerged. Uses of emoticons are strongly grounded in the communication styles in each culture.

Literacy practices in the WWW

Biases in reading WWW pages

The World Wide Web is a huge network of information. We are able to access information from the other side of the globe very easily. But do we really read the text from other cultures in the way the authors intended? Can we say that we read the same text on the WWW with the same meanings? There are three main ways of accessing information on the WWW: following a link from another page, using a search engine, and typing in a URL directly. Each of these three ways has a potential to mislead readers (Sugimoto, 1997a, 1997b).

When following a link from another page, the reading of the linked page is contextualized by the previous page. So the same web page may have different meanings depending on what paths the reader has taken in coming to it. In this sense, each page of text is not neutral on the WWW. Not only does each page necessarily convey the meanings intended by its authors, since the path to the page provides a context for sense making. This is complicated by the fact that anyone can make a link to any page on the World Wide Web in any way she or he likes. In conventional media, meanings are constructed through interactions between authors and readers. But on the World Wide Web, meanings are constructed between authors of pages and those who make links to those pages on the one hand, and readers on the other. Authors can not control who can make links to the pages they have created.

For example, one of the authors of this chapter has been working on a project developing web-based materials for learning English as a second/foreign language. The site has a collection of magazine-like articles written for language learners with hypertextual links to vocabulary explanations as well as to related readings. There are many links (over 150 links from outside of this site) to this site. As expected, most of them are from sites related to language learning, for example from pages titled "ESL Homepage," "Resources for language learning," and so on. People who visit this site following links from these pages read articles there as practice of reading English as a foreign or second language. This is the use the creators of this site intended.

But there are also different kinds of links to some of the web pages of this site. For example, one article on this site is about the O. J. Simpson case and the issue of domestic violence. There are two links to this article from outside this site. One is from the "O. J. Links" page <http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/Impact/articles/Domestic_Violence/DomViolence.html>. This page is a collection of links to web pages related to O. J. Simpson which are categorized into "information, humor, fan pages, articles, books, commercial links, and opinion polls." Those who follow a link from this "O. J. Links" page to the O. J. article on the ESL site will have quite a different context than that which ESL learners have. Another link to this same article is from a page titled "Stop Domestic Violence Web Resources" <http://www.isis.aust.com/domviolence/webresourses.htm>. People who come to the O. J. article on the ESL site from this page would have still another kind of context.

About one tenth of links to this ESL site are not related to language learning, but instead to the subject matter content of one of the articles at the site. Besides the pages related to O. J. Simpson and domestic violence mentioned previously, health-related sites, a page on Arnold Schwartznegger, pages collecting links to web pages on environmental issues, and so on are among those pages having links to articles at the site. This means that as many as 10% of links to this site may create understandings of information at this site that are substantially different from the original intents of the authors.

The second way of accessing information on the World Wide Web is when you reach a WWW page by using a search engine. In this case, the page has a very different contextualization. The context is that you used a search engine, the key words you used in the search, the expectations and framework you had when running the search, and so on. In this case, understandings may be based on the framework and knowledge the reader brings to reading it in ways only weakly influenced by the intention of the author of the page.

A poor design or structure of information on a site may increase the possibility of readers having trouble in understanding the site properly. For example, if a web page you happened to arrive at by using a search engine did not have a link to its overview or introductory page, it would be very difficult or sometimes impossible for a reader to obtain information on the nature of the site or the page. The chances of the readers having misunderstandings or lack of sufficient information of this nature will be substantial especially when readers and authors belong to different cultures or communities.

The third way of accessing information on the Web is when you type in the URL of a web page received from someone else, from a magazine, from an ad, or from somewhere else. The contextualization of the page will depend on how you got the URL. The context for a web page reached in this way will be yet different than for the pages reached in other ways.

Burbulus (1998) problematized the apparently neutral character of a "link" and suggested that we "concentrate more on links - as associative relations that change, redefine, and enhance or restrict access to the information they comprise." Considering the issues of how our readings of information on the Web are affected by links, we cannot say that information on the web is neutral in any sense. Readers can too easily comprehend information differently from the original intents of the author.

One important implication is that conceptualizations of links may not be the same across cultures. Burbulus (1998) lists different kinds of links on the web. Given that our readings of web pages are highly influenced by how we have accessed it (especially what links we have followed to reach it), cultural differences in the interpretation of links can affect our readings as well as the whole literacy practices on the web.

Expressing oneself on the WWW

There are a few studies which investigated the motivations and purposes of making "home pages" or personal web pages both in Japan and the United States.

Kawaura and Shibanai (1997) conducted a survey of those who had personal web pages on a Japanese commercial network provider between mid-April and May in 1996. They had 211 e-mail responses to their study. The answer the most respondents selected was "my own way of sending out information" (78.7%). It is followed by "easy way of sending out information" (67.8%), "just wanted to try it" (67.3%), "wanted to get responses from others" (36.5%), "interpersonal relations with strangers" (32.2%), "it is in fashion" (27.5%), and "wanted others to know myself" (22.3%).

Another study was done by Kawakami et al. (1996) of users of another Japanese commercial network provider in August and September of 1996. Among 3358 respondents, 839 persons (about 25%) had personal web pages. Major purposes they gave for having web pages were "publish messages and opinions" (47.1%), "for business use" (43.4%), "exchange information about my hobbies" (38.9%), "sending out information" (33.7%), "appreciate my own existence" (18.5%), "don't want to be behind the age" (16.7%).

A similar study was done in the United States by Buten (1996). He conducted a survey in May 1996 of Internet users who had their own personal web pages in Pennsylvania. "Expressing myself" was at the top of the answers from the respondents (49%), which was followed by "studying and practicing HTML" (48%), "communicating information to myself" (43%), "sending information to those strangers who share interests" (34%), "serve as bookmarks" (32%), and "advertise myself" (24%).

These studies used different categories, so it is not easy to compare them. But it is clear that Internet users who have their own personal web pages both in Japan and the United States often have a similar motivation, "self-expression."

Japanese people are often described as less assertive and less good at expressing themselves than people in the US. But the WWW has attracted public attention in Japan as a medium for ordinary people to "publish" their personal writings to the world. It is interesting that by using the Internet, Japanese people have shown an eagerness for expressing themselves similarly to people in the United. But there are some differences between the two cultures in ways of expressing themselves

For example there are many "diary" pages in Japan in which ordinary people write their daily personal happenings and thinking and put them on the web to tell such things to the world. More than 10% of the users of a commercial Internet provider in Japan had their diaries on the WWW (Kawaura & Shibatani, 1997).

There are some possible reasons for the popularity of publishing diaries on the WWW in Japan. Diaries are personal things in nature and are generally not shown to others. But there are some diary-related literacy practices in Japan in which diaries are actually written to show to others. One is the Japanese tradition of literary diaries. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, literary diaries as a genre of literature flourished as early as the 10th century in Japan. In Western countries, literary diaries began appearing in 15th century, but have never been a major literary genre.

Another line of Japanese tradition related to diaries are so-called "Koukan Nikki" (Koukan: exchange, Nikki: diary). This practice is popular especially among Japanese school girls. Two or a few persons share a note in which they take turns making entries to describe daily happenings, thoughts, and so on. This is a diary in the sense that they write about daily activities and ideas, but it is different from a diary in the ordinary sense in that it is not written by a single person, but which instead is exchanged and shared. In these "exchange diaries," young Japanese girls create literacy forms quite different from the school-taught authoritative literacy (Honda, 1996). It is comparable to various "hidden" literacies American adolescent girls practice in many situations (Finders, 1997), although it is much rarer for American youths to exchange diaries.

As can been seen from these practices related to diaries in Japan, not just writing diaries but also sharing them with others in some way has been part of Japanese literacy culture for a long time. One interesting fact is that not many of those who have personal diary pages on the web in Japan had a previous habit of keeping diaries (Ikeda et al., 1997). An interaction between the cultural ground and the new communication technology may have prepared them to keep and publish diaries on the web.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have looked at a variety of cases of using information and communication technologies. A culture which has imported a technology creates new ways of using it which are quite different from those practiced in the culture the technology originally came from, ways that are deeply grounded in the culture which adapted it. Substantive as well as subtle variations and differences rooted in cultural differences are often observed in ways of using and conceptualizing a technology. Through these cases, we conclude that if we look carefully at any literacy practice in actual contexts, the processes of using information and communication technologies will be the result of adaption rather than adoption. People's literacy activities in everyday situations using those technologies are embedded and grounded in their socio-cultural contexts.

The Internet is a powerful medium for international and intercultural communications. Language barriers are the most obvious obstacle to mutual understandings. But we tend to overlook more invisible and subtle barriers, which result from the cultural embededness of literacy practices on the Internet. Communications and literacy practices on the Internet have cultural ancestors. If we ignore these, then any mutual understandings are in danger.

One aspect of cultural embededness of Internet literacies is that a great variety of literacy practices, many of which have been "hidden" in everyday cultural practices instead of "authoritative," "official," and "school-related" ones , have emerged in cyberspace. Internet literacies open up a window to our cultural practices related literacy, both with these new communication technologies and also with more conventional media.

Notes

Note 1. Japanese pronunciations have changed over time. The syllable "ha" in the modern Japanese used to be pronounced as "pa" in earlier times. For example, the Japanese word meaning "flower" is currently pronounced as "ha-NA," but in earlier times it was pronounced as "pa-NA."

Note 2. In the late 1990s, the prices and charges for cellular phones dropped drastically, which led many Japanese young people (including college and high school students) to carry them instead of beepers. But still many Japanese youth use beepers to communicate with each other. Some people carry both cellular phones and beepers with them. There are even cellular phones with the added function of beepers on market in Japan. This shows that beepers are still demanded by Japanese young people, not for financial reasons, but for more social and cultural reasons.

References

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Burbulus, N. C. (1998). Rhetorics of the Web: Hyperreading and critical literacy. In I. Snyder (Ed.), Page to screen: Taking literacy into electronic era. New York: Routledge.

Buten, J. (1996). The first World Wide Web personal home page survey [online]. Available at <http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/sbuten/phpi.htm>

Finders, M. J. (1997). Just girls: Hidden literacies and life in junior high. New York: Teachers College Press.

Hatano, G. (1995). The psychology of Japanese literacy: Expanding "the practice account." In L. Martin, K. Nelson, & E. Tobach (Eds.), Sociocultural psychology: Theory and practice of doing and knowing. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Honda, M. (1996). Kokan nikki: Shojo tachi no himitsu no purei rando [Exchange diary: A hidden playland for girls]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

Kawakami, Y., Tamura, K., Uchida, H., Tabata, A., & Fukuda, M. (1996). A report of an Internet on-line survey. Available at <http://www.ntv.co.jp/bekkoame/> (in Japanese)

Kawaura, Y., & Shibanai, Y. (1997). Netto ni bunsan, netto de linku [Distributed on the net, linked with the net.] In K. Ikeda (Ed.) Nettowakingu komyuniti [Networking community]. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.

Moran, C., & Hawisher, G. E. (1998). The rhetorics and languages of electronic mail. In I. Snyder (Ed.), Page to screen: Taking literacy into electronic era. New York: Routledge.

Sanderson, D. (1993). Smileys. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates.

Sproull, L., & Kiesler, S. (1986). Reducing social context cues: The case of electronic mail. Management Science, 32, 1492-1512.

Street, B. V. (1995). Social literacies: Critical approaches to literacy in development, ethnography and education. New York: Longman.

Sugimoto, T. (1997a). Comprehension difficulties due to lack or shortage of contextualization information in reading information through the World Wide Web. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Chicago, IL.

Sugimoto, T. (1997b). Cognitive difficulties and their resolutions in comprehending information through the WWW. Paper presented at the 7th European Conference for Research on Learning and Instruction. Athens, Greece.

Figure 2: A sample e-mail message in Japanese.

	alt.books. reviews	k12.chat. teachers	rec. humor	rec.travel. usa-canada	fj. books	fj. education	fj. jokes	fj. travel
Name at beginning					13	20		1
Name+affiliation at beginning	1	2			8	6		2
Name at end	31	8	21	23	2	13	34
Name+affiliation at end	1	21		2			1	1
Name both at beginning and end					1	3
Name+affiliation at beginning and name at end						1

	alt.books. reviews	k12.chat. teachers	rec. humor	rec.travel. usa-canada	fj. books	fj. education	fj. jokes	fj travel
# of sig files	11	7	16	12	36	29	28	10

	alt.books. reviews	k12.chat. teachers	rec. humor	rec.travel. usa-canada	fj. books	fj. education	fj. jokes	fj. travel
total #	0	5	5	0	12	20	0	15
:-) (smiling)			1		1	5		1
:) (smiling)		3	1
:-( (sad face)			1
:( (sad face)		1	1
;-) (wink)		1						1
;) (wink)			1
?-( (questioning)						1
^^ (smile)					2	4		1
^^; (smile with cold sweat)					6	7		4
(^.^;) (smile with cold sweat)								5
(-.-;) (silence with cold sweat)								1
^^;v (smile with cold sweat and "v-sign")								1
m(__)m (apology or thanks)					1
[;^J^] (a variation of "cold sweat" smilie)					1
^<>^ (smile with open mouth)					1
(^^)y'' (smile with smoking)						1
(?_?) (wondering)						1
(; ;) (crying)						1
(_o_) (I'm sorry...)								1