Keitai and Japanese Adolescents

Introduction

Adolescents are among the world’s more enthusiastic users of mobile phones, demonstrated particularly by their early adoption of data and text-based features, such as mobile e-mail and ringtone downloads. Much of the scholarly attention paid toward Japanese mobile communication activities focuses on keitai, which are an early type of feature phone primarily used in Japan and characterized by capabilities such as Internet browsing, e-mail, and support for the creation and consumption of a variety of media. This article discusses the integration of keitai into the lives of Japanese adolescents, concentrating on ways in which adolescents influenced keitai designs and functions, how keitai have helped adolescents reconfigure their social ties, and how they support new forms of expression and identification through their media capabilities.

The Japanese phrase for a mobile phone is keitai denwa, but the word denwa (telephone) is frequently omitted, shortening the phrase to simply keitai–literally, “something you take with you.” This term is an apt descriptor given the constant presence of keitai in everyday life. Okabe and Ito, two leading scholars on keitai, explained that:

In this article, we use the term keitai rather than mobile phone, following the recommendation put forward by Matsuda (2005a) that this term allows one to refer to mobile phones as existing within and shaped by Japanese society, rather than external objects. This is intended to support a conception of keitai as more than simply cell phones used in a particular region, but as cultural artifacts deeply informed by Japanese customs and culture.

During the 1990s, keitai were designed with communication as their main purpose, but since 2000 have come to permeate numerous other everyday activities. This has led young people to joke that “they would not be able to ride the train or even get up in the morning” without their keitai (Matsuda, 2010, p. 32). One of the most striking aspects of keitai compared to mobile phones in other regions is the rate at which they are used for accessing the Internet. The emergence of mobile media activities in Japan was supported by the launch of i-Mode by NTT DoCoMo in 1999, which was the world’s first commercial mobile Internet service. Although i-Mode quickly developed a large user base, many adolescents bemoaned the high cost of bandwidth, using the term pake-shi (packet-death) to refer to using keitai services they couldn’t afford (2010, p. 33). These concerns were one reason that some users limited themselves to basic Internet features, such as e-mail, which became extremely important for young users particularly. A survey conducted in 2002 indicated that 89.2 per cent of teens (ages 12-19) used the e-mail function of their keitai, 82.7 per cent of users in their twenties, 66.8 per cent of users in their thirties, and a steadily decreasing percentage of users in older demographics (Matsuda, 2005b, p. 124). A 2001 survey indicated that are the most zealous users of mobile e-mail, typically devoting for 1 hour 58 minutes each day to exchanging e-mail on their keitai (2005b, p. 126). The introduction of flat rate data plans in 2003 encouraged heavier use of rich Internet services (2010, p. 33). Internet use became diversified across a variety of functions, such as social networking and exchanging media. A survey in 2007 indicated that far more teenagers accessed the Internet via keitai than by PC, illustrating the keitai to be their primary media device (2010, p. 34).