Cell Phones and Student Life Mobile or cell phones, known generically as “keitai”, first came into use as a means of emergency and other urgent communication, but have recently become indispensable to people in all walks of life. According to a survey on “Youth and Mobile Telephones” announced by the Japanese Management and Coordination Agency in December 2000, approximately 60 percent of second-year high school students own a mobile phone. Keitai are now an essential item for communication among high school students. Why are mobile phones so popular?


Cell phone, Tsurumi High School


Probably the primary reason why high school students prize mobile phones so much is that they provide a personal and private means of communication. By using a keitai, as opposed to the family telephone, they can talk to their friends, girlfriends or boyfriends without parents listening in.


Sending email




Checking email, Kinkaku-ji Temple



Current keitai make it possible to send brief e-mail messages back and forth, and have proved to be a medium of communication perfectly suited to young people’s preference for easy-going, informal exchange. Most of the e-mail messages they send are simple greetings and questions. They also send messages to help each other relax or buck up under stress. Young people have used keitai skillfully to establish communication and close links with each other as never before. The bad manners of some thoughtless keitai users, however, is now a much-talked-about issue.




Photos: Hongo Jin (TJF) 2001 (top), Sakiko Shimao (TJF) 2003 (middle), Taniguchi Tatsuro (TJF) 2001 (bottom)

© The Japan Forum

This text has been adapted from "Keitai (Mobile Phone): Essential Item for Keeping in Touch", The Japan Forum Newsletter 21 (June 2001). www.journeythroughjapan.org.